Almost There And Almost Not

When her father goes away, eleven-year-old California "Callie" Poppy winds up with her eccentric Great-Aunt Monica and their ancestor, the once-famous etiquette expert Eleanor Fontaine, now a hypersensitive ghost.

Follow-up book to Are You Somebody? It is a provocative meditation on the crucible of middle age - a time of life that forges the shape of the years to come, clarifying and solidifying one's relationships to friends and lovers (past and present), family and self.

Jewel is on the run from an abusive home situation and furtively living at school. After Maya discovers her classmate’s secret, should she tell? Or can she help Jewel on her own? Thirteen-year-old Jewel has been holding her life together ever since her older sister, Charmaine, suddenly left home with no forwarding address. She tried to find Charmaine once, but that only brought her family to the attention of the police. Now Jewel keeps her head down at school, looks after her special-needs brother as well as she can, and tries to steer clear of her parents and their shady friends. When her father’s friend comes into her bedroom one night, Jewel finally understands why Charmaine had to leave home. Soon she is on the run herself. When her food runs out, Jewel chances upon a new place to live — the cupboard of the art room at school. It turns out to be surprisingly easy to live under the radar when you have perfected the art of being almost invisible. That is, until Jewel’s classmates, Maya and Lily, discover her washing her hair in the girls’ washroom at school and making breakfast in the lunchroom. They take her on as their project, finding her places to sleep, fixing her hair and wardrobe — even as they can’t quite understand her terror, or why she is so afraid of seeking adult help. But the girls help keep Jewel and her secret safe — until they no longer can. Told in the alternating voices of Maya and Jewel, this is a thought-provoking and moving story about loyalty, privilege, keeping secrets, and what it means to be a good friend. Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.6 Describe how a narrator's or speaker's point of view influences how events are described. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.3 Describe how a particular story's or drama's plot unfolds in a series of episodes as well as how the characters respond or change as the plot moves toward a resolution. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.6 Explain how an author develops the point of view of the narrator or speaker in a text.

Recipient of Publisher’s Weekly Starred Review! On the move . . . again? Wondering when you will “arrive”? Sometimes God leads people out of familiar territory so he can tell them who they are. That moment you depart, you experience reinvention, renewal, and freedom. You get a redo on the adjectives associated with your name. Almost There is for those on the move and those who feel restless right where they are. It’s for those who struggle with not belonging, with feeling unsettled, with believing that home is out of their reach, at least for the moment. And Almost There is for those who find themselves in a transient lifestyle they didn’t expect—say, moving across the country for a new job or the military or an opportunity to begin again. With imaginative storytelling and witty, relatable prose, Bekah DiFelice offers wisdom for those struggling to belong in a world where home is constantly shifting. When our hope of home is rooted in an unchangeable God, we are not uprooted, lost, or made homeless by change. We become found ones on the move.

The 13th installment in the New York Times best-selling series asks: What if Tiana made a deal that changed everything? Sometimes life in the Big Easy is tough. No one knows that better than Tiana, though she also believes that hard work can go a long way. But when the notorious Dr. Facilier backs her into a corner, she has no choice but to accept an offer that will alter the course of her life in an instant. Soon Tiana finds herself in a new reality where all her deepest desires are realized: she finally gets her restaurant, her friends are safe and sound, and most miraculous of all, her beloved father is still alive. She's got everything she's ever wanted. . . . But after a while, her hometown grows increasingly eerie, with new threats cropping up in unlikely places. Navigating through this strange new New Orleans, Tiana must work alongside Naveen and Charlotte to set things right—or risk losing everything she holds dear.

In this first chapter of the sequel to Almost Single, Advaita Kala's boisterous first novel about a bunch of friends in Delhi, Aisha wakes up to a panicked call from her mother and houseguests she had quite forgotten about. Will she survive the day? Read on to reacquaint yourself with the mad mad world of Aisha, Misha, Ric and Karan.

Emily Winston lies dead in the woods, just a few feet from the trail on which she’d been training for her next marathon. Hardly able to believe it themselves, investigating detectives Renaldo Hernandez and Kaitlin Richardson discover information that indicates a sick individual, with a hatred of Emily’s sport, could be the culprit, a hypothesis strengthened by additional chaos affecting the running community. But dark elements arise unrelated to running, and no single theory seems to satisfactorily explain all the facts. Not least among the confusing evidence are obscure geometrical messages popping up at crime scenes and bizarre choices for the weapons of death. Seven young men and women, four of them runners participating in the same marathon training program, find themselves caught in the web of intrigue — some as pawns to be manipulated and others as ancillary victims. One of them has been selected for special attention by the twisted individual behind the crimes. The seven lives are transformed as they deal with greed, evil, rejection, deception, infidelity, insecurity, lust, love, forgiveness, and redemption.

A bestseller in India and featured in the "Washington Post" and "Los Angeles Times," this debut novel introduces a smart, irreverent young woman searching for independence, love, and matrimony in a society bound by tradition.