Dangerous Characters is about people of all kinds, stuck with their unique personalities and trying to negotiate their ways through lifes bramble strewn path. As intellectual historians, psychologists of love, and psychotherapists, Elaine Hatfield and Richard L. Rapson bring to bear their sharp and wry observations upon a constellation of vivid characters.

In an idyllic community of wealthy California families, new teacher Molly Nicoll becomes intrigued by the hidden lives of her privileged students. Unknown to Molly, a middle school tragedy in which they were all complicit continues to reverberate for her students. Theirs is a world in which every action may become public: postable, shareable, viral.

The Gentleman’s Guide to Viceand Virtue meets Jane Austen in this witty, winking historical romance with a dash of mystery! Lady Victoria Aston has everything she could want: an older sister happily wed, the future of her family estate secure, and ample opportunity to while her time away in the fields around her home. But now Vicky must marry—or find herself and her family destitute. Armed only with the wisdom she has gained from her beloved novels by Jane Austen, she enters society’s treacherous season. Sadly, Miss Austen has little to say about Vicky’s exact circumstances: whether the roguish Mr. Carmichael is indeed a scoundrel, if her former best friend, Tom Sherborne, is out for her dowry or for her heart, or even how to fend off the attentions of the foppish Mr. Silby, he of the unfortunate fashion sensibility. Most unfortunately of all, Vicky’s books are silent on the topic of the mysterious accidents cropping up around her…ones that could prevent her from surviving until her wedding day.

Discover New York Times bestseller Samira Ahmed’s romantic, sweeping adventure through the streets of Paris told in alternating narratives that bridge centuries, continents, and the lives of two young Muslim women fighting to write their own stories. Smash the patriarchy. Eat all the pastries. It’s August in Paris and 17-year-old Khayyam Maquet—American, French, Indian, Muslim—is at a crossroads. This holiday with her parents should be a dream trip for the budding art historian. But her maybe-ex-boyfriend is ghosting her, she might have just blown her chance at getting into her dream college, and now all she really wants is to be back home in Chicago figuring out her messy life instead of brooding in the City of Light. Two hundred years before Khayyam’s summer of discontent, Leila is struggling to survive and keep her true love hidden from the Pasha who has “gifted” her with favored status in his harem. In the present day—and with the company of Alex, a très charmant teen descendant of Alexandre Dumas—Khayyam searches for a rumored lost painting, uncovering a connection between Leila and Alexandre Dumas, Eugène Delacroix, and Lord Byron that may have been erased from history. Echoing across centuries, Leila and Khayyam’s lives intertwine, and as one woman’s long-forgotten life is uncovered, another’s is transformed.

"A...coming-of-age story about a girl in Boston's tightly-knit Ethiopian community who falls under the spell of a charismatic hustler out to change the world"--Amazon.com.

It is 1876, the year of the Centennial in Philadelphia. Katherine has lost her twin sister Anna in a tragic skating accident. One wickedly hot September day, Katherine sets out for the exhibition grounds to cut short the haunted life she no longer wants to live. Filled with vivid detail that artfully brings the past to life, National Book Award nominee Beth Kepart's DANGEROUS NEIGHBORS is a timeless and finely crafted novel about betrayal and guilt, hope and despair, love, loss, and new beginnings. Publisher’s Weekly Starred Review Set in Philadelphia against the back-drop of the 1876 Centennial Exhibition (the first World’s Fair in the U.S.), this atmospheric novel traces the sentiments of grief-stricken Katherine, whose identical twin sister, Anna, died in a tragic accident earlier in the year. As the novel opens, Katherine, who feels responsible for Anna’s death, has decided to take her own life. Again and again, she is drawn to the exhibition grounds. Here, futuristic marvels and unexpected events-including a disastrous fire- detain her from completing her suicidal mission. Losing herself in a throng of strangers, she examines her past, recalling the development of her sister’s secret romance with a “dangerous neighbor” and the final sequence of events that led to Anna’s death. Conjuring sharp, meticulously detailed images of fair exhibitions (“The wonders of the world slide past. Parisian corsets cavorting on their pedestals. Vases on lacquered shelves. Folding beds. Walls of cutlery. The sweetest assortment of sugar-colored pills, all set to sail on a yacht”), Kephart (The Heart is Not a Size) evokes a tantalizing portrait of love, remorse, and redemption. Ages 12-up. (Aug.)