problem families

Having been stood up for the prom the previous year, high school junior Nicolette works on a top ten list of things to do with her unworn dress while also trying to help her divorced parents and take care of her relationships with her best friend and with potential boyfriends.

Nine-year-old Lawrence travels with his mother and younger sister to Rome, fleeing torment from his estranged father, and while staying in the homes of his mother's old friends, Lawrence looks at his new life as an adventure, until his father reappears.

American teenager Nori Tanaka has never thought much about her Japanese heritage, but when she travels to Japan for a summer academic program to escape from her parents' impending divorce, she discovers a new way of looking at both herself and the world.

When his father dies, Bo Gamage warily moves to the Mojave Desert home of his distant and estranged relatives, the Martinkas, and finds that "Mad" lives up to her name, PawPaw despises him, and Aunt Juna hopes he'll help search for the gold mine that started a family feud.

After the death of her estranged mother, who left Ohio years ago to live with her lesbian partner in New York City, seventeen-year-old Shawna Gallagher's life is transformed by revelations about her family, her best friend, and herself.

The struggles of several young people who confront family problems, emotional problems, unrequited love, mystery, and violence, are told from the viewpoint of Matt, who is known for his unusual behavior but who has unusual gifts, and Erin, who tries to use her proficiency with magic to attract Matt.

Suffering his stepfather's physical and emotional abuse, ninth-grader Oz is sent to the Briarwood School where his mistreatment continues at the hands of abusive and criminal school officials.

Andrea Ashworth's account of how she survived her appalling childhood with her spirit, and capacity for forgiveness, intact.

Starting her junior year at an ultra-elite Boston school, sixteen-year-old Sara, hoping to join the popular crowd, hides that her father not only is the school janitor, but also has obsessive-compulsive disorder.