Maya's Notebook

The Goldfinch

Donna Tartt · 817 pages

"The Goldfinch is a rarity that comes along perhaps half a dozen times per decade, a smartly written literary novel that connects with the heart as well as the mind....Donna Tartt has delivered an extraordinary work of fiction."--Stephen King, The New York Times Book Review Composed with the skills of a master, The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present day America and a drama of enthra

Girl in Pieces, You'd Be Home Now, How to Make Friends with the Dark

Kathleen Glasgow · 1,296 pages

Last Night I Sang to the Monster

Benjamin Alire Saenz · 271 pages

Zach is eighteen. He is bright and articulate. He's also an alcoholic and in rehab instead of high school, but he doesn't remember how he got there. He's not sure he wants to remember. Something bad must have happened. Something really, really bad. Remembering sucks and being alive—well, what's up with that?I have it in my head that when we're born, God writes things down on our hearts. See, on so

Go Ask Alice

Anonymous · 185 pages

You Can't Ask Alice Anything Anymore But you can do something. Read her diary. Strong, painfully honest, nakedly candid. The actual story of a desperate girl on drugs and on the run who almost made it. --back cover

Gather

Kenneth M. Cadow · 325 pages

Publisher Annotation: A resourceful teenager in rural Vermont struggles to hold on to the family home while his mom recovers from addiction in this striking debut novel.

Crank

Ellen Hopkins · 537 pages

Kristina is the perfect daughter: gifted high school junior, quiet, never any trouble. Then she meets the monster: crank. And what begins as a wild ride turns into a struggle for her mind, her soul---her life.

The Impossible Knife of Memory

Laurie Halse Anderson · 391 pages

For the past five years Hayley Kincain and her father, Andy, have been on the road, never staying long in one place as he struggles to escape the demons that have tortured him since his return from Iraq. Now they are back in town where he grew up so Hayley can go to a proper school. Perhaps, for the first time, Hayley can have a normal life, put aside her own painful memories, even have a relation

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

Infinite Jest

David Foster Wallace · 1,088 pages

A gargantuan, mind-altering comedy about the Pursuit of Happiness in America Set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connec

This Is Me: A Reckoning

Hayden Panettiere · 320 pages

Hayden Panettiere’s career in entertainment began before she was old enough to walk. From early commercials to film and television roles in hits like *Remember the Titans*, her career unfolded in the public eye, resulting in tremendous success by her early teens. She had become a fixture of early-2000s pop culture, earning acclaim for performances in *Heroes, Nashville* (which earned her two Golde

Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood

Koren Zailckas · 352 pages

From earliest experimentation to habitual excess to full-blown abuse, twenty-four-year-old Koren Zailckas leads us through her experience of a terrifying trend among young girls, exploring how binge drinking becomes routine, how it becomes "the usual." With the stylistic freshness of a poet and the dramatic gifts of a novelist, Zailckas describes her first sip at fourteen, alcohol poisoning at six

Martyr!

Kaveh Akbar · 352 pages

Cyrus Shams is lost. Ever since his mother’s plane was senselessly shot down over the Persian Gulf when he was just a baby, Cyrus has been grappling with her death. Now, newly sober, he is set to learn the truth of her life. When an encounter with a dying artist leads Cyrus towards the mysteries of his past - an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as an Angel of Death, a haun

All Fall Down

Jennifer Weiner · 441 pages

"Allison Weiss has a great job ... a handsome husband ... an adorable daughter ... and a secret. Allison Weiss is a typical working mother, trying to balance a business, aging parents, a demanding daughter, and a marriage. But when the website she develops takes off, she finds herself challenged to the point of being completely overwhelmed. Her husband's becoming distant, her daughter's acting spo

Other Broken Things

Christa Desir

Forced to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, where she bonds with a much older man, seventeen-year-old Natalie, a recovering alcoholic, confronts issues in her family and life as she tries to turn her life around.

Recovery Road

Blake Nelson

While she is in a rehabilitation facility for drug and alcohol abuse, seventeen-year-old Maddie meets Stewart, who is also in treatment, and they begin a relationship, which they try to maintain after they both get out.

Rachel's Holiday

Marian Keyes · 570 pages

RACHEL'S HOLIDAY, Marian's classic novel about addiction, is being given a new lease of life with a fantastic new jacket treatment. Here's Rachel Walsh, twenty-seven and the miserable owner of size 8 feet. She has regular congress with Luke Costello, a man who wears his leather trousers tight. And she's fond - some might say too fond - of recreational drugs. Until she finds herself being frogmarch

Any Woman's Blues

Erica Jong · 373 pages

Any Woman's Blues, first published in 1990, is a tale of addiction and narcissism-the twin obsessions of ourage. World-famous folk singer Leila Sand emerged from the sixties and seventies with addictions to drugs and booze. Leila's latest addiction is to a younger man who leaves her sexually ecstatic but emotionally bereft. The orgasmic frenzies trump the betrayals, so she keeps coming back for mo

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.

Diary of a Drug Fiend

Aleister Crowley · 368 pages

Diary of a Drug Fiend was Aleister Crowley's first published novel. To the reader of 1922 it presented a shocking look at a little known phenomenon. Today, while we are more familiar with drugs because of their widespread use in our culture, Diary of a Drug Fiend remains one o fthe most intense, detailed and accurate accounts of drug addiction and the drug experience. The book was written by Cr

It's Kind of a Funny Story

Ned Vizzini · 444 pages

A humorous account of a New York City teenager's battle with depression and his time spent in a psychiatric hospital.

Trainspotting

Irvine Welsh · 352 pages

Scottish writer Irvine Welsh's first novel, Trainspotting, is a collection of short-stories revolving around a group of friends, their drug use, and struggles in the city of Edinburgh.

Blame

Michelle Huneven · 291 pages

Patsy MacLemoore, a history professor in her late twenties with a brand-new Ph.D. from Berkeley and a wild streak, wakes up in jail--yet again--after another epic alcoholic blackout. However, this time two people are dead, and Patsy had been driving with a revoked license. She will spend the rest of her life in prison, getting sober, finding a new community and husband, and trying to atone for thi

Freefall

Mindi Scott · 315 pages

A bass guitar player in a teen rock band deals with alcoholism, his best friend's death, and first love.

Spin

Catherine McKenzie

"Kate, an undercover newbie gossip reporter, follows a celebrity into rehab to dish all the dirt--but things are always more complicated than they seem in the first charming novel by Catherine McKenzie"--