Lara Galian is a hauntingly beautiful sixteen-year-old from a poor village in Armenia. A corrupt local rich man seduces her family with an offer to manage her through a wonderful modeling career, but when her mother accepts the offer, Lara is whisked away, raped and sent to Moscow. Forced into prostitution, Lara refuses to accept her fate as she's moved from Moscow to Dubai and eventually sold into the harem of a local VIP. With unlikely allies, the courage of her family, and a spirit that never dies, Lara's fate is far from sealed, but escape will not be easy.--From publisher description.
A powerfully told story of the love between two brothers in the aftermath of a family tragedy Griff and Dylan are driving into Manhattan with their parents when the worst happens. There is a terrible car accident and Dylan and Griff1s parents are killed. The boys are suddenly orphans with nowhere to go, until a kind aunt and uncle give them a new home in Wales. Now Dylan and Griff have everything they need love, a happy home and a future. But Dylan is worried about Griff: whether he is OK, whether he is coping with his grief. He doesn't seem to want to speak about it or really acknowledge the loss of their parents. But Dylan needs to be even braver than Griff, because there is something very important he needs to face up to before he can move on. The heartbreaking new novel from award-winning author Hayley Long Winner of the Mal Peet Children's Book Award at the 2017 East Anglian Book Awards, the Tir na n-Og Award (English language) 2018, the Staffordshire Libraries YTF2018 (Young Teen Fiction) Book Award and the Young Jury Prize 2020 (Flanders). Nominated for the Carnegie Medal 2018 Shortlisted for the Brilliant Book Award 2019, the Warwickshire Secondary Books Award 2019, the Stockport Children's Book Award 2018, the Hillingdon Secondary Book of the Year 2018 and the Dudley Teen Book Awards 2018
A National Book Award Finalist An Edgar Award Finalist A California Book Award Gold Medal Winner A dark, contemporary fairy tale in the tradition of Neil Gaiman. Jeremy Johnson Johnson hears voices. Or, specifically, one voice: the ghost of Jacob Grimm, one half of The Brothers Grimm. Jacob watches over Jeremy, protecting him from an unknown dark evil whispered about in the space between this world and the next. But Jacob can't protect Jeremy from everything. When coltish, copper-haired Ginger Boultinghouse takes a bite of a cake so delicious it’s rumored to be bewitched, she falls in love with the first person she sees: Jeremy. In any other place, this would be a turn for the better for Jeremy, but not in Never Better, where the Finder of Occasions—whose identity and evil intentions nobody knows—is watching and waiting, waiting and watching. . . And as anyone familiar with the Brothers Grimm know, not all fairy tales have happy endings. Veteran writer Tom McNeal has crafted a young adult novel at once grim(m) and hopeful, full of twists, and perfect for fans of contemporary fairy tales like Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book and Holly Black's Doll Bones. The recipient of five starred reviews, Publishers Weekly called Far Far Away "inventive and deeply poignant."
A Far Away Place, Bear River (Mary Marvin McLeod, 1920-2003) is the story of Maple Grove farm, the first volume of a panoramic Canadian trilogy that takes us from a farming community in the 1920s, to a small town during the Depression, to Ottawa and Montreal during the war years. More than a memoir, it is a history of the times, stitching together a series of tales and vignettes about the people and places Mary sees along the way. Underlying it all is an eldest daughter's recounting of her parents' tragic fate as Mary finds herself following a similar path, tangled in "the strange mathematics of give and take." Bear River, Volume 1: After suffering head wounds in WWI, Daniel Marvin, a career naval officer from Newport News, Virginia, brings his bride, Mary MacGregor of Helensburgh, Scotland, to a lonely, long-deserted farm near Bear River, Nova Scotia, a village he visited once as a boy. His wounds soon force him into a military hospital in Montreal, where he supports the farm by making brass work and selling it in Canada's best jewellery stores. Mary MacGregor is an unusually gifted singer, but Maple Grove farm is the stage on which her stars have plunged her, and she is too often alone running the farm and raising a family that will grow to ten. "Why did they persist in this struggle, for what dream? The vagaries of nature alone would destroy the dreams of rugged individuals, never mind sensitive artists with sensitive health. The farm was a death wish and they seemed not to know it."
A book about life, loss, and the secrets families keep, reminiscent of Sharon Creech's Walk Two Moons, by National Book Award nominee Lisa Graff. CJ's Aunt Nic is a psychic medium who tours the country speaking to spirits from Far Away, passing on messages from the dearly departed. And CJ knows firsthand how comforting those messages can be -- Aunt Nic's Gift is the only way CJ can talk to her mom, who died just hours after she was born. So when CJ learns that she won't be able to speak to her mother anymore, even with Aunt Nic's help, she's determined to find a work-around. She sets off on road trip with her new friend Jax to locate the one object that she believes will tether her mother's spirit back to Earth . . . but what she finds along the way challenges every truth she's ever known. Ultimately, CJ has to sort out the reality from the lies. National Book Award nominee Lisa Graff has written a poignant, heartfelt novel that explores the lengths we go to protect those we love -- and the power secrets have to change our worlds. Praise for Far Away: * "Graff nimbly crafts a credible novel from the unlikely, shaping layered characters and unforeseen plot twists while exploring issues of truth and illusion--and the emotion-infused miasma that separates the two. A genuinely moving and memorable story." --Publishers Weekly, *STARRED REVIEW* "The story is a genre blend of mystery and realistic family drama . . . Graff never shies away from difficult topics, and this is as brave as expected." --Booklist
