What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorOut of the Dust
Karen Hesse · 235 pages
"Dust piles up like snow across the prairie. . . ." A terrible accident has transformed Billie Jo's life, scarring her inside and out. Her mother is gone. Her father can't talk about it. And the one thing that might make her feel better -- playing the piano -- is impossible with her wounded hands. To make matters worse, dust storms are devastating the family farm and all the farms nearby. Wh
One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies
Sonya Sones · 268 pages
Written in free-verse poems, this novel follows fifteen-year-old Ruby as she moves from Boston to La after her mother dies to live with her famous movie star father, whom she has never met and is determined to dislike.
Under the Mesquite
Guadalupe Garcia McCall · 224 pages
Throughout her high school years, as her mother battles cancer, Lupita takes on more responsibility for her house and seven younger siblings, while finding refuge in acting and writing poetry. Includes glossary of Spanish terms.
May B.
Caroline Starr Rose
When a failed wheat crop nearly bankrupts the Betterly family, Pa pulls twelve-year-old May from school and hires her out to a couple new to the Kansas frontier.
Between Shades of Gray
Ruta Sepetys · 348 pages
Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they’ve known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circ
The Bronze Horseman
Paullina Simons · 637 pages
E-book exclusive: The author's tribute to her grandparents, survivors of Russia's twentieth century.An unforgettable epic of passion, betrayal, and survival set against the shimmering beauty and brutal terror of 1941 war-torn Leningrad.From the author of the international bestseller Tully comes an epic tale of passion, betrayal, and survival in World War II Russia. Leningrad, 1941: The European wa
Heartbeat
Elizabeth Scott · 256 pages
Emma's mother is on life support with a living baby growing inside of her. Estranged from her stepfather, the only person she can turn to is her best friend. Then bad-boy Caleb Harrison comes along and reminds her that there just might be life and love after death and grief.
The Crossover
Kwame Alexander · 240 pages
"A bolt of lightning on my kicks, the court is sizzling, my sweat is drizzling. Stop all that quivering, cuz tonight I'm delivering," raps basketball phenom Josh Bell. Thanks to his dad, he and his twin brother, Jordan, are kings on the court, with crossovers that make even the toughest ballers cry. But Josh has more than hoops in his blood. He's got a river of rhymes flowing through him -- a sick
The Usual Rules
Joyce Maynard · 400 pages
"It's a Tuesday morning in Brooklyn - a perfect September day. Wendy's heading to school, eager to make plans with her best friend, worried about how she looks, mad at her mother for not letting her visit her father in California, impatient with her little brother and with the almost too-loving concern of her jazz musician stepfather. She's out the door to catch the bus. An hour later comes the ne
By the River
Steven Herrick · 232 pages
A fourteen-year-old describes, through prose poems, his life in a small Australian town in 1962, where, since their mother's death, he and his brother have been mainly on their own to learn about life, death, and love.
Life As We Knew It
Susan Beth Pfeffer · 356 pages
Miranda lives a normal life in a normal family. When an asteroid is scheduled to hit the moon, nobody realized that it would change the world forever. Together with her family, Miranda must struggle to survive and hope for help.
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Cheryl Strayed · 315 pages
A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again. At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she'd lost everything when her mother died young of cancer. Her family scattered in their grief, her marriage was soon destroyed, and slowly her life spun out of control. Four years after her mot
Solo
Kwame Alexander, Mary Rand Hess · 461 pages
Seventeen-year-old Blade, who endeavors to resolve painful issues from his past to navigate the challenges of his former rockstar father's addictions, scathing tabloid rumors, and a protected secret that threatens his own identity.
Identical
Ellen Hopkins · 624 pages
Do twins begin in the womb? Or in a better place? Kaeleigh and Raeanne are identical down to the dimple. As daughters of a district-court judge father and a politician mother, they are an all-American family—on the surface. Behind the facade each sister has her own dark secret, and that's where their differences begin. For Kaeleigh, she's the misplaced focus of Daddy's love, intended for a
Waiting
Carol Lynch Williams
As the tragic death of her older brother devastates the family, teenaged London struggles to find redemption and finds herself torn between her brother's best friend and a handsome new boy in town.
And We Stay
Jenny Hubbard · 224 pages
Sent to an Amherst, Massachusetts, boarding school after her ex-boyfriend shoots himself, seventeen-year-old Emily expresses herself through poetry as she relives their relationship, copes with her guilt, and begins to heal. Sent to a boarding school after her ex-boyfriend shoots himself, 17-year-old Emily expresses herself through poetry as she relives their relationship, copes with her guilt, a
You Are Not Here
Samantha Schutz · 292 pages
Annaleah's grief over the tragic death of seventeen-year-old Brian is compounded by the fact that her friends did not like him, while his friends and both of their families knew nothing of their intimate relationship.
If You Find Me
Emily Murdoch · 290 pages
"She leaves us sittin' there, with the late-afternoon sun dapplin' the forest floor as if it's any other day. I watch her reach into the bin by the foldin' table, then walk back over. She hands me two of the shiny black garbage bags folded up like Mama's letter. I slip out from under Jenessa, balance her on the tree, and proceed to shake each bag into its full size. We all stop and watch the birds
The Leanin' Dog
K.A. Nuzum · 250 pages
In wintry Colorado during the 1930s, eleven-year-old Dessa Dean mourns the death of her beloved mother, but the arrival of an injured dog and the friendship they form is just what each needs to change their lives forever.
Yellow Star
Jennifer Roy · 227 pages
From 1939, when Syvia is four and a half years old, to 1945 when she has just turned ten, a Jewish girl and her family struggle to survive in Poland's Lodz ghetto during the Nazi occupation.