"The opportunity to be swept up in a world of glittering gowns and pricelss jewels. To live in a palace and compete for the heart of gorgeous Prince Maxon. But for America Singer, being Selected is a nightmare. It means turning her back on her secret love with Aspen, who is a caste below her, and leaving her home to enter a fierce cmpetition for a crown she doesn't want. Then America meets Prince Maxon. Gradually, she begins to realize that the life...

"Marah, an underclass 'sparker' in a society ruled by magicians, works with her friend Azariah to find a cure for a mysterious disease that turns its victims' eyes black"--

"Two familes from different social classes are joined together by an unexpected pregnancy and the child that it produces. As the book opens in 2001, it is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody's coming of age ceremony in her grandparents' Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, making her entrance to the music of Prince, she wears a special custom-made dress. But the event is not without poignancy. Sixteen years earlier,...

In Manhattan in 1899, five teens of different social classes lead dangerously scandalous lives, despite the strict rules of society and the best-laid plans of parents and others.

After their parents divorce in the 1970's, Andre Dubus III and his three siblings grew up with their exhausted working mother in a depressed Massachusetts mill town saturated with drugs and crime. To protect himself and those he loved from street violence, Andre learned to use his fists so well that he was even scared of himself. He was on a fast track to getting killed, or killing someone else, or to beatings-for-pay as a boxer. Nearby, his father,...

"In this poignant, perceptive, witty novel, Gary D. Schmidt brings authenticity and emotion to multiple plot strands, weaving in themes of grief, loss, redemption, achievement, and love. Following the death of her closest friend in summer 1968, Meryl Lee Kowalski goes off to St. Elene's Preparatory Academy for Girls, where she struggles to navigate the venerable boarding school's traditions and a social structure heavily weighted toward students from...

In the summer of 1951, Miranda Schuyler arrives on elite, secretive Winthrop Island as a schoolgirl from the margins of high society, still reeling from the loss of her father in the Second World War. When her beautiful mother marries Hugh Fisher, whose summer house on Winthrop overlooks the famous lighthouse, Miranda's catapulted into a heady new world of pedigrees and cocktails, status and swimming pools. Isobel Fisher, Miranda's new stepsister--all...

"Be Careful What You Wish For opens with Harry Clifton and his wife Emma rushing to learn the fate of their son Sebastian, who has been in a fatal car accident. But who died, Sebastian or his best friend? When Ross Buchanan is forced to resign as chairman of the Barrington Shipping Company, Emma Clifton wants to replace him. But Don Pedro Martinez intends to install his puppet, Alex Fisher, in order to destroy the Barrington family firm just as the...

New York City, 1910. Ladies' maid Jane Prescott has taken a position with the Benchley family, dismissed by the city's elite as 'new money.' Invisible until she's needed, Jane has a power they do not-- she understands the rules of high society. At a party for Charlotte Benchley's engagement to notorious playboy Norrie Newsome, the groom-to-be is found murdered. There are many with grudges to bear: from the family Norrie was supposed to marry into,...

Two sisters of opposing temperaments share the pangs of tragic love. Their mutual suffering brings a closer understanding between the two sisters and true love finally triumphs.