Twice A Daughter

Julie is adopted. She is also a twin. Because their adoption was closed, she and her sister lack both a health history and their adoption papers—which becomes an issue for Julie when, at forty-eight years old, she finds herself facing several serious health issues. To launch the probe into her closed adoption, Julie first needs the support of her sister. The twins talk things over, and make a pact: Julie will approach their adoptive parents for the adoption paperwork and investigate search options, and the sisters will split the costs involved in locating their birth relatives. But their adoptive parents aren’t happy that their daughters want to locate their birth parents—and that is only the first of many obstacles Julie will come up against as she digs into her background. Julie’s search for her birth relatives spans eight years and involves a search agency, a PI, a confidential intermediary, a judge, an adoption agency, a social worker, and a genealogist. By journey’s end, what began as a simple desire for a family medical history has evolved into a complicated quest—one that unearths secrets, lies, and family members that are literally right next door.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Unhoneymooners and the “delectable, moving” (Entertainment Weekly) My Favorite Half-Night Stand comes a modern love story about what happens when your first love reenters your life when you least expect it… Sam Brandis was Tate Jones’s first: Her first love. Her first everything. Including her first heartbreak. During a whirlwind two-week vacation abroad, Sam and Tate fell for each other in only the way that first loves do: sharing all of their hopes, dreams, and deepest secrets along the way. Sam was the first, and only, person that Tate—the long-lost daughter of one of the world’s biggest film stars—ever revealed her identity to. So when it became clear her trust was misplaced, her world shattered for good. Fourteen years later, Tate, now an up-and-coming actress, only thinks about her first love every once in a blue moon. When she steps onto the set of her first big break, he’s the last person she expects to see. Yet here Sam is, the same charming, confident man she knew, but even more alluring than she remembered. Forced to confront the man who betrayed her, Tate must ask herself if it’s possible to do the wrong thing for the right reason… and whether “once in a lifetime” can come around twice. With Christina Lauren’s signature “beautifully written and remarkably compelling” (Sarah J. Maas, New York Times bestselling author) prose and perfect for fans of Emily Giffin and Jennifer Weiner, Twice in a Blue Moon is an unforgettable and moving novel of young love and second chances.

It seems incredible that a call-in TV show featuring pictures of missing children could change her life so drastically, but when a 16-year-old recognizes her father in the photo on the screen, she discovers that the family who's been searching for their daughter is looking for "her." But who is she? Brooke or Amy? She's been living with her father and now learns he's taken her illegally. Who do you love when everyone says they love you? How can anyone know which parent loves you most? Susan Beth Pfeffer delivers yet another hard-hitting novel that delves into the issues that confront real teens today. "Lively narration, peppered with wry, insightful wit, and the story's balanced resolution make it enjoyable reading...."-- "School Library Journal" "Pfeffer perfectly conveys Brooke's hurt and resentment.... Readers will share Brooke's anxiety as she tries to adapt to a new family while remaining loyal to her father, and they'll understand her anger when she finally realizes the cost of her father's actions."-- "Booklist" "The emotions are raw...but the story combines the draw of sensational headlines with an understanding of teenage struggles."-- "The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books" "The author maintains so brisk a pace and so appealingly plumbs her heroine's emotional life that the reader will want to believe in the story."-- "Publishers Weekly," Starred Review

In moving and candid prose, Rescuing Julia Twice tells Traster's foreign-adoption story, from dealing with the bleak landscape and inscrutable adoption handlers in Siberia, to her gradual realization that something was "not quite right" with her daughter, Julia. Traster describes how uncertainty turned to despair until she learned that Julia suffered from reactive attachment disorder, a serious condition associated with young children who have been neglected, abused, or orphaned in infancy. Lifting the veil of secrecy that too often surrounds parents struggling with attachment issues, Traster describes how with work, commitment, and acceptance, she and her husband have been able to close the gulf between them and their daughter, then concludes with practical advice, strategies, and resources for parents and caregivers.

"When it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it. You can't sugarcoat it. You have to take a stand and say, ‘This is not right.'" – Claudette Colvin On March 2, 1955, an impassioned teenager, fed up with the daily injustices of Jim Crow segregation, refused to give her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Instead of being celebrated as Rosa Parks would be just nine months later, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin found herself shunned by her classmates and dismissed by community leaders. Undaunted, a year later she dared to challenge segregation again as a key plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle, the landmark case that struck down the segregation laws of Montgomery and swept away the legal underpinnings of the Jim Crow South. Based on extensive interviews with Claudette Colvin and many others, Phillip Hoose presents the first in-depth account of an important yet largely unknown civil rights figure, skillfully weaving her dramatic story into the fabric of the historic Montgomery bus boycott and court case that would change the course of American history. Claudette Colvin is the 2009 National Book Award Winner for Young People's Literature and a 2010 Newbery Honor Book.

In 1975, Tempestt Saville and her family are chosen by lottery to "move on up" to Lakeland: one square mile of sparkling apartment towers and emerald lawns where the Black elite live sheltered from the ghetto by a ten-foot-tall, ivy-covered wrought-iron fence. Eleven-year-old Temmy doesn't enjoy the privilege, however, and thinks Lakeland is the "kingdom of the drab." Instead, she is drawn to the vivid world outside the fence: to 35th Street, where the saved and the sinners are both so "done up" you can't tell one from the other. Tempestt's curiosity soon leads her down a dangerous path, however, and after witnessing the death of a friend, she sets into motion a chain of events that will send 35th Street up in flames.

Offers advice to parents who are expecting their second child on how to prepare the marriage and the firstborn child for the new edition to the family.