The Me Nobody Knows

When she is four years old Amra Pajalić realises that her mother is different. Fatima is loving but sometimes hears strange voices that tell her to do bizarre things. She is frequently sent to hospital and Amra and her brother are passed around to family friends and foster homes, and for a time live with their grandparents in Bosnia. At sixteen Amra ends up in the school counsellor's office for wagging school. She finally learns the name for the malady that has dogged her mother and affected her own life: bipolar disorder. Amra becomes her mother's confidante and learns the extraordinary story of her life: when she was fifteen years old Fatima visited family friends only to find herself in an arranged marriage. At sixteen she was a migrant, a mother, and mental patient. Surprisingly funny, Things Nobody Knows But Me is a tender portrait of family and migration, beautifully told. It captures a wonderful sense of bicultural place and life as it weaves between St Albans in suburban Australia and Bosanska Gradiška in Bosnia. Ultimately it is the heartrending story of a mother and daughter bond fractured and forged by illness and experience. Fatima emerges as a remarkable but wounded woman who learns that her daughter really loves her.

The nail-bitingly intense story of a summer at camp that ends in a disturbing death—and depicts a powerful friendship that won’t ever be forgotten. Perfect for fans of One of Us Is Lying and Broken Things. Kayla is still holding on to Lainie’s secrets. After all, Lainie is Kayla’s best friend. And despite Lainie’s painful obsession with her on-again, off-again boyfriend, and the ways he has tried to come between them, friends don’t spill each other’s secrets. They don’t betray each other’s trust. The murder at the end of the summer doesn’t change all that. Besides—Kayla knows that the truth is not the whole story.

The first book for sexually abused teens to turn to When teenagers are victims of sexual abuse, the 'normal' problemsof adolescence are exacerbated. The authors validate theconflicting emotions aroused by sexual abuse and offer theseadolescents simple, concrete advice about reporting the abuse andhow to seek counseling. This unique book is for teenagers in therapy that have been victimsof sexual abuse, as well as for their therapists. Through written,visual, and relaxation exercises, the book shows survivors how tobegin to cope.

The author describes her struggles with depression, concerns about family, friends, dating, body image, and the difficulties of being a teenage girl.

Shannon was 13 and she wanted to die. She hated her parents, her body, her friends - her life. She never felt pretty or popular enough. She struggled with drinking. She was sexually assaulted. She nearly starved herself. But Shannon survived her pain and slowly began finding peace in her life. With warmth and insight, Shannon McLinden shares the true story of her journey through addiction and depression, offering a lifeline of support for girls everywhere. Like the best-selling Go Ask Alice, this compelling true account of the secrets and pains of a teen girl are revealed with utter honesty.

"As a kid growing up in Manhattan, William Helmreich played a game with his father they called "Last Stop." They would pick a subway line and ride it to its final destination, and explore the neighborhood there. Decades later, Helmreich teaches university courses about New York, and his love for exploring the city is as strong as ever. Putting his feet to the test, he decided that the only way to truly understand New York was to walk virtually every block of all five boroughs--an astonishing 6,000 miles. His epic journey lasted four years and took him to every corner of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island. Helmreich spoke with hundreds of New Yorkers from every part of the globe and from every walk of life, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former mayors Rudolph Giuliani, David Dinkins, and Edward Koch. Their stories and his are the subject of this captivating and highly original book. We meet the Guyanese immigrant who grows beautiful flowers outside his modest Queens residence in order to always remember the homeland he left behind, the Brooklyn-raised grandchild of Italian immigrants who illuminates a window of his brownstone with the family's old neon grocery-store sign, and many, many others. Helmreich draws on firsthand insights to examine essential aspects of urban social life such as ethnicity, gentrification, and the use of space. He finds that to be a New Yorker is to struggle to understand the place and to make a life that is as highly local as it is dynamically cosmopolitan."--Publisher's description.

It's autumn in Tokyo, and 12-year-old Akira and his younger siblings Kyoko, Shige, and little Yuki have just moved into a new apartment with their mother. Akira hopes it's a new start for all of them. But their mother soon begins to spend more and more time away from the apartment, and then one morning Akira finds an envelope of money and a note. She has gone away with her new boyfriend for a while. For a brief time the children bask in their freedom. They shop, explore, plant a little balcony garden, have the playground to themselves. Even when the bank account is empty and the utilities are turned off and the children become increasingly ill kempt, it seems in the bustling big city, nobody notices them. It's as if nobody knows.