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  A House Between Home: Youth in the Foster Care System

  Joyce Libal

  Discusses the laws that govern the foster care system, the newest and most innovative programs available today and provides an overview of the history of foster care, including the orphan trains and the British home children.

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  Alan Cole is Not a Coward

  Eric Bell

  Hoping to keep his older brother Nathan silent about his secret crush on another boy at their school, twelve-year-old Alan agrees to a ruthless sibling competition involving nearly impossible tasks--from standing up to their demanding father to getting a first kiss.

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  A List of Cages

  Robin Roe

  When Adam Blake lands the best elective ever in his senior year, serving as an aide to the school psychologist, he thinks he's got it made. Sure, it means a lot of sitting around, which isn't easy for a guy with ADHD, but he can't complain, since he gets to spend the period texting all his friends. Then the doctor asks him to track down the troubled freshman who keeps dodging her, and Adam discovers that the boy is Julian; the foster brother he hasn't seen in five years.

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  Also Known as Harper

  Ann Haywood Leal

  Writing poetry helps fifth-grader Harper Lee Morgan cope with her father's absence, being evicted, and having to skip school to care for her brother while their mother works, and things look even brighter after she befriends a mute girl and a kindly disabled woman.

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  And She Was

  Jessica Verdi

  When Dara finds her birth certificate, she is puzzled to find two strange names on it, but when her mother, Mellie, reveals that she is transgender and transitioned when Dara's biological mother died soon after Dara's birth, Dara is stunned and angry--and she sets off with her friend Sam, in search of the grandparents she never knew existed (and who may be able to fund her tennis career), and the family secrets she can only guess at.

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  And Then There Were Four

  Nancy Werlin

  When five high school students are brought together under mysterious circumstances, they begin to piece together a theory that their parents are working together to kill them all.

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  An Ember in the Ashes

  Sabaa Tahir

  Laia is a Scholar living under the iron-fisted rule of the Martial Empire. When her brother is arrested for treason, Laia goes undercover as a slave at the empire's greatest military academy in exchange for assistance from rebel Scholars who claim that they will help to save her brother from execution.

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  Angryman

  Gro Dahle

  There's someone in the living room. It's Dad. It is Angryman. Boj's father can be very angry and violent. Boj calls this side of his father's personality "Angryman." When Angryman comes no one is safe. Until something powerful happens... Gro Dahle's astute text and Svein Nyhus's bold, evocative art capture the full range of emotions that descend upon a small family as they grapple with "Angryman." With an important message to children who experience the same things as Boj: You are not alone. It's not your fault. You must tell someone you trust. It doesn't have to be this way!

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  Angry Management

  Chris Crutcher

  Every kid in this group wants to fly. Every kid in this group has too much ballast. Mr. Nak's Angry Management group is a place for misfits. A place for stories. And, man, does this crew have stories. There's Angus Bethune and Sarah Byrnes, who can hide from everyone but each other. Together, they will embark on a road trip full of haunting endings and glimmering beginnings. And Montana West, who doesn't step down from a challenge. Not even when the challenge comes from her adoptive dad, who's leading the school board to censor the article she wrote for the school paper. And straightlaced Matt Miller, who had never been friends with outspoken genius Marcus James. Until one tragic week—a week they'd do anything to change—brings them closer than Matt could have ever imagined.

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  A Safe Place

  Maxine Trottier

  To escape her father's abuse, Emily and her mother come to a shelter where they find a safe place to stay with other women and children in similar circumstances. At night, a little girl and her mother seek safety from an abusive daddy by going to a safe place, the white house on the hill.

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  Bait

  Alex Sanchez

  Diego keeps getting into trouble because of his explosive temper until he finally finds a probation officer who helps him get to the root of his anger so that he can stop running from his past.

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  Beast

  Brie Spangler

  After falling off the roof, fifteen-year-old misfit Dylan must attend a therapy group for self-harmers where he meets Jamie, a beautiful and amazing person he does not know is transgender.

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  Because I Am Furniture

  Thalia Chaltas

  The youngest of three siblings, fourteen-year-old Anke feels both relieved and neglected that her father abuses her brother and sister but ignores her, but when she catches him with one of her friends, she finally becomes angry enough to take action.

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  Becoming Chloe

  Catherine Ryan Hyde

  A gay teenage boy and a fragile teenage girl meet while living on the streets of New York City and eventually decide to take a road trip across America to discover whether or not the world is a beautiful place.

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  Blood Family

  Anne Fine

  A boy with an abusive father grows up and fears that he has the same potential for violence as his father has.

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  Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

  Trevor Noah

  Noah's path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother, at the time such a union was punishable by five years in prison. As he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist, his mother is determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life....

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  Born Both: An Intersex Life

  Hida Viloria

  From Hida Viloria, writer and intersex activist, a candid, provocative, and eye-opening memoir of life, love, and gender identity as an intact intersex person, as well as a call to action for justice for intersex people. Hida Viloria was raised as a girl but discovered early on that he/r body was different. Unlike most people who are born intersex in the first world--meaning they have genitals, reproductive organs, hormones, and/or chromosomal patterns that do not fit standard definitions of male or female--Hida had the freedom to explore the person s/he was born to be because he/r parents did not agree to have he/r sex characteristics surgically altered at birth. It wasn't until s/he was 26 and encountered the term "intersex" in a San Francisco newspaper that s/he finally had a name for he/r difference. That's when s/he began to explore what it means to live in the space between genders--to be both and neither. As s/he began to reach out to others like he/r, however, Hida discovered that most intersex people had been scarred, both physically and psychologically, by infant surgeries and hormone treatments meant to "correct" their bodies. Eager to help end this practice, Hida came out as intersex at a national and then international level. By answering the question "Are you a boy or a girl?" with "I'm both," Hida's helped blaze a trail for people--particularly intersex and genderqueer/non-binary people--to celebrate the middle space where male and female are not separate and opposite but entwined. Born Both is an intimate and powerful account of Hida's search for authentic identity and love in a world that insists on categorizing people into either/or.

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  Bronxwood

  Coe Booth

  Tyrell's life is spinning out of control after his father is released from prison, his little brother is placed in foster care, and the drug dealers he's living with are pressuring him to start dealing.

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  Bruises

  Anke de Vries and Stacey Knecht

  While living in Holland, Michael meets Judith, who is frightened, bullied, and beaten by her mother and blames herself for the abuse she is enduring.

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  Caraval

  Stephanie Garber

  Welcome, welcome to Caraval--Stephanie Garber's sweeping tale of two sisters who escape their ruthless father when they enter the dangerous intrigue of a legendary game. Scarlett has never left the tiny island where she and her beloved sister Tella live with their powerful and cruel, father. Now Scarlett's father has arranged a marriage for her, and Scarlett thinks her dreams of seeing Caraval, the far-away, once-a-year performance where the audience participates in the show, are over. But this year, Scarlett's long-dreamt of invitation finally arrives. With the help of a mysterious sailor, Tella whisks Scarlett away to the show. Only, as soon as they arrive, Tella is kidnapped by Caraval's mastermind organizer, Legend. It turns out that this season's Caraval revolves around Tella, and whoever finds her first is the winner. Scarlett has been told that everything that happens during Caraval is only an elaborate performance. But she nevertheless becomes enmeshed in a game of love, heartbreak, and magic with the other players in the game. And whether Caraval is real or not, she must find Tella before the five nights of the game are over, a dangerous domino effect of consequences is set off, and her sister disappears forever.

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  Charlie's Run

  Valerie Hobbs

  Hoping to stop his parents' impending separation and keep them from getting a divorce, eleven-year-old Charlie runs away from their home in inland California and finds a ride to the coast.

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  Children of Blood and Bone

  Tomi Adeyemi

  Seventeen-year-old Zélie, her older brother Tzain, and rogue princess Amari fight to restore magic to the land and activate a new generation of magi, but they are ruthlessly pursued by the crown prince, who believes the return of magic will mean the end of the monarchy.

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  Chinese Handcuffs

  Christ Crutcher

  Dillon is living with the painful memory of his brother's suicide-and the role he played in it. To keep his mind and body occupied, he trains intensely for the Ironman triathlon. But outside of practice, his life seems to be falling apart. Then Dillon finds a confidante in Jennifer, a star high school basketball player who's hiding her own set of destructive secrets. Together, they must find the courage to confront their demons-before it's too late.

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  Dark Silence

  Maureen Crane Wartski

  Randy wanted things to be the way they used to be, but her mother is dead, her father has remarried, they've moved to a new neighborhood and her first friend in it cuts her off for no reason that Randy can figure out.

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  Devils Within

  S.F. Henson

  Killing isn't supposed to be easy. But it is. It's the after that's hard to deal with. Nate was eight the first time he stabbed someone; he was eleven when he earned his red laces--a prize for spilling blood for "the cause." And he was fourteen when he murdered his father (and the leader of The Fort, a notorious white supremacist compound) in self-defense, landing in a treatment center while the state searched for his next of kin. Now, in the custody of an uncle he never knew existed, who wants nothing to do with him, Nate just wants to disappear. Enrolled in a new school under a false name, so no one from The Fort can find him, he struggles to forge a new life, trying to learn how to navigate a world where people of different races interact without enmity. But he can't stop awful thoughts from popping into his head, or help the way he shivers with a desire to commit violence. He wants to be different--he just doesn't know where to start. Then he meets Brandon, a person The Fort conditioned Nate to despise on sight. But Brandon's also the first person to treat him like a human instead of a monster. Brandon could never understand Nate's dark past, so Nate keeps quiet. And it works for a while. But all too soon, Nate's worlds crash together, and he must decide between his own survival and standing for what's right, even if it isn't easy. Even if society will never be able to forgive him for his sins.