Showing titles in Bullying & Abuse

Thirteen-year-old Butterball doesn't have that much going for him. He's teased about his weight. He hates the suburb his mum moved them to so she could go to nursing school and start her life over. He wishes he still lived with his dad in New York City - where there's always something happening, even if his dad doesn't have much time for him. Still, that's not why he beat up Maurice in the playground....

What do the queen bee, star athlete, valedictorian, stoner, loner, and music geek all have in common? They were all invited to a scholarship dinner, only to discover it’s a trap. Someone has locked them into a room with a bomb, a syringe filled with poison, and a note saying they have an hour to pick someone to kill...or else everyone dies.

They’re called parachutes: teenagers dropped off to live in private homes and study in the United States while their wealthy parents remain in Asia. Claire Wang never thought she’d be one of them, until her parents pluck her from her privileged life in Shanghai and enroll her at a high school in California. Suddenly she finds herself living in a stranger’s house, with no one to tell her what to do for the first time in her life. She soon embraces her newfound freedom, especially when the hottest and most eligible parachute, Jay, asks her out.

Sang Sorenson struggles with her growing feelings when the Academy boys take her in and draw her closer into their world. They work together to uncover the true secrets happening at Ashley Waters High School, where Principal Hendricks will stop at nothing to take them all down. Adding to their complications, Nathan's father shows up, and he's just as ruthless and violent as ever, beating up on Nathan. Sang offers Nathan refuge in her home, but Marie is fed up with the boys.

Kaeleigh and Raeanne are 16-year-old identical twins, the daughters of a district court judge father and politician mother running for U.S. Congress. Everything on the surface seems fine, but underneath run very deep and damaging secrets. When the girls were nine, Daddy turned to his beloved Kaeleigh in ways a father never should. Raeanne needs to numb the pain of not being Daddy's favorite; Kaeleigh wants to do everything she can to feel something normal, even if it means cutting herself and vomiting after every binge.

Climbing to the top of the social ladder is hard - falling from it is even harder. Regina Afton used to be a member of the Fearsome Fivesome, an all-girl clique both feared and revered by the students at Hallowell High... until vicious rumors about her and her best friend's boyfriend start going around. Now Regina's been "frozen out" and her ex-best friends are out for revenge.

Here is a gripping, chilling, beautifully observed tale of what a teenage girl will do to keep her friends, by one of Australia's finest writers. Growing up during the 1980s in the safe complacency of the Australian suburbs, Plum Coyle should be happy. But on the cusp of her 14th birthday - and on the fringe of her peer group - she lives in terror of the disapproval of her cruel and fickle girlfriends and, most of all, she hates her awkward, changing body with a passion.

I thought I knew pain. I thought I knew grief. I knew nothing. And nothing could compare to the moment Toby ripped my heart right out of my chest. Confirming all my worst fears. Shattering the very foundation my life has been built on. Deception is his weapon, and now I’m his victim. Rock bottom is a familiar place, and once again I’m trying to drag myself out of the pits of despair. But fate is an evil master, and before long I find myself with no other place to turn…but him. He might be cruel. Reckless. Dangerous. But I also know that he’ll do anything to right his wrongs.

Everything fell apart before we were able to pull ourselves together. When tragedy demands my silence, I have no choice but to give it - because losing a life also means saving so many more. I finally have everything I want. Having my best friend back is a dream come true. But everything at Black Falls High comes at a price, and these boys are mine. I’d do anything for them. Even in ruins. In silence. I’ll bring the chaos.

Allison is in danger at home. Her stepmother has run away and her father is getting worse. So she runs away too and with no where to live finds herself hiding out, miles from home, in an elderly woman’s shed. But this woman, Marla, has dementia and doesn’t recognise her as Allison, believing she is an old friend from her past called Toffee. So this is who Allison becomes, morphing into a person Marla usually knows and trusts but sometimes fears and fights. Eventually Allison’s stepmother shows up, armed with a new baby girl, a new sibling.

Caitlin can't afford to leave this dreamland, this half-sleeping state where everything and everyone can be kept at arm's length. Because then she'd have to face the ugly truth about her relationship with Rogerson: magnetic, fascinating--and very dangerous--Rogerson. What is it about Rogerson Biscoe...and why can't she leave him?

Seventeen-year-old Deedee's life is full of family ghosts and questions she can't ask. She longs to escape her stifling home, but guilt holds her back—that, and the fact that her strict, single Filipino mom won't let her learn to drive. But one sleepless night leads Deedee down a road she never thought possible: secret driving lessons with the new boy next door, Jay, whose turbulent family life also keeps him up until sunrise.

Blubber is a thick layer of fat that lies under the skin and over the muscles of whales... When Linda innocently reads out her class project, everyone finds it funny. Linda can't help it if she's fat, but what starts as a joke leads to a sustained and cruel ritual of humiliation. Jill knows she should defend Linda, but at first she's too scared. When she eventually stands up to the bullies, she becomes their next victim – and what's worse, Linda is now on their side.

The body count is rising in Maywood Heights, and Royal seems determined to add to that number. He wants to take out those who hurt Paige - and I'm determined to stand by him, Knight, Jax, and LJ, to do what needs to be done. My sister will get justice in this town. She deserves it....I just hope the ultimate price in the end isn't our souls.

Sixteen-year-old Alicia Rivers has a reputation that precedes her. But there’s more to her story than the whispers that follow her through the hallways at school—whispers that splinter into a million different insults that mean: a girl who has had sex. But what her classmates don't know is that Alicia was sexually abused by a popular teacher, and that trauma has rewritten every cell in her body into someone she doesn't recognize. To the world around her, she’s been cast, like the mythical Medusa, as not the victim but the monster of her own story: the slut who asked for it.

Jo used to be the perfect high-school girl – class president, popular, bright and successful. But when nude photos of her were leaked to the entire school, her grades plummeted, her friends fell away and now she's a reckless, difficult social outcast. The girl who 'deserved' it. Then her former best friend Maddie disappears. To discover the truth, Jo needs to get back in with the group of classmates who have shut her out: the boys who betrayed her and the clique of girls who whisper behind her back. And she has to make it look as if she wants to be there.

Em Morales' older sister was raped by another student after a frat party. A jury eventually found the rapist guilty on all counts - a remarkable verdict that Em felt more than a little responsible for, since she was her sister's strongest advocate on social media during the trial. Her passion and outspokenness helped dissuade the DA from settling for a plea deal. Em's family would have real justice.

In her best-selling novel, Tricks, Ellen Hopkins introduced us to five memorable characters tackling enormous questions: Eden, the preacher's daughter who turns tricks in Vegas and is helped into a child prostitution rescue; Seth, the gay farm boy disowned by his father who finds himself without money or resources other than his own body; Whitney, the privileged kid coaxed into the life by a pimp and whose dreams are ruined in a heroin haze.

Trained and traumatised by a secret assassin program for minors, Isabel Ryans wants nothing more than a new life as a normal civilian. And she might just be in with a shot when she befriends Emma Westray, because for the first time in her life things are looking up. But when Isabel blows her cover by impulsively murdering a burglar, she draws the attention of the guilds—the two organisations who control the city of Espera. An unaffiliated killer like Isabel is either a potential asset...or a threat to be eliminated.

Jane Vandermaker-Cook would like her mother back. As Jane's mother tours the world to support the family, Jane lives and goes to school in a Victorian mansion with her younger brother and their mendacious father who confines Jane’s mother to a system of pneumatic tubes whenever she’s at home. And then there's weirdly ever-present Aunt Finch, Milorad the gardener, and his rat, Brutus. For Jane, this all seems normal until she suddenly gains access to the files for a lifetime of security-camera videos—her lifetime.