It?s 1972. Twelve-year-old Joan is sure that she is going to be miserable when her family moves. Then she meets a most unusual girl. Sarah prefers to be called ?Fox,? and lives with her author dad in a rundown house in the middle of the woods. The two girls start writing their own stories together, and when one wins first place in a student contest, they find themselves recruited for a summer writing class taught by the equally unusual Verla Volante. The Wild Girls brilliantly explores friendship, the power of story, and how coming of age means finding your own answers.

Adventures of 2 Girls traces the journey of two best friends who take a 9-month break from their successful careers to tick a big, fat item off their Bucket Lists: To travel the world and write a book. Ning is an award-winning professional female magician, and Pam an award-winning journalist and radio DJ. At the peak of their careers, they break loose from the safe and familiar, stuff their backpacks with bare essentials, and buy two one-way tickets to Honolulu. From a road trip across the United States, to spending a summer in Paris, studying French and being certified in the art of patisserie at the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu, from roughing it out in wild Madagascar (with no electricity, running water or toilets!), to trekking in the Himalayas, Pam and Ning go in search of new experiences and ultimate adventures off the beaten track. If you think this is a guidebook for girls, or an offshoot of Eat, Pray, Love… think again! Adventures of 2 Girls boasts action-packed accounts of sticky situations faced by two city girls in foreign lands, travel tips about budgeting, finances, insurance, PMS survival etc., plus quirky observations, and quiet ruminations on lazy afternoons… complete with private photos from their compact cameras and iPhones, and sketches from their travel journals. It’s a heart-warming, humorous and inspiring story about friendship, chasing dreams, taking risks, and letting go.

A mix of Prep's critique of boarding school culture and the suspenseful and high-stakes plot of The Secret History, this highly original debut is part coming-of-age story, part riveting supernatural tale about teenage girls learning their own strength. Kate Riordan fears two things as she grows up in the small Appalachian town of Swan River: that she'll be a frustrated townie forever, or that she'll turn into one of the monstrous Wild Girls that menace the community, throwing flame from their hands. Struggling to better her chances of escaping, Kate attends the posh Swan River Academy and finds herself divided between two worlds: the simple town and its dark twin, a commune off Bloodwort Road, where hippie farming and occult practices led to a disastrous end; and the realm of privilege and achievement at the Academy. Explosive friendships with Mason, a boy from the wrong side of the river, and Willow, a wealthy and charismatic queen bee from school, are slowly pulling her apart. Kate must decide who she is and where she belongs before she wakes up with cinders at her fingertips.

A riveting thriller about the search for two missing girls in a small Pennsylvania town. “Opening this book is like arming a bomb—the suspense is relentless and the payoff is spectacular.” —Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Midnight Line When two young sisters, Kylie and Bailey Brandt, disappear from a strip mall parking lot in a small Pennsylvania town, their devastated family hires an enigmatic bounty hunter from California, Alice Vega, to do what the authorities cannot. Immediately shut out by a local police department already stretched thin by budget cuts and the growing OxyContin and meth epidemics, Vega enlists the help of a disgraced former cop, Max Caplan, to cut through the local politics. With little to go on, Vega and Cap will go to extraordinary lengths to untangle a complex web of lies, false leads, and dangerous relationships to locate both girls before time runs out and the girls are gone forever.

Our hedonistic heroine and her long-lost chum come to blows as Two Girls One Tank reaches its tear-jerking terminus. Keep the tissues handy, folks; you're gonna need the whole box!

An NPR Best Book of the Year • A Buzzfeed Best Book of the Year On Halloween, 1991, a popular high school basketball star ventures into the woods near Battle Creek, Pennsylvania, and disappears. Three days later, he’s found with a bullet in his head and a gun in his hand—a discovery that sends tremors through this conservative community, already unnerved by growing rumors of Satanic worship in the region. In the wake of this incident, bright but lonely Hannah Dexter is befriended by Lacey Champlain, a dark-eyed, Cobain-worshiping bad influence in lip gloss and Doc Martens. The charismatic, seductive Lacey forges a fast, intimate bond with the impressionable Dex, making her over in her own image and unleashing a fierce defiance that neither girl expected. But as Lacey gradually lures Dex away from her safe life into a feverish spiral of obsession, rebellion, and ever greater risk, an unwelcome figure appears on the horizon—and Lacey’s secret history collides with Dex’s worst nightmare. By turns a shocking story of love and violence and an addictive portrait of the intoxication of female friendship, set against the unsettled backdrop of a town gripped by moral panic, Girls on Fire is an unflinching and unforgettable snapshot of girlhood: girls lost and found, girls strong and weak, girls who burn bright and brighter—and some who flicker away.

Savage Girls and Wild Boys is a fascinating history of extraordinary children---brought up by animals, raised in the wilderness, or locked up for long years in solitary confinement. Wild or feral children have fascinated us through the centuries, and continue to do so today. In a haunting and hugely readable study, Michael Newton deftly investigates a number of infamous cases. He looks at Peter the Wild Boy, who gripped the attention of Swift and Defoe, and at Victor of Aveyron, who roamed wild in the forests of revolutionary France. He tells the story of a savage girl lost on the streets of Paris, of two children brought up by wolves in the jungles of India, and of a Los Angeles girl who emerged from thirteen years locked in a room to international celebrity. He describes, too, a boy brought up among monkeys in Uganda; and in Moscow, the child found living with a pack of wild dogs. Savage Girls and Wild Boys examines the lives of these children and of the adults who "rescued" them, looked after them, educated, or abused them. How can we explain the mixture of disgust and envy that such children can provoke? And what can they teach us about our notions of education, civilization, and man's true nature?

An "elegant and inspiring memoir" by the human rights activist who changed the minds of her elders, reformed traditions from the inside, and is creating a better future for girls and women throughout Africa (Sonia Faleiro, New York Times). Nice Leng`ete was raised in a Maasai village in Kenya. In 1998, when Nice was six, her parents fell sick and died, and Nice and her sister Soila were taken in by their father’s brother, who had little interest in the girls beyond what their dowries might fetch. Fearing “the cut” (female genital mutilation, a painful and sometimes deadly ritualistic surgery), which was the fate of all Maasai women, Nice and Soila climbed a tree to hide. Nice hoped to find a way to avoid the cut forever, but Soila understood it would be impossible. But maybe if one of the sisters submitted, the other would be spared. After Soila chose to undergo the surgery, sacrificing herself to save Nice, their lives diverged. Soila married, dropped out of school, and had children–all in her teenage years–while Nice postponed receiving the cut, continued her education, and became the first in her family to attend college. Supported by Amref, Nice used visits home to set an example for what an uncut Maasai woman can achieve. Other women listened, and the elders finally saw the value of intact, educated girls as the way of the future. The village has since ended FGM entirely, and Nice continues the fight to end FGM throughout Africa, and the world. Nice’s journey from “heartbroken child and community outcast, to leader of the Maasai” is an inspiration and a reminder that one person can change the world–and every girl is worth saving.

Wild Girls is the critically acclaimed true story of two wealthy American heiresses---one an artist, the other a writer---whose stormy, passionate love affair captivated Paris’s salon set between the wars. Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooks were rich, American, eccentric, and grandly lesbian. They met in Paris in 1915, and their relationship lasted more than fifty years, despite infidelity, separation, and temperamental differences. Romaine Brooks, a painter, was the product of an unhappy childhood and trusted no one but Natalie. Natalie Barney was passionate about life, sex, and love. Her Friday afternoon salons, attended by Gertrude Stein, and Colette and Edith Sitwell, were a magnet for social introductions and cultural innovations. Drawing from letters, papers, and paintings, Diana Souhami, the award-winning author of Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter, re-creates the lives and loves of this pair of dazzling and wild women. “Epic romance . . . smartly sex-positive and so good-naturedly shocking.” ---The New York Times Book Review “Real tenderness and pathos . . . not only entertaining but affecting reading.” ---The Washington Post “Their friends were the most bohemian, their parties the most risqué, their tortured love affair the most notorious in Europe. Diana Souhami tells a remarkable tale.” ---The Sunday Telegraph (UK)

"Two girls in a boat is the eagerly-awaited debut collection by the winner of the 2012 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Eleven warm and shapely stories in the tradition of Alice Munro, moving between the author's native New Zealand, London and other locations."--Publisher's description.