At fifteen, sick of her unbearable and increasingly dangerous home life, Janice Erlbaum walked out of her family’s Brooklyn apartment and didn’t look back. From her first frightening night at a shelter, Janice knew she was in over her head. She was beaten up, shaken down, and nearly stabbed by a pregnant girl. But it was still better than living at home. As Janice slipped further into street life, she nevertheless attended high school, harbored crushes, and even played the lead in the spring musical. She also roamed the streets, clubs, bars, and parks of New York City with her two best girlfriends, on the prowl for hard drugs and boys on skateboards. Together they scored coke at Danceteria, smoked angel dust in East Village squats, commiserated over their crazy mothers, and slept with one another’s boyfriends on a regular basis. A wry, mesmerizing portrait of being underprivileged, underage, and underdressed in 1980s New York City, Girlbomb provides an unflinching look at street life, survival sex, female friendships, and first loves. “A fast and engrossing read in the spirit of Girl, Interrupted.” –Entertainment Weekly “Gripping . . . a wry, compelling memoir of what it means to stand up for yourself, especially when no one else will.” –Bust “How satisfying to watch Erlbaum survive adolescence and produce a smart, engaging book.” –The New York Times Book Review “Erlbaum’s survival is hard-won, the journey rendered with page-turning intensity.” –New York Post “A fast and engrossing read in the spirit of Girl, Interrupted.” –Entertainment Weekly “Gritty . . . perversely riveting. You want her to survive.” –The Washington Post Book World

Just two hours ago, I had been heating up some lentil soup at my mom’s in Brooklyn, thinking I’d eat it and maybe read some Edith Wharton before bed. Now here I was at a runaway shelter, staring at a nun’s mustache and wondering where I was going to spend the rest of my adolescence. At fifteen, sick of her mom’s spineless reactions to abusive men–and afraid of her stepfather’s unpredictable behavior–Janice Erlbaum walked out of her family’s apartment and never returned. What followed that fateful decision is the heart of this amazing, fascinating, and disturbing memoir. From her first frightening night at a shelter, trying to sleep in a large room filled with yelling girls, Janice knew she was in over her head. She was beaten up, shaken down, and nearly stabbed by a pregnant girl. But it was still better than living at home. Just like that, she was halfway homeless, always one step away from being sent “upstate to Lockdown.” As Janice slipped further into street life, she nevertheless continued to attend high school, harbor crushes, even play the lead in the spring production of Guys and Dolls. She also roamed the streets, clubs, bars, and parks of New York City with her two best girlfriends, on the prowl for hard drugs and boys on skateboards. Together they scored coke at Danceteria, smoked angel dust in East Village squats, commiserated over their crazy mothers, and slept with one another’s boyfriends on a regular basis. Janice Erlbaum paints a wry, mesmerizing portrait of being underprivileged, underage, and underdressed in the 1980s, bouncing from shelters to group homes, from tenement squats to legendary nightclubs. A moving and tremendously entertaining ride through the seediest parts of New York City, Girlbomb provides an unflinching look at street life, survival sex, female friendships, and first loves.

A funny and heartfelt realistic middle-grade novel about friendship, family, and the meaning of luck, from author Janice Erlbaum. Eighth-grader Emma Macintyre could use some good luck. The popular kids at her school ignore her, the boy she likes is out of her league, and her best friend has been ditching her for the mean girls. Worst of all, her beloved Aunt Jenny died recently, leaving Emma and her single mom reeling with grief. Then Emma receives a mysterious letter with no return address. The letter promises that ten lucky little things will happen to her over the next thirty days—she just has to make a list of what she wants. When the things on her list start coming true, she races to understand what’s happening. How does this lucky letter work? Who sent it? And what’s going to happen when the thirty days are done?

A Bank Street Best Children's Book of 2020 Janice Erlbaum's Let Me Fix That for You is a quirky, touching, and laugh-out-loud middle-grade novel about a girl capable of fixing everything but her own life. Twelve-year-old Gladys Burke may not have many friends, but at least she has her empire. From her table at the back of the cafeteria, Glad arranges favors for her classmates in exchange for their friendship. She solves every problem, handles every situation, and saves every butt. But the jobs keep getting harder, and when Glad decides the problem that most needs fixing is her parents' relationship, she finds herself in way over her head. She'll have to call in all her favors and use all her skills to help the person who most needs it—herself.

And every week, there was the unspoken question, the one I didn’t know enough to ask myself : Have you found her yet? The one who reminds you of you? Twenty years after she lived at a homeless shelter for teens, Janice Erlbaum went back to volunteer. Now thirty-four years old and a successful writer, she’d changed her life for the better; now she wanted to help someone else–someone like the girl she’d once been. Then she met Sam. A brilliant nineteen-year-old junkie savant, the product of a horrifically abusive home, Sam had been surviving alone on the streets since she was twelve and was now struggling for sobriety against the adverse health effects of long-term drug abuse. Soon Janice found herself caring deeply for Sam, following her through detoxes and psych wards, halfway houses and hospitals, becoming ever more manically driven to save her from the sickness and sadness leftover from Sam’s terrible past. But just as Janice was on the verge of becoming the girl’s legal guardian, she made a shocking discovery: Sam was sicker than anyone knew, in ways nobody could have imagined. Written with startling candor and immediacy, Have You Found Her is the story of one woman’s quest to save a girl’s life–and the hard truths she learns about herself along the way. “A rich and compelling account . . . Ultimately this is a book about the narrator’s journey and the dangers that attend the urge within us all to believe we can save another soul. A terrific read.” –Cammie McGovern, author of Eye Contact

“Riveting . . . A genuinely important book that casts the problem of sex trafficking in America into stunning, heartbreaking relief.” (Kirkus Reviews) A School Library Journal Best Adult Book for Teens A Joan F. Kaywell Award Finalist from the Florida Council of Teachers of English Carissa Phelps was a runner. By the time she was twelve, she had run away from home, dropped out of school, and fled blindly into the arms of a brutal pimp. Even when she escaped him, she could not outrun the crushing inner pain of abuse, neglect, and abandonment. With little to hope for, she expected to end up in prison, or worse. But then her life was transformed through the unexpected kindness of a teacher and a counselor. Through small miracles, Carissa accomplished the unimaginable, graduating from UCLA with both a law degree and an MBA. She left the streets behind, yet found herself back, this time working to help homeless and at-risk youth discover their own paths to a better life. Like the multimillion-copy bestseller The Glass Castle, this memoir moves us through the power of its unflinching candor and generosity.

It’s 1985 in a small factory town near Pittsburgh. Eight-year-old Karen’s parents are lifelong workers at the Anchor Glass plant, where one Saturday, an employee goes on a shooting spree, killing four supervisors, then himself. This event splits the young girl’s life open, and like her mother, she begins to seek comfort in obsessive rituals and superstitions. This beautifully evocative memoir chronicles the next fourteen years, as Karen moves through girlhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. It illuminates small-town factory life; explores a complicated mother-daughter bond; thoughtfully unfolds a smart, but insecure girl’s coming of age; achingly recounts her attempts to use sex to fit in; and ultimately uncovers the buried secret from her childhood—a medical file with an unbearable report. The Girl Factory deftly travels the intersections of memory and origin. Karen’s body remembers details her mind has tried to control. As the young woman mines her interior landscape for answers, certain questions persist. Where does memory live—in the body or the mind? And can you rewrite the story of your past?

Written by JUDD WINICK Art and cover by SAMI BASRI In these stories from issues #13-18 of her series, Power Girl finds herself mysteriously unaware of the period in her life when Max Lord was pulling her strings as part of Justice League International. Meanwhile, the distractions of being a heroine cause her business to falter as her friends and co-workers disappear. On sale JUNE 22 - 144 pg, FC, $14.99 US

"Powerfully raw, deeply moving, and utterly authentic. Rachel Lloyd has turned a personal atrocity into triumph and is nothing less than a true hero.... Never again will you look at young girls on the street as one of 'those' women—you will only see little girls that are girls just like us." —Demi Moore, actress and activist With the power and verity of First They Killed My Father and A Long Way Gone, Rachel Lloyd’s riveting survivor story is the true tale of her hard-won escape from the commercial sex industry and her bold founding of GEMS, New York City’s Girls Education and Mentoring Service, to help countless other young girls escape "the life." Lloyd’s unflinchingly honest memoir is a powerful and unforgettable story of inhuman abuse, enduring hope, and the promise of redemption.

MANIPULATIVE. TRAINWRECK. PSYCHO. Elizabeth Madigan needs too much love. As the neglected daughter of a beautiful, selfish mother, she learned early in life how to get attention through lies, but it's never enough. At age eight, she pretends to have cancer. At age twelve, she lives a thousand lives online. At age seventeen, she's in inpatient treatment for self-harm, blaming it on trauma from her past. But what exactly is her damage? If she knew, maybe she could stop herself before she gets busted for good. But she's been lying so long, she's starting to forget what's real. And as her passionate need for her girl friends' attention grows, she'll do anything to keep them in her life -- including risk it. Told in four sections ("Beth," "Betty," "Eliza," and "Elizabeth"), I, LIAR is about the way we rewrite our histories, remake our selves, and revisit the same storylines and characters throughout our lives. It's about the longing for maternal love, the passionate intensity of female friendships, and where those two overlap. From an all-girl psych rehab to a feminist bookstore to a lesbian bar in Brooklyn, I, LIAR illuminates the intimate world of women's relationships -- with each other, with the world at large, and with themselves. For the trainwrecks, for the borderlines, for the girls who are "too much" for everybody else: This is for you.