The train taking nineteen-year-old teacher Christy Huddleston from her home in Asheville, North Carolina, might as well be transporting her to another world. The Smoky Mountain community of Cutter Gap feels suspended in time, trapped by poverty, superstitions, and century-old traditions.
But as Christy struggles to find acceptance in her new home, some see her â and her one-room school â as a threat to their way of life. Her faith is challenged and her heart is torn between two strong men with conflicting views about how to care for the families of the Cove.
Yearning to make a difference, will Christyâs determination and devotion be enough?
Wrapped in the landscape of a blustery Wisconsin winter, Blankets explores the sibling rivalry of two brothers growing up in the isolated country, and the budding romance of two coming-of-age lovers. A tale of security and discovery, of playfulness and tragedy, of a fall from grace and the origins of faith.
Adam Silvera reminds us that thereâs no life without death and no love without loss in this devastating yet uplifting story about two people whose lives change over the course of one unforgettable day.
On September 5, a little after midnight, Death-Cast calls Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio to give them some bad news: Theyâre going to die today.
Mateo and Rufus are total strangers, but, for different reasons, theyâre both looking to make a new friend on their End Day. The good news: Thereâs an app for that. Itâs called the Last Friend, and through it, Rufus and Mateo are about to meet up for one last great adventureâto live a lifetime in a single day.
In this humorous coming-of-age story, Bridget Flagherty, a student at St. Michaelâs Catholic school outside Boston in the 60s and 70s, takes refuge in her wacky misunderstandings of Bible Stories and Catholic beliefs to avoid the problems of her Irish/Italian family life. Her musings on sadistic nuns, domestic violence, emerging sexuality, and God the Fatherâs romantic life will delight readers.
Bridget creates glorious supernatural worldsâwith exorcisms, bird relics, Virgin Martyrs, time travel, Biblical plagues, even the âholyâ in holy waterâto cope with a family where leather handbags and even garlic can cause explosions. An avid Bible reader who innocently believes everything the nuns tell her, Bridgetâs saints, martyrs, and boney Christs become alive and audible within her. While the nuns chide her sinful âmathematical prideâ and slow eating habits, God answers her prayers instantly by day, but the devil visits nightly in the dark.
Scenes run the gamut from laugh-out-loud Catholic brainwashing of children, to heart-wrenching abuse, to riveting teenage excursions toward sex. Young Bridget tries to make sense of a world of raging men and domestically subjugated women and carve a future for herself, wrestling with how God and men treat women. Her Italian female relativesâglamorous Santa Anna, black-and-blue Aunt Maria, sophisticated Eleanor with a New York âFellini pageboyââoffer sensual alternatives to the repression of her immediate family.
She prays fervently that âdespite Godâs bizarre treatment of married women... some [girls] might still discover ways to have a great time without being a nun.â Dodging Satan is the flip-side of l'Histoire d'une Ăme by Saint ThĂ©rĂšse of Lisieux authored by a twentieth century American girl chomping on a blue-gum cigar while she talks to a confidant about God and sex.
Years ago, Rachel had a crush on Henry Jones. The day before she moved away, she tucked a love letter into his favorite book in his family's bookshop. She waited. But Henry never came. Now Rachel has returned to the cityâand to the bookshopâto work alongside the boy she'd rather not see, if at all possible, for the rest of her life. But Rachel needs the distraction, and the escape. Her brother drowned months ago, and she can't feel anything anymore. She can't see her future.
Henry's future isn't looking too promising, either. His girlfriend dumped him. The bookstore is slipping away. And his family is breaking apart. As Henry and Rachel work side by sideâsurrounded by books, watching love stories unfold, exchanging letters between the pagesâthey find hope in each other. Because life may be uncontrollable, even unbearable sometimes. But it's possible that words, and love, and second chances are enough.
From the author of The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley comes a brand-new novel about a teenage boy who must decide whether or not the world is worth saving.
Henry Denton has spent years being periodically abducted by aliens. Then the aliens give him an ultimatum: The world will end in 144 days, and all Henry has to do to stop it is push a big red button.
Only he isnât sure he wants to.
After all, life hasnât been great for Henry. His mom is a struggling waitress held together by a thin layer of cigarette smoke. His brother is a jobless dropout who just knocked someone up. His grandmother is slowly losing herself to Alzheimerâs. And Henry is still dealing with the grief of his boyfriendâs suicide last year.
Wiping the slate clean sounds like a pretty good choice to him.
But Henry is a scientist first, and facing the question thoroughly and logically, he begins to look for pros and cons: in the bully who is his perpetual one-night stand, in the best friend who betrayed him, in the brilliant and mysterious boy who walked into the wrong class. Weighing the pain and the joy that surrounds him, Henry is left with the ultimate choice: push the button and save the planet and everyone on itâŠor let the worldâand his painâbe destroyed forever.
As destiny calls, a journey begins. It has been twenty years since the god-like Augurs were overthrown and killed. Now, those who once served them - the Gifted - are spared only because they have accepted the rebellion's Four Tenets, vastly limiting their powers. As a Gifted, Davian suffers the consequences of a war lost before he was even born. He and others like him are despised.
But when Davian discovers he wields the forbidden power of the Augurs, he sets into motion a chain of events that will change everything. To the west, a young man whose fate is intertwined with Davian's wakes up in the forest, covered in blood and with no memory of who he is... And in the far north, an ancient enemy long thought defeated begins to stir.
The Licanius Trilogy is a relentless coming-of-age epic from the very first page.
Seventeen-year-old Molly Peskin-Suso knows all about unrequited loveâsheâs lived through it twenty-six times. She crushes hard and crushes often, but always in secret. Because no matter how many times her twin sister, Cassie, tells her to woman up, Molly canât stomach the idea of rejection. So sheâs careful. Fat girls always have to be careful.
Then a cute new girl enters Cassieâs orbit, and for the first time ever, Mollyâs cynical twin is a lovesick mess. Meanwhile, Mollyâs totally not dying of lonelinessâexcept for the part where she is. Luckily, Cassieâs new girlfriend comes with a cute hipster-boy sidekick. Will is funny and flirtatious and just might be perfect crush material. Maybe more than crush material. And if Molly can win him over, sheâll get her first kiss and sheâll get her twin back. Thereâs only one problem: Mollyâs coworker Reid. Heâs an awkward Tolkien superfan with a season pass to the Ren Faire, and thereâs absolutely no way Molly could fall for him. Right?
The Idiot, a novel by Elif Batuman, is a portrait of the artist as a young woman, exploring the themes of self-discovery and inventing oneself. Set in the year 1995, when email was a new phenomenon, we follow Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, as she begins her freshman year at Harvard. Without any preconceived plans, she enrolls in classes on unfamiliar subjects, forges a friendship with the charismatic and worldly Serbian classmate Svetlana, and, almost by chance, starts corresponding with Ivan, a Hungarian mathematics student.
Despite their limited face-to-face interactions, Selin and Ivan develop a complex relationship through their email exchanges, with each message adding new and mysterious layers to the act of writing. As the school year concludes, Ivan departs for Budapest, and Selin embarks on a teaching assignment in the Hungarian countryside, a position arranged by one of Ivan's friends. Her journey also includes a two-week sojourn in Paris with Svetlana.
Unlike the typical narratives of American college students abroad, Selin's experiences in Europe lead her on an introspective journey. She confronts the bewildering and exhilarating turmoil of first love and comes to an important realization: she is destined to become a writer. The Idiot is a candid reflection on the complexities of becoming an adult, filled with exquisite emotional and intellectual sensitivity, mordant wit, and a writing style that captures the unpredictable nature of memory itself.
Everything, Everything tells the story of Maddy, a girl who's literally allergic to the outside world, and Olly, the boy who moves in next door and becomes the greatest risk she's ever taken. Maddy's disease is as rare as it is famous. Essentially, she's allergic to the world and has not left her house in seventeen years. The only people she ever sees are her mom and her nurse, Carla.
But then, a moving truck arrives next door. Maddy looks out her window, and she sees him. He's tall, lean, and dressed entirely in black. When he catches Maddy looking, they share a moment. His name is Olly. Maddy wants to learn everything about him, and as she does, she finds that talking to him makes her whole world open up. She begins to change, to want things, to want out of her bubbleâto want everything, everything the world has to offer.
While it's impossible to predict the future, some things are certain. For example, Maddy is definitely going to fall in love with Olly. And it's almost certainly going to be a disaster. Yet, through this journey, Everything, Everything will make you laugh, cry, and feel everything in between. It's an innovative, inspiring, and heartbreakingly romantic debut novel that unfolds in a unique manner, including vignettes, diary entries, and illustrations.