Contains eight “true stories” of the sexual experiences of young adults. These stories are sometimes shocking, poignant, graphic and at times tragic. The stories cover many types of experiences including young love, sexual abuse, emabarrassment, difficult consequences, happiness, and gay experiences.
Young Adult (ages 14-18)
Material appropriate for young adults
The Juliet Club
Italy . . . Shakespeare . . . but no romance?
Kate Sanderson inherited her good sense from her mother, a disciplined law professor, and her admiration for the Bard from her father, a passionate Shakespeare scholar. When she gets dumped, out of the blue, for the Practically Perfect Ashley Lawson, she vows never to fall in love again. From now on she will control her own destiny, and every decision she makes will be highly reasoned and rational. She thinks Shakespeare would have approved.
So when she is accepted to a summer Shakespeare symposium in Verona, Italy, Kate sees it as the ideal way to get over her heartbreak once and for all. She’ll lose herself in her studies, explore ancient architecture, and eat plenty of pasta and gelato. (Plus, she’ll be getting college credit for it—another goal accomplished!) But can even completely logical Kate resist the romance of living in a beautiful villa in the city where those star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet met and died for each other? Especially when the other Shakespeare Scholars—in particular Giacomo, with his tousled brown hair, expressive dark eyes, and charming ways—try hard to break her protective shell?
“In fair Verona, where we lay our scene . . . ”
The Year Of Secret Assignments
The Ashbury-Brookfield pen pal program was designed to bring together the “lowlife Brooker kids” (as they’re known to the Ashburyites) and the “rich Ashbury snobs” (as they’re called by the Brookfielders) in a spirit of harmony and the Joy of the Envelope. But things don’t go quite as planned. Lydia and Sebastian trade challenges, like setting off the fire alarm at Brookfield. Emily tutors Charlie in How to Go On a Date with a Girl. But it’s Cassie and Matthew who both reveal and conceal the most about themselves — and it’s their secrets and lies that set off a war between the two schools.
The Dandelion Garden
Ten stories that follow themes of life changes includes a girl discovery a painful secret about an older brother, a girl who falls in love with an older man, a character who realizes human potential, and more. By the author of The Leaving.
The Fetch
Calder is a Fetch, a death escort, the first of his kind to step from HeavenAfter 350 years as a Fetch, or death escort, Calder breaks his vows and enters the body of Rasputin, whose spirit causes rebellion in the Land of Lost Souls while Calder struggles to convey Ana and Alexis, orphaned in the Russian Revolution, to Heaven.
Two Suns in the Sky
In 1944, an Upstate New York teenager named Christine meets and falls in love with Adam, a Yugoslavian Jew living in a refugee camp, despite their parents’ conviction that they do not belong together.
Just One Tear
A thirteen-year-old boy’s diary offers an honest, raw, and unvarnished look at the difficulties of adolescence, expressing his searing emotions after he sees his father shot and killed and is forced to endure the killer’s trial.
The Edge
No one understands Declan. Not his mother or his father or his teachers. No one but maybe his new group of friends. After moving, Declan will do anything to fit in at his new school, even if it is illegal. When he and his new friends get caught, the consequences are tragic. Given a second chance that he is not sure that he wants, Declan is sent to work at a ski lodge in the Canadian Rockies. Though he is not locked up, he feels trapped and lonely, and learns that second chances aren’t easy. While there, Declan learns to snowboard and meets new friends, but the ghosts of his past keep rising up to haunt him. Standing on the edge, Declan realizes that the only way to break free is to face his past, and to look forward to the future.
Alis
At fourteen, Alis has never been outside her strict religious community. But when her parents arrange for her to marry a forty-year-old man, she flees desperately to the dangerous, unfamiliar city. She learns quickly that the only way to survive there is to become a thief—or worse. Facing an impossible choice between a forced marriage or life on the streets, Alis seizes control of her own fate. But the path she chooses sets off a disastrous chain of events that leave her accused of murder. Steadfastly loyal, Alis must decide: will she betray a loved one or sacrifice herself?
Dangerous Spaces
Flora has always known that her house is haunted. But things have taken a sinister turn since her orphaned cousin Anthea moved in. Frightening scenes are played out in the night–and in the girls’ dreams. Although they don’t get along, the two must work together to escape their nightmares–before they get trapped forever.