The teenage son of an Appalachian single mother who dies when he is eleven uses his good looks, wit, and instincts to survive foster care, child labor, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.

For summer vacation, two groups of high school students hitchhike to the Baltic Sea, where fun and trouble mix to create ties of friendship and love. After DEFA made a number of "pessimistic" films for teenagers, this musical was a breakthrough into unrestrained entertainment and was one of East Germany's top box-office hits. Hot Summer was featured in the 1997 documentary on East Bloc musicals, Eastside Story. While hitchhiking to the Baltic, a group...

"Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, but he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was seven, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself and his dad. When Charlie is seventeen, he meets a dog named Radar and her aging master, Howard Bowditch, a recluse in a big house with a locked shed in the backyard. Sometimes strange sounds emerge from it. Charlie starts doing...

A Grammy nominee. Fourteen-year-old Gary, a self-described tree toad lover of a perfect lawn, the soft-porn masterpiece Carnal Cuties, his Underwood typewriter, and, above all, his rebellious cousin Katelives through one amazing Lake Wobegon summer. Gary preoccupies himself by spinning fantastic yarns about boogers, talking dogs, conversations between God and Jesus, and especially melodramas featuring himself as hero and Kate as distressed damsel.When...

Sometimes the end is just the beginning. Book 1 of 6 in the bestselling Soulkeepers Series. When fifteen-year-old Jacob Lau is pulled from the crumpled remains of his mother's car, no one can explain why he was driving or why the police can't find his mother's body. A beautiful and mysterious neighbor offers to use her unique abilities to help him find his mom. In exchange, she requires Jacob to train as a Soulkeeper, a protector of human souls. He...

"Wordsworth, Whitman, William Carlos Williams, and the Beats in their respective generations moved poetry toward a more natural language. Bukowski moved it a little farther." –Los Angeles Times Book Review In what is widely hailed as the best of his many novels, Charles Bukowski details the long, lonely years of his own hardscrabble youth in the raw voice of alter ego Henry Chinaski. From a harrowingly cheerless childhood in Germany through acne-riddled...

When his best friend disappears from her bedroom in the middle of the night, thirteen-year-old Theo uses his legal knowledge and investigative skills to chase down the truth and save April.