Jimmy Lee Hickam grew up along Red Dog Road, a dead-end strip of gravel and mud buried deep in the bowels of Appalachian Ohio. It is the poorest road, in the poorest county, in the poorest region of the state. To make things worse, the name Hickam is synonymous with trouble. Jimmy Lee hails from a heathen mix of thieves, moonshiners, drunkards, and general anti-socials that for decades have clung to both the hardscrabble hills and the iron bars of every jail cell in the region. This life, Jimmy Lee believes, is his destiny, someday working with his drunkard father at the sawmill, or sitting next to his arsonist brother in the penitentiary. There aren’t many options if your last name is Hickam.    An inspiring coach and Jimmy Lee's ability to play football are the only things motivating him to return for his junior year of high school—until his visionary English teacher cuts him a break and preserves his eligibility for the coming football season. To thank her, Jimmy Lee writes a winning essay in the high school writing contest. When irate parents and the baffled administration claim he has cheated, his teacher is inspired to take his writing talent as far as it can go, showing him the path out of the hills of Appalachia.             Terrific characterizations, surprising revelations, gut-wrenching past betrayals, and an unforgettable cast of characters born of the dusty, worn-out landscape of southeastern Ohio make The Essay a powerful, evocative, and incredibly moving novel.  

The monster showed up after midnight. As they do. But it isn’t the monster Conor’s been expecting. He’s been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he’s had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments, the one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming.... This monster, though, is something different. Something ancient, something wild. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor. It wants the truth. Patrick Ness spins a tale from the final story idea of Siobhan Dowd, whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself. Darkly mischievous and painfully funny, A Monster Calls is an extraordinarily moving novel about coming to terms with loss from two of our finest writers for young adults. “Compelling...powerful and impressive.” —Philip Pullman, author of the award-winning His Dark Materials trilogy “Exceptional...this is storytelling as it should be—harrowing, lyrical, and transcendent.” —Meg Rosoff, author of the Printz Award–winning novel How I Live Now “Brilliant and elegant, with all the thrills and ambition you would expect from the author of the Chaos Walking trilogy.” —Frank Cottrell Boyce, award-winning author of Millions and Cosmic “Haunting, lyrical, powerful, and true. Patrick Ness has crafted a masterful story about grief and loss, love and hope that lingers in the heart like a ghost.” —Libba Bray, author of the Printz Award-winning novel Going Bovine

An ambitious, would-be programmer at a Silicon Valley research lab, Andy Caspar is given the task of designing a computer that can sell for $300, but just as Andy and his fellow Ironmen are on the verge of success, their careers are jeopardized by other interests

Cutthroat velocipede racing enthralls the citizens of Seren, and Emmeline Escot was born to ride. There’s only one problem: she’s a girl. Serenias—the high-born women of the city—live tightly laced lives, cloistered by their families before marriage, rigidly controlled by their husbands after. Emmeline watches her twin brother gain success as a professional racing jockey while her own life grows increasingly narrow. Yet her hunger to ride never dies. Ever more stifled by the rules of her life, Emmeline rebels—with stunning consequences. Can her dream to race survive scandal, scrutiny, and heartbreak?

The inspiration for the major motion picture! From the coauthor of He’s Just Not That Into You and a former story editor for Sex and the City, How to Be Single is about one woman’s attempts to navigate a world filled with ever-evolving definitions of love.Julie Jenson is a single thirty-seven-year-old book publicist in New York. When her friend Georgia’s husband leaves her for a samba teacher, she forces Julie to organize a single girls’ night out to remind her why it’s so much fun not to be tied down. But the night ends up having the opposite effect on Julie. Fed up with the dysfunction and disappointments of singledom, Julie quits her job and sets off to find out how women around the world are dealing with this dreaded phenomenon. From Paris to Brazil to Sydney, Bali, Beijing, Mumbai, and Reyjavik, Julie falls in love, gets her heart broken, sees the world, and learns more than she ever dreamed possible. All the while her friends at home are grappling with their own issues—bad blind dates, loveless engagements, custody battles, single motherhood, and the death of a loved one. Written in Liz Tuccillo’s pitch-perfect, hilarious, and relatable voice, How to Be Single is “a summer read that, for once, accurately depicts the hopes, fears, and bad dates of a single woman looking for love” (Parade).