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  Jesus Land: A Memoir

  Julia Scheeres

  It's the mid-1980s. Julia Scheeres and her adopted brother David are sixteen years old and have just moved to rural Indiana, a landscape of cottonwood trees and trailer parks, and a racism neither of them is prepared for. While Julia is white, her close relationship with David, who is black, makes them both outcasts. At home, a distant mother, more involved with her church's missionaries than with her own children, and a violent father only compound their problems. When high-school hormones, bullying, and a deep-seated restlessness prove too much to bear, they are packed off to a Christian boot camp in the Dominican Republic. Surrounded by natural beauty, the Escuela Caribe is governed by a disciplinary regime that demands its teens repent for their sins, which few of them are aware they've committed. How they made it through with heart and soul intact is told here with candor and humor.

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  Keurium

  Jessica Sun Lee

  Shay Stone lies in a hospital bed, catatonic -- dead to the world. Her family thinks it's a ploy for attention. Doctors believe it's the result of an undisclosed trauma. At the mercy of memories and visitations, Shay unearths secrets that may have led to her collapse. Will she remain paralyzed in denial? Or can she accept the unfathomable and break free?

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  Kids of Appetite

  David Arnold

  Teens Victor Benucci and Madeline Falco sit in separate police interrogation rooms telling about the misfits who brought them together and their journey sparked by a message in an urn.

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  Kiss Number 8

  Colleen AF Venable

  Mads is pretty happy with her life. She goes to church with her family, and minor league baseball games with her dad. She goofs off with her best friend Cat, and has thus far managed to avoid getting kissed by Adam, the boy next door. It's everything she hoped high school would be... until all of a sudden, it's not. Her dad is hiding something big--so big it could tear her family apart. And that's just the beginning of her problems: Mads is starting to figure out that she doesn't want to kiss Adam... because the only person she wants to kiss is Cat. Just like that, Mad's tidy little life has gotten epically messy--and epically heartbreaking. And when your heart is broken, it takes more than an awkward, uncomfortable, tooth-clashing, friendship-ending kiss to put things right again. It takes a whole bunch of them.

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  Laurie Tells

  Linda Lowery

  When her mother doesn't believe her, eleven-year-old Laurie tells a supportive aunt that she is being sexually abused by her father

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  Little Chicago

  Adam Rapp

  Little Chicago opens in the office of Children's Services, where eleven-year-old Blacky Brown is being interviewed by a social worker who is trying to determine what has happened to him. At first, Blacky's emotions are blocked, but then he reveals that he has been sexually abused by his mother's boyfriend, and is released into his mother's custody. Thus begins an alternately harrowing and hopeful story of a brave boy's attempts to come to grips with a grim reality. Mary Jane, a classmate who is similarly ostracized, tries to help Blackie, but he soon takes refuge instead in the gun that he buys.

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  Made of Stars

  Kelley York

  When eighteen-year-old Hunter Jackson and his half sister, Ashlin, return to their dad's for the first winter in years, they expect everything to be just like the warmer months they'd spent there as kids. And it is, at first. But Chance, the charismatic and adventurous boy who made their summers epic, is harboring deep secrets. Secrets that are quickly spiraling into something else entirely. The reason they've never met Chance's parents or seen his home is becoming clearer. And what the siblings used to think of as Chance's quirks-the outrageous stories, his clinginess, his dangerous impulsiveness-are now warning signs that something is seriously off. Then someone turns up with a bullet to the head, and all eyes shift to Chance's family. Hunter and Ashlin know Chance is innocent ... they just have to prove it. But how can they protect the boy they both love when they can't trust a word Chance says?

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  Me & Emma

  Elizabeth Flock

  Eight-year-old Carrie Parker and her little sister, tired of living in an abusive environment, concoct a plan to run away, but their escape is thwarted by a shocking revelation that will change their lives.

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  Missing in Action

  Dean Hughes

  While his father is missing in action in the Pacific during World War II, twelve-year-old Jay moves with his mother to small-town Utah, where he sees prejudice from both sides, as a part-Navajo himself and through an unlikely friendship with Japanese American Ken from the nearby internment camp.

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  More Than We Can Tell

  Brigid Kemmerer

  When Rev Fletcher and Emma Blue meet, they both long to share secrets, his of being abused by his birth father, hers of her parents' failing marriage and an online troll who truly frightens her.

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  My Body Belongs to Me

  Jill Starishevsky

  Presented in story format and narrated by a young child in rhyming couplets, this short book encourages children who have been sexually abused to talk to someone they trust.

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  Not Even Bones

  Rebecca Schaeffer

  Nita's mother hunts monsters and, after Nita dissects and packages them, sells them online, but when Nita follows her conscience to help a live monster escape, she is sold on the black market in his place.

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  Now is Everything

  Amy Giles

  The McCauleys look perfect on the outside. But nothing is ever as it seems, and this family is hiding a dark secret. Hadley McCauley will do anything to keep her sister safe from their father. But when Hadley's forbidden relationship with Charlie Simmons deepens, the violence at home escalates, culminating in an explosive accident that will leave everyone changed. When Hadley attempts to take her own life at the hospital post-accident, her friends, doctors, family, and the investigator on the case want to know why. Only Hadley knows what really happened that day, and she's not talking.

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  One for the Murphys

  Lynda Mullaly Hunt

  Follows the experiences of foster kid Carley, who uses humor and street smarts to cope with her unpredictable life until the loving, bustling Murphy family offers her more stability and a greater sense of belonging than she ever thought possible.

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  One of the Problems of Everett Anderson

  Lucille Clifton

  Everett Anderson wonders how he can help his friend Greg, who appears to be a victim of child abuse.

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  Out of Darkness

  Ashley Hope Perez

  Loosely based on a school explosion that took place in New London, Texas in 1937, this is the story of two teenagers: Naomi, who is Mexican, and Wash, who is black, and their dealings with race, segregation, love, and the forces that destroy people.

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  Out of the Blue

  S. L. Rottman

  After moving to Minot, North Dakota, with his mother, the new female base commander, Air Force dependent Stu Ballentyne gradually becomes aware that something terrible is going on in his neighbor's house.

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  Personal Effects

  E. M. Kokie

  Matt has been sleepwalking through life while seeking answers about his brother T.J.'s death in Iraq, but after discovering that he may not have known his brother as well as he thought he did, Matt is able to stand up to his father, honor T.J.'s memory, and take charge of his own life.

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  Putting Makeup on the Fat Boy

  Bil Bil Wright

  Sixteen-year-old Carlos Duarte is on the verge of realizing his dream of becoming a famous make-up artist, but first he must face his jealous boss at a Macy's cosmetics counter, his sister's abusive boyfriend, and his crush on a punk-rocker classmate.

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  Radio Silence

  Alice Oseman

  What if everything you set yourself up to be was wrong? Frances has always been a study machine with one goal, elite university. Nothing will stand in her way; not friends, not a guilty secret -- not even the person she is on the inside. But when Frances meets Aled, the shy genius behind her favourite podcast, she discovers a new freedom. He unlocks the door to Real Frances and for the first time she experiences true friendship, unafraid to be herself. Then the podcast goes viral and the fragile trust between them is broken. Caught between who she was and who she longs to be, Frances' dreams come crashing down. Suffocating with guilt, she knows that she has to confront her past. She has to confess why Carys disappeared. Meanwhile at uni, Aled is alone, fighting even darker secrets. It's only by facing up to your fears that you can overcome them. And it's only by being your true self that you can find happiness. Frances is going to need every bit of courage she has.

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  Rage: A Love Story

  Julie Anne Peters

  At the end of high school, Johanna finally begins dating the girl she has loved from afar, but Reeve is as much trouble as she claims to be as she and her twin brother damage Johanna's self-esteem, friendships, and already precarious relationship with her sister.

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  Rani Patel in Full Effect

  Sonia Patel

  Rani Patel, almost seventeen and living on remote Moloka'i island, is oppressed by the cultural norms of her Gujarati immigrant parents but when Mark, an older man, draws her into new experiences red flags abound.

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  Reason to Breathe

  Rebecca Donovan

  In the affluent town of Weslyn, Connecticut, where most people worry about what to be seen in and who to be seen with, Emma Thomas would rather not be seen at all. She's more concerned with feigning perfection- pulling down her sleeves to conceal the bruises, not wanting anyone to know how far from perfect her life truly is. Without expecting it, she finds love. It challenges her to recognize her own worth- at the risk of revealing the terrible secret she's desperate to hide.

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  Runaway!

  Janet Willig

  After leaving home because her drunken father frequently beats her, fourteen-year-old Jodie tries out a couple of foster homes and eventually finds peace with a loving Christian family.

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  Sadie

  Courtney Summers

  Sadie hasn't had an easy life. Growing up on her own, she's been raising her sister Mattie in an isolated small town, trying her best to provide a normal life and keep their heads above water. But when Mattie is found dead, Sadie's entire world crumbles. After a somewhat botched police investigation, Sadie is determined to bring her sister's killer to justice and hits the road following a few meager clues to find him. When West McCray - a radio personality working on a segment about small, forgotten towns in America - overhears Sadie's story at a local gas station, he becomes obsessed with finding the missing girl. He starts his own podcast as he tracks Sadie's journey, trying to figure out what happened, hoping to find her before it's too late.