Equally broke and futureless, 28–year–old James Brooke, a graduate architect, coffee-addict, and self–described average nobody has returned to his small hometown in West Ohio. Torn between his fanciful dreams and the need to pay off bills, he struggles to find his own identity while facing a harder–than–ever reality. But living under his father’s rooftop while keeping his head in the clouds soon turns out to be a bad combination, and the mounting student debt forces him to settle for any job he can find. That’s when he stumbles across a new coffee shop, a wayward girl with a talent for storytelling, and his own unresolved past. This unexpected set of things could help him figure out what his place in the world is—if that place even exists. Paper Castles is a story about the search for meaning in times when everything seems meaningless.

    Part of the in-crowd at Providence High, she is steps away from being asked out by the most desired guy at school, winning a prom queen nomination, and her parents' approval. If she can just get skinny enough, be pretty enough, and popular enough. All she has to do is eat less than the week before. Lose just one more pound. But soon, she finds herself in a deadly game of self-acceptance. Is love enough to pull her back from the edge?Fans of emotional contemporary YA will fall in love with Souders' heart-wrenching novel. Like Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why and Lauren Oliver's Before I Fall, More Than a Number raises thought-provoking questions about love and acceptance, as well as the cost of beauty. *Previously titled Something of Substance*

    When an old friend convinces her to give two adolescent boys a temporary home, she is torn between a growing love for these orphans and the grief in her past.After his marriage fell apart, Roman Taylor has focused on his career. An unexpected phone call sends him rushing to Abby's side where he is drawn into his estranged wife's new life - a life that could offer a future he thought he'd lost forever.Will they seize this second chance to have a family of their own? Or will fate once again destroy their dreams?Welcome to Bindarra Creek - A Town Reborn, a fictional town set on the western slopes of the New England tablelands. Take me Home is the first book in a eight book series by best-selling authors. With a community full of quirky characters, the books feature compelling romance, heart-warming family life, drama, and even suspense.

    Beat him to death with a tree branch after he threatened to rape her. But what started as self-defense became problematic for two reasons. First, she killed Robert Sims after he’d been rendered completely defenseless. And second, she inadvertently left her fingerprints at the scene. Allie is young, beautiful, the smartest person in any room. But she’s also been diagnosed as clinically insane. As her past catches up with her and her marriage starts to crumble, Allie is determined to survive at all costs. Size Matters is a taut, compelling novel that teaches us never to underestimate a woman with nothing to lose. PRELIMINARY REVIEWS: “Size Matters is so full of twists and turns and surprises I couldn’t have flipped the pages faster if you paid me! This novel surprised and delighted and kept me shaking my head time and again. Fans of Donovan Creed should be aware that he and Callie make a brief appearance that furthers their saga.” “‘I’ve done bad things,’ says Allie McPherson, ‘but that doesn’t make me a bad person.’ Well, that’s one opinion!” “This book is crazy! There are twists and turns on virtually every page! While I consider myself an expert on Locke novels, I have to admit he took me on a wild ride that made me guess wrong every single time.” “Size Matters is a cross between Alfred Hitchcock and Quentin Tarantino. From start to finish I was shocked, surprised, and hopelessly entertained.”

    Two men, aided by her father, hustle her mother away without a word, leaving a stunned Sarah staring after them. Thus begins Sarah’s journey into a world of secrets, a world of great responsibility and little guidance. Along the way, “The Blue Car,” set in western North Carolina in 1952, explores when to keep a promise and when to break it, and whether people can really change. Book club discussion questions included.

    Longing for what she doesn’t have, the unfulfilled stay-at-home mom goes on a journey of self discovery tainted by the pursuit of a perfect body. An unlikely friendship with fun-loving and thin-obsessed Stacy Vargus leads Sarah down a path she believes will bring her closer to a world she has spent a lifetime chasing, only to realize it doesn’t exist. An unexpected reunion with an old friend unleashes a passion for life Sarah had long forgotten, giving her a new lens through which to view her world.This debut novel by Michelle Cantrell offers an entertaining twist on keeping up with the Joneses while revealing the dangers of losing oneself to the superficial status symbols of suburban life.

    Almost everyone.For Sanskrit Aaron Zuckerman, it isn't easy to believe. Especially when all the people you care about leave.His Dad left after the divorce. The love of his life left in second grade. His best friend in Jewish school found God and practically left the planet. Now his yoga teacher Mom is falling in love with her spiritual guru, and she’s threatening to leave, too.In a desperate attempt to keep his family together, Sanskrit tells just one small lie. And for a while it seems to be working. Because people start coming back. Sanskrit might even get the family he always wanted.There’s just one little thing in his way. The truth.

    Bright, wry, blunt, and irreverent, she invites you to witness her family's unraveling. Her Harvard-bound sister is anorexic, her mother is having an affair, her father is obsessed with the Food Network, and her grandfather wants to plan her wedding (even though she has no fiancé, let alone a steady boyfriend).By turns wickedly funny and heartbreakingly bittersweet, Hunger Point chronicles Frannie's triumph over her own self-destructive tendencies, and offers a powerful exploration of the complex relationships that bind together a contemporary American family. You will never forget Frannie, a "sultry, suburban Holden Caulfield," whom critics have called "the most fully realized character to come along in years," (Paper) nor will you forget Hunger Point, an utterly original novel that stuns with its amazing insights and dazzles with its fresh, distinctive voice.

    The one thing Melissa doesn't have is a perfect body. But there are ways to fix that. Strict dieting and throwing up can't be all bad, can they? Melissa soon finds the consequences are devastating, but turning back isn't so easy. Will she hear God's voice before it's too late?

    The family retreats to the seclusion of a small Pennsylvanian town, where a host of rich characters all play part in Olivia's struggle to understand her disillusionment with Christianity and gather courage to fight the eating disorder threatening her health.

    Cliques form and break apart. Couples are made and destroyed. And a reputation is solidified that you won’t ever be able to escape. Everything you do and say, and everyone you spend your time with, matters.Katie Mills knows that. She gets it. That’s why she tried so hard to get in with the cool girls at school. And why she was so devastated when those efforts found her detained for shoplifting and laughed out of cheer squad tryouts.But Katie has more to worry about than just fitting in. Her parents are divorced and always fighting. Her sister never has time for her. And her friends all seem to be drifting apart. Even worse? The boy she has a crush on is dating the mean girl at school.Everything is a mess, and Katie doesn’t feel like she has control over any of it. Certainly not over her weight, which has always topped out at slightly pudgier than normal—at least, according to her mother.So when she happens to catch one of the popular girls throwing up in the bathroom one day, it sparks an idea. A match that quickly engulfs her life in flames.Is there any going back once she gets started down this path?And would she even want to if she could?

    And who would know better than twenty-five-year-old Alice, passionately committed to her own suffering--an all-consuming addiction to food deprivation--as a divine form of self-knowledge?After an episode of heart failure, Alice arrives in the eating disorder clinic of Seaview Hospital, where she detachedly watches a circus unfold . . . starring her perfectionist mother, Syd ("she'd been a synchronized swimmer in college"), her counselors ("the therapists are like tuning forks for epiphanies"), and the resident anorexics, bulimics, and compulsive eaters. But it is newcomer Maeve Sullivan, at once raucous and tender, with her fleshy body and hedonistic appetites, who turns Alice's adventure beyond her own distorted looking glass into a new perception of herself--and who wakens an attraction that touches Alice's soul and changes her life forever.Praise for The Passion of Alice"A smart, funny, wonderful book that will contain truth for every reader."-- Los Angeles Times Book Review "[A] tart and edgy first novel . . . A rarity--an examination of a twenty-five-year-old woman's peculiar inner life, wrapped in a sharp comedy of manners."--Harper's Bazaar "Stephanie Grant's first novel is as grim as it is powerful, stripped entirely of the convenient life-affirming consolations and breakthroughs that can make 'social issue' fiction easier to take. Her prose style is relentlessly cool and stark, serving as x-ray vison that registers the hardest truths without prettification."--The Boston Globe

    The only way to be safe, to be good, to be acceptable and above all, to escape from the cold, looming threat of approaching adulthood. Jessica listened to the Monkey, and it consumed her.This is the illuminating story of a teenage girl's wanderings in darkness: the spiral down into madness, the terrible realities of an adolescent psychiatric unit, and the stark choice that she must either tame her monster - or die.Through memory, reflection, and enduring black humour, Jessica makes a tenuous peace with the world and with her emerging adult self.

    She's fortunate enough to find a great opportunity to live in an exterior apartment of a beautiful lake house in a small town in Vermont. When she realizes the apartment and scenery are not the only gorgeous appeal but the home owner, Seth Finn, is as well, she puts it all on the line for the chance at love. When she becomes comfortable and confident in her own skin and sexuality, Mae realizes that this place and this man is exactly what she came looking for. Knowing Seth and his three children are as special as they come, Mae bets the house, and prays she and her gamble are enough.

    She is also a perfectionist. When Leslie starts to diet, she finds herself becoming obsessed, getting thinner and thinner, until she is forced to realize that her quest for perfection is killing her. First published in 1981, this groundbreaking novel has been lauded by countless librarians, educators, and teenage readers. This new edition features an afterword by the author in which she discusses her own struggle with the disease, the difficult road toward recovery, and the lasting effects on her life.