Sam Abernathy prepares to leave home for the first time in this charming follow-up to award-winning author Andrew Smith’s The Size of Truth. Vampires have just moved in to the haunted house next door. All twelve-year-old Sam Abernathy wanted to do was make the most of his last few weeks in Blue Creek before he has to say goodbye. Goodbye to the well he fell in eight years ago; goodbye to cooking at Lily Putt’s snack bar; goodbye to his overdramatic best friend, Karim; goodbye to unsweetened iced tea at Colonel Jenkins’s Diner every Saturday with Bahar (who he does not have a crush on); goodbye to his old life. But the arrival of the Monster People throws a wrench into his plans. Things only get worse when the new family hires Bahar to babysit their child, Boris, who is almost certainly a cannibal. And then—scariest of all—they employ Sam’s catering services. He can’t possibly say no. If he doesn’t survive the summer, Sam might not have to say bye-bye to Blue Creek at all.

A boy who spent three days trapped in a well tries to overcome his PTSD and claustrophobia so he can fulfill his dream of becoming a famous chef in Andrew Smith’s first middle grade novel. When he was four years old, Sam Abernathy was trapped at the bottom of a well for three days, where he was teased by a smart-aleck armadillo named Bartleby. Since then, his parents plan every move he makes. But Sam doesn’t like their plans. He doesn’t want to go to MIT. And he doesn’t want to skip two grades, being stuck in the eighth grade as an eleven-year-old with James Jenkins, the boy he’s sure pushed him into the well in the first place. He wants to be a chef. And he’s going to start by entering the first annual Blue Creek Days Colonel Jenkins Macaroni and Cheese Cook-Off. That is, if he can survive eighth grade, and figure out the size of the truth that has slipped Sam’s memory for seven years.

Now a senior at Pine Mountain Academy, fifteen-year-old Ryan Dean West becomes captain of the rugby team, shares his dormitory room with twelve-year-old prodigy Sam Abernathy, and through the course of the year learns to appreciate things he has tried to resist, including change.

“Andrew Smith is the Kurt Vonnegut of YA . . . [Smith’s novels] are the freshest, richest, and weirdest books to hit the YA world in years.” —Entertainment Weekly Skillfully blending multiple story strands that transcend time and place, award-winning Grasshopper Jungle author Andrew Smith chronicles the story of Ariel, a refugee who is the sole survivor of an attack on his small village. Now living with an adoptive family in Sunday, West Virginia, Ariel's story is juxtaposed against those of a schizophrenic bomber and the diaries of a failed arctic expedition from the late nineteenth century . . . and a depressed, bionic reincarnated crow.

Finn Easton, sixteen and epileptic, struggles to feel like more than just a character in his father's cult-classic novels with the help of his best friend, Cade Hernandez, and first love, Julia, until Julia moves away.

The summer before Troy Stotts turns seventeen, his mother dies. Troy and his father barely speak, communicating instead by writing notes on a legal pad by the phone. Troy spends most of his time with his closest friends: Tom Buller, brash and fearless, the son of a drunk; Gabe Benavidez, smart enough to know he'll never take over the family ranch; and Gabe's sister, Luz, whose family overprotects her, and who Troy has loved since they were children. Troy and his friends don't want trouble. They want this to be the summer of what Troy calls "ghost medicine," when time seems to stop, so they won't have to face the past or the future. But before the summer is over, their paths will cross in dangerous and fateful ways with people who will change their lives: Rose, a damaged derelict who lives with a flock of wild horses and goats; and Chase Rutledge, the arrogant sheriff's son. Troy and his friends want to disappear. Instead, they will become what they least expect —brothers, lovers, heroes, and ghosts.

In a place called thunder creek, two wary hearts are about to get a second chance at love. When Katy Templeton fled her small Wyoming town and its painful memories, she thought she’d said good-bye to Thunder Creek forever. But now the prodigal daughter has come home. Home to the relentless ghosts of the past. Home to Jackson Brent, the lean, hard cowboy with the lazy smile--and the last person on earth she ever wanted to lay eyes on again. Time and tragedy had come between them, but Jackson never forgot his best friend’s kid sister. The coltish beauty blossomed into a stunning woman, burned by love yet unafraid to take on the whole town to get justice for her family. Katy blames him for her beloved brother’s death, but as she digs for answers about that fateful day fourteen years earlier, there is someone ready to kill to keep her from getting them--and Jackson might be the only one who can save her. He wants her safe--and in his arms, but Katy can’t rest until she discovers the truth. Fighting her red-hot attraction to Jackson, Katy risks everything--even the yearnings of her own heart--to unravel the truth about her brother’s death.

A teen at boarding school grapples with life, love, and rugby in this unforgettable novel that is “alternately hilarious and painful, awkward and enlightening” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Ryan Dean West is a fourteen-year-old junior at a boarding school for rich kids. He’s living in Opportunity Hall, the dorm for troublemakers, and rooming with the biggest bully on the rugby team. And he’s madly in love with his best friend Annie, who thinks of him as a little boy. Ryan Dean manages to survive life’s complications with the help of his sense of humor, rugby buddies, and his penchant for doodling comics. But when the unthinkable happens, he has to figure out how to hold on to what’s important, even when it feels like everything has fallen apart. Filled with hand-drawn infographics and illustrations and told in a pitch-perfect voice, this realistic depiction of a teen’s experience strikes an exceptional balance of hilarious and heartbreaking.

A darkly comic and heartbreakingly honest YA novel about finding the courage to help a friend who can't stop hurting herself. Zoe and Hank (short for Hannah) have been inseparable since they met in elementary school. The leader of the pack, Zoe is effortlessly popular while Hank hides comfortably in her shadow. But when Zoe's parents unexpectedly divorce, Zoe's perfect facade starts cracking little by little. Sinking under the weight of her broken family, Zoe develops an eating disorder. Now she must rely on Hank for help. Hank struggles to help Zoe; after all, she is used to agreeing, not leading. How can she help her best friend get better before it's too late? Written partially in letters from Zoe and mostly in narrative from Hank's perspective, Abby Sher's Miss You Love You Hate You Bye is a poignant and eye-opening novel about friendship, mental health, and learning to put yourself first.

The anticipated second book by the poet Mary Szybist, author of Granted, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award The troubadours knew how to burn themselves through, how to make themselves shrines to their own longing. The spectacular was never behind them.-from "The Troubadours etc." In Incarnadine, Mary Szybist.