The Garden of Eden

Sample

Lurlene McDaniel

Collects three novels by the author, in which teenagers find compassion, strength, and love while recovering from tragic circumstances. In Saving Jessica, helping her boyfriend, Jeremy, work through his grief over his brother's fatal accident, Jessica finds herself leaning on Jeremy for support when she is diagnosed with kidney failure. In Telling Christina goodbye, a young woman must come to grips with the accident that left her boyfriend in a coma and her best friend dead. In Letting go of Lisa, home-schooled for most of his education, Nathan enters the public high school as a senior where he meets a beautiful girl with a secret and together they learn about loving, living, and dying.

Sample

Melissa Kantor

Setting high ambitions for an Ivy League education and successful life, Juliet begins questioning her strict family rules in the face of her father's abandonment, her mother's instability, and her growing feelings for a boy.

Sample

William H. Hooks

Describes the coming of age of an 11-year-old boy on his father's farm in the South in the 1930's and his relationships with his extended family and the black sharecroppers who work the farm.

Sample

Julie Lawson Timmer

Mara Nichols, a terminally ill career woman, wife, and mother, and Scott Coffman, a middle-school teacher whose eight-year-old foster son is about to return to his former inmate mother, traverse the last five days they have to say goodbye to their loved ones.