Dirk McDonald's life was almost perfect. He lived with this grandmother, Fifi, in a beautiful gingerbread cottage in Hollywood. He had the beach, and his surfboard, and Fifi's red-and-white 1955 Pontiac convertible.

But Dirk wasn't happy. Inside, he was harboring a deep, dark secret. And he was afraid that if he admitted it to anyone - even Fifi - he would never be accepted again.

Then one night, Dirk's magic lamp came to life. Suddenly, all the stories from Dirk's past came flowing out of it. On that night, his life changed forever. At last, Dirk learned who he really was, and that any love that is love is right. 

Once upon a time in a land called Shangri-L.A., a bleach-blonde punk pixie named Weetzie Bat lived a life of surf and slam.  But Shangri-L.A. can be Hell-A., too, and Weetzie wanted something celestial and sparkling to keep her safe.

So she made three wishes and learned that love is the most beautiful and dangerous angel of all.

When Louie and Willa first meet, they don’t know that their lives will soon be changed forever.  Self-assured Louie is gearing up for another successful year in high school, starring in a production of Twelfth Night and running the Comedy Club.  Kicked out of her last school and still stinging from a past relationship, Willa just wants to get through her last year at school quietly so she can graduate and become a chef.  More than anything, she wants to be left alone.

Then, unexpectedly, each girl learns that plans mean nothing when it comes to love.  Louie discovers that everything she is sure of—acceptance, faith and identity—aren’t what they seem.  And Willa finds herself suddenly willing to take another chance.

Mario Santelli, a member of the famous flying Santelli family, is a great trapeze artist.  Tommy Zane is his protégé.

As naturally and gracefully as they soar through the air, the two flyers find themselves falling in love.  Mario and Tommy share sweet stolen moments of passion, but the real intensity of their relationship comes from their total devotion to one another and to their art.

As public figures in a conservative era, they cannot reveal their love.  But they will never renounce it.

If Ben can survive breaking the heart of the girl who loves him...losing his own heart to the charismatic classmate who's introducing Ben to the joys of rebellion and true love...seeing his mother shovel french fries for Ronald McDonald to keep the family's heads above poverty's brackish waters...and pretty much everything about his father...if he can fly in the face of the tantalizing, terrifying world that's knock-knock-knocking on his closet door...well, who the hell knows?

Part love story, part life lesson--starring a sometimes clever, often confused, but ultimately irresistible character in the wry--Todd D. Brown's debut novel is deftly funny and sweetly, achingly real.  Through the delightful window of Ben's intimacies and observations, we remember what it was to be fourteen, freaked out by life, and never more eager to see what would happen next.

Eighteen-year-old Andy Logan has finally made it to his first year of college, but not without some struggle.  As he tries to settle in this new environment, he cannot help but recall the events and experiences that have led him there.

It is in these recollections that we meet a vast array of people—those who had either helped Andy along the way or had threatened his hope to escape.  These are the stories of his great-uncle, the one person who seemed to understand him; his father, whose domineering presence and unwavering anger were the rules, not the exceptions; and Evan, an older boy who became his first true love.

Bo Brewster has been at war with his father as long as he can remember.  After angry outbursts at his football coach and English teacher that cost him his spot on the football team and move him dangerously close to expulsion from school, Bo gets sent to Mr. Nak’s before-school Anger Management group (rumored to the populated with future serial killers and freeway snipers).

There he meets a herd-edged pack of survivors whose own defenses are rigged as high as high as his.  And there he meets and falls in love with Shelly, a future American Gladiator whose passion for physical challenge more than matches his own.

From A Reader Review

This book is great for early adolescents who find that they feel "too close" to their best friend and question their feelings. The book portrays a boy growing up with an alcoholic mother and absent father in New York and his struggle after kissing his best friend.

Someone was with him.

The memory lay curled in Liam's mind, barely stirring for months at a time.  He'd never told anybody.  In one sense, he'd never told himself.

Now his mother tells him that Daddy is sick--from a blood transfusion.  Maybe she believes it, but Liam doesn't.

"We all die," his father says to him.  "I'll die sooner."

"Sooner," Liam echoes.

Philip Cormac has AIDS.  And only he and Mrs. Mottley, the woman who looks in on him at the cabin in Springton to which he's retreated, will say the word.  

One Thanksgiving Liam is seized with a desire to be with his father.  Unsure why he's come, he finds in Philip's face--so like an eagle's now in its gauntness--and in his rusty voice and in his very life, the long-burried answer.

Jan has to admit that Kerry is especially right for the part.  And as they work closely together in strengthening Kerry's theatrical technique, they find that their feelings for each other are evolving beyond friendship.  Kerry and Jan's fellow cast members begin to wonder about their friendship, and one actor in particular is determined to expose them.  Eventually Jan and Kerry must face a decision, one that could change their lives forever.

A love story, a portrait of aspiring young actors, and a powerful reminder of cruelty met through intolerance, Good Moon Rising is Nancy Garden at her finest.

Then Gillian stumbles across the thieves and they are not at all what she expected.  Lark and Jackie, sister and brother, are young runaways camping out in an abandoned hut, stealing food to survive, and terrified of being sent back to their abusive parents.  Rather than tell her family or Suzanne, Gillian decides to respect the children's fear and help them on her own.  But when the police seem close to discovering Lark and Jackie, Gillian wonders if she has taken on too much--especially since Lark once attempted suicide.

High school senior Jamie Crawford wants to run the Wilson High Telegraph with all the integrity and honest of any big time editor.  But it’s the paper’s editorial page that comes under fire when Jamie writes and opinion in support of the new health ed curriculum, which includes making condoms available to high school students.  Most of her fellow news staff are in agreement with her views, but her close friend Nomi, who is the art editor, opposes them.  St the same time, a new and outspoken school board member, Lisa Buel, is campaigning to rewrite the new curriculum, stressing sexual abstinence and deleting references to homosexuality and condom use; she also favors removing books she considers objectionable from the town’s public and school libraries.

While Jamie and her newspaper staff find themselves in the very heart of the controversy, things grow even more complicated: Jamie’s in the process f coming to terms with being gay, and her best friend, spots editor Terry Gage, who is also gat, has fallen in love with a boy whose parents are unaccepting of homosexuality.  As Jamie’s and Terry’s sexual orientation becomes more obvious to the other students, the paper they work so hard on faces ever more serious attacks and, along with the health ed curriculum, the threat of termination.

Daphne Duprey -- She prides herself on always being "cool, calm, collected, poised, sophisticated, cultured, and refined." Ruby is drawn to this girl,who, in Ruby's eyes, is everything she is not. They fill the aching emptiness in each other, love each other, despite the shared knowledge that their happines will end as abruptly as it began.