motherless families

Anne Elliot, persuaded by family and friends that the charming and handsome Frederick Wentworth is not worthy of her regard, questions her decision to send him away until he returns seven years later, his circumstances much improved.

A teenage girl who lives with her father, a prison warden, looks to inmates for a mother figure, only to find herself in the process.

"Bouncing in the middle of two cultures, Apple meets her Indian relatives, shatters Indian stereotypes, and learns what it means to find her place in a world divided by color"--Provided by publisher.

"Bouncing in the middle of two cultures, Apple meets her Indian relatives, shatters Indian stereotypes, and learns what it means to find her place in a world divided by color."--Provided by publisher.

Twelve year old Ava must travel into the Underworld part of the swamp in order to save her family's dynasty of Bigtree alligator wresting. This novel takes us to the swamps of the Florida Everglades, and introduces us to Ava Bigtree, an unforgettable young heroine. The Bigtree alligator wrestling dynasty is in decline, and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator wrestling theme park, formerly no. 1 in the region, is swiftly being encroached upon by a fearsome and sophisticated competitor called the World of Darkness. Ava's mother, the park's indomitable headliner, has just died; her sister, Ossie, has fallen in love with a spooky character known as the Dredgeman, who may or may not be an actual ghost; and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, who dreams of becoming a scholar, has just defected to the World of Darkness in a last ditch effort to keep their family business from going under. Ava's father, affectionately known as Chief Bigtree, is AWOL; and that leaves Ava, a resourceful but terrified thirteen, to manage ninety eight gators as well as her own grief. Against a backdrop of hauntingly fecund plant life animated by ancient lizards and lawless hungers, the author has written a novel about a family's struggle to stay afloat in a world that is inexorably sinking.

Seventeen-year-old Kate, feeling alone in the wake of her mother's death and her father's preoccupation with his new girlfriend, prepares, with the help of her younger sister, to give birth to her baby in secret.

Something happened to her mother that night. Something no one wants to talk about. But she?s determined to uncover her family?s dark secrets, even if they bury her.

This book presents a real-world look at how American families are changing and helps teen readers gain an understanding of what it is like to be part of a single-parent family.

Living with her warden father in an apartment above a 1950s prison, Cammie O'Reilly struggles to come to terms with the loss of her mother, who died saving her from harm when she was a baby, and interacts with some of the reformed inmates.

"Bouncing in the middle of two cultures, Apple meets her Indian relatives, shatters Indian stereotypes, and learns what it means to find her place in a world divided by color."--Provided by publisher.