It was just another ordinary day at McKinley High—until a massive explosion devastated the school. When loner David Thorpe tried to help his English teacher to safety, the teacher convulsed and died right in front of him. And that was just the beginning. A year later, McKinley has descended into chaos. All the students are infected with a virus that makes them deadly to adults. The school is under military quarantine. The teachers are gone. Violent gangs have formed based on high school social cliques. Without a gang, you're as good as dead. And David has no gang. It's just him and his little brother, Will, against the whole school. In this frighteningly dark and captivating novel, Lex Thomas locks readers inside a school where kids don't fight to be popular, they fight to stay alive.

Some children seem different, detached, disinterested in the games of other children. They prefer their hobbies to friends of their own age and if forced into community activities, as they often are at school, can become aggressive and difficult. In Loners, Sula Wolff describes a childhood personality syndrome that has frequently been neglected. Often using children's own words, their lives and problems become real as she unwraps their stories from first referral to adulthood. Some have become talented and successful adults, whilst others are less fortunate in later years. Carefully documented and meticulously researched, this study makes compelling reading.

Gives accounts of twelve people in Idaho who have prefered to lead lives of isolation.

Using ethnographic interviews, an affiliation scale, and observational data from two "soup kitchens" of homeless men, Road Dogs and Loners investigates the various family types that homeless road dogs and loners rely on for support. Pippert specifically compares homeless men who typically partnered up with homeless men who were self-described loners. The groups are compared here in terms of their contact and support with biological, created, and fictive families. Interdisciplinary in nature, this work tackles themes that are relevant to the study of social class, stratification, economics, social problems, family sociology, social theory and research methods. Road Dogs and Loners provides an updated and in-depth, personal perspective on the lives and relationships of homeless men in America.

“Powerful.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air Named a best book of the year by NPR, Kirkus Reviews, and BookPage David Federman has never felt appreciated. An academically gifted yet painfully forgettable member of his New Jersey high school class, the withdrawn, mild-mannered freshman arrives at Harvard fully expecting to be embraced by a new tribe of high-achieving peers. Initially, however, his social prospects seem unlikely to change, sentencing him to a lifetime of anonymity. Then he meets Veronica Morgan Wells. Struck by her beauty, wit, and sophisticated Manhattan upbringing, David becomes instantly infatuated. Determined to win her attention and an invite into her glamorous world, he begins compromising his moral standards for this one, great shot at happiness. But both Veronica and David, it turns out, are not exactly as they seem. Loner turns the traditional campus novel on its head as it explores ambition, class, and gender politics. It is a stunning and timely literary achievement from one of the rising stars of American fiction.

`Loners is destined to be a clinical classic... I wish I had had Loners to read when I began my career... I commend this book to all those starting out on their mental health careers as an insightful portrait of an important condition and as a standard of clarity and brevity for their own research and writing. I commend it as well to mature clinicians whose understanding will be sharpened by studying its contents. This monograph demonstrates the importance of careful clinical longitudinal observation and incisive thought for the provision of appropriate psychiatric care for children and their families.' From the foreward by Leon Eisenberg Some children are solitary and unable to adapt to the social and educational demands of school life. Some are gifted; most cope better once they leave school. In Loners, Sula Wolff discusses the nature and origins of their difficulties and compares them with autism, Asperger's syndrome and schizoid/schizotypal personality disorders. Sula Wolff illustrates follow-up studies with case histories of children and adults seen in the course of twenty years, as well as with discussions of the apparent eccentricities of some exceptional people who catch the public eye. The book shows the necessity of the clinical recognition of the condition. Loners will help psychiatrists towards a realistic approach to the treatment of afflicted people, both children and adults.

A sharp and unlikely coming-of-age debut novel from Australia’s Sally Rooney