Showing results by narrator "Gail Shalan" in All Categories

A solar powered girl. A ballerina vigilante. A boy with an alien sharing his brain. A girl with a black hole for her heart. And a werewolf with confidence issues. This is the next generation of heroes Doc Silence has gathered together, a random collection of amazing kids he hopes to train to make the world a better place. But Silence isn't the only one collecting super-powered teenagers.

When Laurie Whitman’s husband Devon chokes her during a violent intimate encounter, she goes on the run to save her life. Then Devon’s death in a horrifying fire brings her back and her story makes her a celebrity and spokeswoman for women in similar positions. But when it’s discovered that the fire was arson, she becomes the prime suspect and focus of private investigator Blake Gramercy’s scrutiny. After a confrontation between them leads to them being shot at by a mysterious figure, the two must join forces to uncover the truth and seek justice while fighting for their lives.

In Privilege Lost, Jessi Streib traces the lives of over 100 youth born into the upper-middle-class. Following them for over 10 years as they transition from teens to young adults, Streib examines who falls from the upper-middle-class, how, and why don't they see it coming. In doing so, she reveals the patterned ways that individuals' resources and identities push them onto mobility paths - and the complicated choices youth make between staying true to themselves and staying in their class position.

Isabel Beane is a shy girl who lives in a home full of havoc and hubbub and hullabaloo. With five siblings, there is always too much too much-ness. At school, there’s a new girl who is immediately popular, but she’s also not very nice to one person—Isabel. Isabel has never felt more invisible. She begins to get bombarded by fears, like being abandoned by her classmates and taking the upcoming Extremely Important standardized test. Her fears feel like worry-moths that flutter in her belly. With every passing day, they seem to get stronger and stronger.

Hannah Malfa-Adler is Jew...ish. Not that she really thinks about it. She'd prefer to focus on her favorite pastime: baking delicious food! But when her best friend has a beyond-awesome bat mitzvah, Hannah starts to feel a little envious...and a little left out. Despite her parents firm no, Hannah knows that if she can learn enough about her own faith, she can convince her friends that the party is still in motion. As the secrets mount, a few are bound to explode.

When they were 15, Willa, Luz, and Britton’s friendship was everything. When they were 16, they stood by each other no matter what. When they were 17, they went through the worst. And when they were 18, Willa ruined it all. Now, it’s the week of graduation, and Willa is left with only a memory box filled with symbols of the friendship she destroyed.

It’s Pairing Day in Terrafamiliar! Marina has been waiting for this moment—anxiously—for as long as she can remember. Because today’s the day she gets to bond with her animal familiar for life, like every other ten-year-old in the land. Except after the ceremony ends, Marina doesn’t have one. And she’s not alone . . . four other girls also didn’t get their animal companions. The leaders of Terrafamiliar realize something special is happening: Marina and the other four girls—Kit, Ember, Pippa, and Hailey—are called Mythics.

Nine-year-old Magdala and her father have been exiled from their home; they flee through the harsh landscape of the American West, searching for refuge. As violence pursues them, they join a handful of survivors on a pilgrimage to the holy city of Las Vegas, where it is said that vigilante saints reside, bright with neon power.

Rachele Luzzato is twelve years old when she learns that her father is gravely ill. While her family plans for her upcoming bat mitzvah, Rachele finds herself cast as the Madonna in her school’s Christmas play. Caught between spiritual poles, struggling to cope with her father’s mortality, Rachele feels as if the threads of her everyday life are unraveling.

During a hot summer of June moods, grubworms, and dark storms, Sunshine discovers stones in her chest—and learns the dangers her coming of age will bring about in the yellow house she shares with her father. Without the vocabulary to comprehend Billy's actions or her own changing body, Sunshine turns to an apocryphal story passed down from her grandmother: In the dark waters of the Black Bayou lives a crocodile with an insatiable appetite and a woman with a mysterious healing gift.

When recent NYC-transplant Liz Brinkley and her husband are invited to an exclusive soiree by their neighbor, Liz’s immediate thought is hell no. And yet she RSVPs anyway, trying to extend an olive branch to her withdrawing husband, who seems desperate to get in with the cliquey elite. They’ve barely made it through their first round of champagne when a “red alert” comes through their phones: strange atmospheric masses, reported to look like “glimmering clouds,” have been spreading through major U.S. cities and killing anyone they touch.

Avery Hart lives for the thrill and speed of her dirt bike and the pounding thump of her drum kit. But after she’s diagnosed with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a disease that affects her joints, Avery splits her time between endless physical therapy and worrying that her fun and independence are over for good.

Painfully shy Grace dreads starting fifth grade, now that her best friend has moved away. Jada hopes she'll stop feeling so alone if she finds the mother who left years ago. And Malia fears the arrival of her new baby sister will forever change the family she loves. When the girls each find a mysterious treasure box in their library and begin to fill the box with their own precious things, they start to feel less alone. But it's up to Grace, Jada, and Malia to take the treasures and turn them into something more: true friendship.

Sure, I hate how everyone was over the moon about her TikTok fame. And I suppose I got a little bit carried away with vengeance when she tried to ruin my life. But seriously, when my friend gave me that leather journal, I’d never had so much power in my life. It was intoxicating. Who wouldn’t have done what I did to Eva? Now everyone thinks that just because she vanished in the forest after a party, that I killed her. That the blood on the jackets is proof. Or the text messages. The slightly weird thing I had with Eva's dad. The fire.

Danielle Silver is a Philadelphia high school senior at the dawn of the ’90s. Ever since her parents split up, she has known her father was gay, but she never expected to be hit with the bombshell that he is HIV positive. As he sickens, and AIDS starts to claim the lives of his friends, Danielle searches for silver linings while trying to balance paralyzing fear, grief, her social life, and schoolwork—capturing all the feelings as adolescence and some hard facts collide.

Four girls from very different backgrounds are making their way to the mysterious Rosenholm Boarding School from different corners of the country. The one thing they have in common is the strange offer they have received to apply for a place at what will turn out to be a school for magic, deeply embedded in Nordic mythology, nature magic, and shamanism. The girls have been invited to apply for a reason that is as yet unknown to themselves, but already during the unorthodox application tests, it becomes apparent that a spirit is trying to establish contact with the girls.

Midsummer used to be a day of feasts and bonfires. A day when cares were set aside for the joy of grass between our toes, warm hands in our palms, laughter in our hearts. Our celebrations dimmed with the light. Something upset the balance of our woods. Something so deep that even our bonfires can't lure the sun back. And he has something to do with it. Of that we're sure, which is why I'm being given to him.

A feminist anthology inspired by legendary Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown’s Sex and the Single Girl, featuring twenty-four new essays on the triumphs and heartbreaks of modern singlehood from acclaimed and bestselling authors, including Kristen Arnett, Morgan Parker, Evette Dionne, and Melissa Febos.

Raised in a conservative Palestinian family in Brooklyn, Yara thought she would finally feel free when she married a charming entrepreneur. Now, she has a good job at the local college, and balances that with raising her two daughters and taking care of their home. Yara knows that her life is more rewarding than her mother’s–so why doesn’t it feel like enough?

I’m the crazy fun one. Pedal to the floor, balls to the wall, party all weekend guy. The guy everybody calls for laughs and a good time. And I always deliver. So, when Ainsley Winslow and I made a pact for a summer fling, I was all in. What hot-blooded college male doesn’t jump at the chance for a no-strings-attached relationship? Not this one. Then summer drew to a close, and I found myself wanting time to move slower. Ainsley Winslow is a girl of her word. When fall inevitably came, she vanished.