Brendan Halpin

Fourteen-year-old Amanda and her best friend Lena start high school looking forward to playing on the varsity soccer team, but when Lena makes varsity and Amanda only makes junior varsity, their long friendship rapidly changes.

Although encouraged to apply to colleges, Brianna Pelletier, a mathematically-gifted high school senior with cystic fibrosis, dwells on her mortality and the unfairness of life.

Francis has two childhood encounters that shape his life: one with God, and the other with Dee Dee Ramone. When his life falls apart in adulthood, Francis, feeling betrayed by God, turns to his other spiritual mentor, emerging as that rarest of beings, a middle-aged punk rocker. A love letter to punk rock and the spiritual power of music, Long Way Back rocks through grief and tragedy toward a new beginning for Francis and an ending sure to make even...

When Eddie moves in with his cousin Alex, his world is turned upside down  Eddie's life is changing. When his widowed mom is sent to rehab, he goes to Boston to live with his aunt, uncle, and cousin Alex, a smart-mouthed extrovert whom the withdrawn Eddie has a hard time understanding.   As they negotiate the difficulties of girls, homework, friendship, and more girls, both boys will come to realize that they have a lot to learn from each other-and...

Rosalind is mourning the deaths of both her moms, and Sean is working on his own issues-the only thing they have in common is a little DNA When both of Rosalind's mothers die, she moves in with the donor father she never knew. Fifteen, angry, and feeling completely alone, Ros refuses to speak to her biological father, Sean, sharing her feelings only with her journal. But through a series of emails and text messages, Ros and Sean slowly get to know...

Two teenagers--a heavy-metal-music-loving boy who is still mourning the death of his mother years earlier, and a beautiful, popular girl whose parents divorced because her father is gay--try to negotiate the complications of family and peer relationships as they get to know each other after learning that their father and mother are marrying each other.

Liana's decided to boycott kissing this summer, hoping to lose her reputation and focus on planetary science. Hank has near-encyclopedic knowledge of music and Asperger's syndrome. When they meet by chance in a hospital restroom, neither one realizes that their friendship will change everything.   If Liana's experiment goes as planned, she'll learn to open up, using her mouth for talking instead of kissing. But Hank's never been kissed and thinks...