Showing titles in Physical & Emotional Abuse

Best friends Amani and Huda are getting nervous about their GCSEs - and their future beyond school, which they're both wildly unprepared for. Shy, quiet Amani has an outwardly picture-perfect family - a father who is a successful TV presenter, a loving mother and an adorable younger brother - while confident and impulsive Huda has grown up with over-affectionate foster parents who are now expecting a baby of their own.

Johanna is steadfast, patient, reliable; the go-to girl, the one everyone can count on. But always being there for others can’t give Johanna everything she needs - it can’t give her Reeve Hartt. Reeve is fierce, beautiful, wounded, elusive; a flame that draws Johanna’s fluttering moth. Johanna is determined to get her, against all advice, and to help her, against all reason. But love isn’t always reasonable, right? In the precarious place where attraction and need collide, a teenager experiences the dark side of a first love, and struggles to find her way into a new light.

Keely planned to keep her head down at her new school - she isn't there to make friends or memories, she just wants to be left alone. In order to get into college, she is roped into a programme that involves camping in the Welsh wilderness with five over-keen try-hards. Her plan is to keep her head down, keep her mouth shut and get through the next few days. But Keely is running from something. Something that drove her family out of their home and to this quiet town.

Caitlin can't afford to leave this dreamland, this half-sleeping state where everything and everyone can be kept at arm's length. Because then she'd have to face the ugly truth about her relationship with Rogerson: magnetic, fascinating--and very dangerous--Rogerson. What is it about Rogerson Biscoe...and why can't she leave him?

Nick is one of the chosen few at his high school: intelligent, popular, wealthy. People think his life is pretty easy. Except for one thing. Nick has never told anyone about his father's violent temper. In a harrowing journey of self-discovery, Nick learns the truth about himself - and that the phrase "like father, like son" can carry terrifying possibilities.

When everything has been taken from you, what else is there to do but run? So that’s what Annabelle does - she runs from Seattle to Washington, DC, through mountain passes and suburban landscapes, from long lonely roads to college towns. She’s not ready to think about the why yet, just the how - muscles burning, heart pumping, feet pounding the Earth. But no matter how hard she tries, she can’t outrun the tragedy from the past year, or the person - The Taker - that haunts her.

Trained and traumatised by a secret assassin program for minors, Isabel Ryans wants nothing more than a new life as a normal civilian. And she might just be in with a shot when she befriends Emma Westray, because for the first time in her life things are looking up. But when Isabel blows her cover by impulsively murdering a burglar, she draws the attention of the guilds—the two organisations who control the city of Espera. An unaffiliated killer like Isabel is either a potential asset...or a threat to be eliminated.

When 16-year-old Amy returns home, she can't tell her family what's happened to her. She can't tell them where she's been since she and her best friend, her cousin Dee, were kidnapped six years ago - who stole them from their families or what's become of Dee. She has to stay silent because she's afraid of what might happen next, and she's desperate to protect her secrets at any cost. Amy tries to readjust to life at "home," but nothing she does feels right. She's a stranger in her own family, and the guilt that she's the one who returned is insurmountable.

Seven months. That’s how long I was kept captive. My only solace was Mason - one of the other kidnapped teens - and our pact to one day escape together. But when that day finally came, I had to leave him behind. Now that I’m home, my parents and friends want everything to be like it was before I left. But they don’t understand that dining out and shopping trips can’t heal what’s broken inside me. When I ask the detectives assigned to my case about Mason, I get an answer I don’t believe - that there were no traces of any other kidnapped kids.

Georgie Burgess has known only neglect and abuse during his seven and a half years of life. His alcoholic mother does little to prevent the bruises and scars inflicted on Georgie by her brutal boyfriend. With each blow, the little boy withdraws further into his dreams. When he wins a small rose bush in a lottery, it seems as if one of his dreams has finally come true. But after a particularly savage beating, he is taken from his mother and placed in a home for boys.

Nia would do anything to win the approval of her boyfriend Scott and his friends, especially mean girl Olivia. Olivia dares Nia to explore an abandoned prison. Facing dark tunnels, distant noises and creepy mementoes left behind by incarcerated criminals will surely all be worth it to finally become part of the group. But it isn't long before Nia and her little sister, Kayla, find themselves trapped inside. And then Kayla vanishes. Suddenly, this feels like more than a game gone wrong.

Heartache, betrayal, and abuse: These are Mia’s lifelong companions, inflicted upon her by parents who wish she’d never been born. The night she was kicked out of the house, Mia would have frozen to death—if not literally, then emotionally—were it not for the love of her best friend’s family. Intuition, love, and wonder: These are Sophie’s gifts, unleashed by her struggle with Cystic Fibrosis and her determination to live fully. When Mia tells Sophie about the long walk down the mountain in the snow, Sophie instinctively knows there is more to the story of Mia’s survival.

An ambitious and complex novel with a multi-faceted and vivid depiction of a group of young people in the grip of drug addiction, told in many different voices, from the addicts themselves to the friends watching from the outside who try to prevent tragedy. It was a love story. Me, Gemma and junk. I thought it was going to last forever. It was the biggest adventure of my life. Tar loves Gemma, but Gemma doesn’t want to be tied down - not to anyone or anything. Gemma wants to fly. But no one can fly forever. One day, somehow, finally, you have to come down.

Each time Sloane Sawyer gets her heart broken by a boy, she writes him a eulogy in her journal as a form of therapy. They're dead to her. So, imagine Sloane's surprise when the exes in her journal start dying…literally. Now, Sloane’s senior year at Pembroke College is on the line, and so is her freedom. As the prime suspect, she has no choice but to dive headfirst into the investigation, even if that means teaming up with Asher, the last person she’d ever trust or want to be around. They’re both too stubborn, too sarcastic, and way too attracted to each other for this to go smoothly.

A wealthy businessman is dead, and fifteen-year-old Ruby Monroe is in a Dallas jail awaiting trial for his murder. Ruby has no one she can count on—no one, except her state-appointed caseworker, a woman named Cadence Ware. In Ruby’s experience, that’s not anyone she can trust. Cadence is familiar with the cold reality of Ruby’s situation, even before Ruby was arrested. Angry and alone, homeless and hungry, breaking the law just to survive, she is the kind of girl no one wants to listen to, especially not the prosecutor who wants to put her away for life.

Sisters Cheta and Zam couldn’t be more different. Cheta, sharp-tongued and stubborn, never shies away from conflict—either at school or at home, where her mother fires abuse at her. Timid Zam escapes most of her mother’s anger, skating under the radar and avoiding her sister whenever possible. In a lucky turn, Zam is invited to live in her aunt’s luxurious home. Jealous, Cheta also leaves home, but to a hard existence that will drive her to terrible decisions. When the sisters are reunited, Zam alone sees just how far Cheta has fallen—and Cheta’s fate is in Zam’s hands.

In the backwoods of Upstate New York, the six remaining Creswell children live under the strict rule of their father. Castley, Caspar, Jerusalem, Mortimer, Delvive and Hannan. Someone needs to save the Creswell children. Castley Creswell, a girl equal parts humour and longing, loves her extraordinary family but knows something is missing from her closeted life. Forced into a real school, Castley feels more like a freak than ever.

Danny's mam has a new boyfriend. Initially, all is good – Callum seems nice enough, and Danny can't deny he's got a cool set up; big house, fast car, massive TV, and Mam seems to really like him. But cracks begin to show, and they're not the sort that can be easily repaired. As Danny witnesses Mam suffer and Callum spiral out of control he goes in search of his dad. The Dad he's never met. Set in Newcastle and Edinburgh, this supremely enjoyable coming-of-age drama tackles domestic violence head on, but finds humour and hope in the most unlikely of­ places.

Kayla is still holding on to Lainie’s secrets. After all, Lainie is Kayla’s best friend. And despite Lainie’s painful obsession with her on-again, off-again boyfriend, and the ways he has tried to come between them, friends don’t spill each other’s secrets. They don’t betray each other’s trust. The murder at the end of the summer doesn’t change all that. Besides—Kayla knows that the truth is not the whole story.

Randi Lewis isn't your typical seventh-grader. She's a damaged girl with a secret life who just wants to be a normal, happy teenager. And on her first day of seventh grade, she vows to make this the year she turns it all around. This will be the year that she'll finally let go of her pain and her anger and be happy again. All she has to do is ignore all the mean looks, pointed whispers, trash talk, and name-calling - from kids and adults alike.