BREDA’S ISLAND (QUILLTREE BOOKS, JULY 2022)
After Breda Moriarity gets caught stealing one too many times, her mom sends her to Ireland—a place she has never been—to live with the grandfather she has never met. While Breda doesn’t want to be in this strangely beautiful land, she finally gets to meet her Granda, her mom’s father. He’s a grumpy farmer who is also a seanchaí, a traditional Gaelic storyteller. But the most important story to Breda is the one nobody will talk about: what happened to her absent father. If nothing else this summer, Breda is determined to figure out the truth about her family’s history—and herself.
This powerfully poignant middle grade novel asks important questions about immigration, estranged relationships, and family secrets.
Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection
Best Book for Kids 2022, New York Public Library
The Carnival at bray (Elephant rock books, 2014)
It’s 1993, and Generation X pulses to the beat of Kurt Cobain and the grunge movement. Sixteen-year-old Maggie Lynch is uprooted from big-city Chicago to a windswept town on the Irish Sea. Surviving on care packages of Spin magazine and Twizzlers from her rocker uncle Kevin, she wonders if she’ll ever find her place in this new world. When first love and sudden death simultaneously strike, a naive but determined Maggie embarks on a forbidden pilgrimage that will take her to a seedy part of Dublin and on to a life-altering night in Rome to fulfill a dying wish. Through it all, Maggie discovers an untapped inner strength to do the most difficult but rewarding thing of all—live.
Printz Honor Book
YALSA Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults Title 2014
Kirkus Reviews Best Book 2014
William C. Morris Award Finalist for debut YA fiction
Texas Library Association TAYSHAS reading list selection
Pennsylvania Young Readers’ Choice Awards finalist
New York Public Library favorite book of 2014
Finalist, Chicago Writer’s Association 2015 Book of the Year Awards
Finalist, Housatonic Book Awards 2015
neighborhood girls (harperteen, 2017)
Before junior Wendy Boychuck was best friends with Kenzie, Sapphire, and Emily—the most brutal group of girls that Academy of the Sacred Heart has ever seen—she was content with being a nobody. Then Wendy’s father, a corrupt police officer, gets sentenced to prison. So when Wendy has a chance to join Kenzie and her pack of alphas, she sees in the them the type of protection and remaking that she—the daughter of a crooked cop—so badly needs. From that point on, what Wendy encounters are the exhilarating highs and isolating lows that come with being in her school’s most feared and revered clique.
With tinges of magical realism, Jessie Ann Foley’s follow-up to the highly-acclaimed The Carnival at Bray deftly explores toxic friendships, broken families, and a girl’s journey back to herself, all with unmistakable authenticity.
Booklist Editor’s Choice, Best Books for Youth 2017
YALSA Best Fiction For Young Adults Title 2018
sorry for your loss (Harperteen 2019)
As the youngest of eight, painfully average Pup Flanagan is used to flying under the radar. The only person who ever made him think he could be more was his older brother Patrick, the family’s golden child. But that was before Patrick died suddenly, leaving Pup alone with a family who won’t talk about it and acquaintances who just keep saying, “sorry for your loss.”
When Pup excels at a photography assignment he thought he’d bomb, things in his life start coming into focus: his dream girl shows her true colors, an unexpected friend becomes something more, and one of Pup’s photos reveals someone else who needs healing. Someone with a secret Pup could never have imagined.
YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults 2020 title
Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection
Winner, Maine North Star YA Award 2020-2021
Illinois Reads 2020-2021 title
Georgia Peach Book Awards finalist
Oklahoma Library Association Sequoya Book Awards 2021 Masterlist title
Friends of American Writers Young People’s Literature Award
Shortlisted title for Iowa Reads program
YOU KNOW I’M NO GOOD (QuillTree Books 2020)
Mia is officially a Troubled Teen™— she gets bad grades, drinks too much, and has probably gone too far with too many guys.
But she doesn’t realize how out of control she seems until she is taken from her home in the middle of the night and sent away to Red Oak Academy, a therapeutic girls' boarding school in the middle of nowhere.
While there, Mia is forced to confront her painful past at the same time she questions why she's at Red Oak. If she were a boy, would her behavior be considered wild enough to get sent away? But what happens when circumstances outside of her control compel Mia to make herself vulnerable enough to be truly seen?
Challenging and thought-provoking, this stunning contemporary YA novel examines the ways society is stacked against teen girls and what one young woman will do to even the odds.
* YALSA Best Fiction For Young Adults 2021 title
*Bank Street Best Book of 2021
* Chicago Public Library Best of the Best 2020 title
*Illinois Reads 2021-2022 title
*Abraham Lincoln Award 2024 nominee
