Everyone Has Problems . . . and So Do You
Discover powerful books to help you navigate life's challenges. Everyone has problems—find solutions, inspiration, and growth with these transformative reads.
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It's Kind of a Funny Story
by Ned Vizzini
Like many ambitious New York City teenagers, Craig Gilner sees entry into Manhattan’s Executive Pre-Professional High School as the ticket to his future. Determined to succeed at life—which means getting into the right high school to get into the right college to get the right job—Craig studies night and day to ace the entrance exam, and does. That’s when things start to get crazy. At his new school, Craig realizes that he isn't brilliant compared to the other kids; he’s just average, and maybe not even that. He soon sees his once-perfect future crumbling away. The stress becomes unbearable and Craig stops eating and sleeping—until, one night, he nearly kills himself. Craig’s suicidal episode gets him checked into a mental hospital, where his new neighbors include a transsexual sex addict, a girl who has scarred her own face with scissors, and the self-elected President Armelio. There, isolated from the crushing pressures of school and friends, Craig is finally able to confront the sources of his anxiety. Ned Vizzini, who himself spent time in a psychiatric hospital, has created a remarkably moving tale about the sometimes unexpected road to happiness. For a novel about depression, it’s definitely a funny story.
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Luna
by Julie Anne Peters
With the help of his sister, Liam secretly transforms himself into a girl when evening falls, but although he wants to present his female persona to the world, he fears the reaction of the rest of his family.
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The Burn Journals
by Brent Runyon
Fans of Thirteen Reasons Why, Running with Scissors, and Girl, Interrupted will be entranced by this remarkable true story of teenage despair and recovery. “[The Burn Journals] describes a particular kind of youthful male desolation better than it has ever been described before, by anyone.” —Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon In 1991, fourteen-year-old Brent Runyon came home from school, doused his bathrobe in gasoline, put it on, and lit a match. He suffered third-degree burns over 85% of his body and spent the next year recovering in hospitals and rehab facilities. During that year of physical recovery, Runyon began to question what he’d done, undertaking the complicated journey from near-death back to high school, and from suicide back to the emotional mainstream of life.
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Perfect
by Natasha Friend
Following the death of her father, a thirteen-year-old uses bulimia as a way to avoid her mother's and ten-year-old sister's grief, as well as her own.
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Cut
by Patricia McCormick
"A tingle arced across my scalp. The floor tipped up at me and my body spiraled away. Then I was on the ceiling looking down, waiting to see what would happen next."Callie cuts herself. Never too deep, never enough to die. But enough to feel the pain. Enough to feel the scream inside.Now she's at Sea Pines, a "residential treatment facility" filled with girls struggling with problems of their own. Callie doesn't want to have anything to do with them. She doesn't want to have anything to do with anyone. She won't even speak.But Callie can only stay silent for so long...
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Damage
by A. M. Jenkins
As the Pride of the Panthers, football star Austin Reid is a likable guy, good with the ladies. Lately though, he doesn't like his life -- or anything else -- so much. And the worst part is that he can't seem to figure out why.
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The Year of Magical Thinking
by Joan Didion
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • From one of America’s iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion that explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage—and a life, in good times and bad—that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child. One of The New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later—the night before New Year’s Eve—the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma. This powerful book is Didion’ s attempt to make sense of the “weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness ... about marriage and children and memory ... about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself.
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
by Mark Haddon
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A modern classic—both poignant and funny—about a boy with autism who sets out to solve the murder of a neighbor's dog and discovers unexpected truths about himself and the world. “Disorienting and reorienting the reader to devastating effect.... Suspenseful and harrowing.” —The New York Times Book Review Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow. This improbable story of Christopher's quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years.
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Crank
by Ellen Hopkins
Based on a real-life event and written in verse, this novel relates the disturbing story of one girl's descent into addiction.
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Glass
by Ellen Hopkins
Crank. Glass. Ice. Crystal. Whatever you call it, it's all the same: a monster. And once it's got hold of you, this monster will never let you go. Kristina thinks she can control the urge, the addiction, the monster trying to drag her down. Now with a baby to care for, she's determined to be the one deciding when and how much, the one calling the shots. But the monster is too strong, and before she knows it, Kristina is back in its grips. She needs the monster to keep going, to face the pressures of day-to-day life. She needs it to feel alive. Once again the monster takes over Kristina's life and she will do anything for it, including giving up the one person who gives her the unconditional love she craves—her baby. A vivid portrait of a victim to addiction, this sequel to Crank is the continuing story of Kristina and her descent back to hell. Told in verse, it's a harrowing and disturbing look at addiction and the damage that it inflicts.
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Shattering Glass
by Gail Giles
When Rob, the charismatic leader of the senior class, turns the school nerd into Prince Charming, his actions lead to unexpected violence.
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Speak
by Laurie Halse Anderson
Laurie Halse Anderson's award-winning, highly acclaimed, and controversial novel about a teenager who chooses not to speak rather than to give voice to what really happened to her marks ten years in print with this special anniversary edition. Bonus material created for this edition includes a new introduction and afterword from the author, resources, and discussion guide. Will also include a preview of Anderson's newest book, Wintergirls. The quintessential edition for all fans of this powerfully moving book.
