"Sometimes life isn't a piece of cake ... When Jingwen moves to a new country, he feels like he's landed on Mars. School is torture, making friends is impossible since he doesn't speak English, and he's often stuck looking after his (extremely irritating) little brother, Yanghao. To distract himself from the loneliness, Jingwen daydreams about making all the cakes on the menu of Pie in the Sky, the bakery his father had planned to open before he unexpectedly...

"Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other "Bunny," and are often found entangled in a group hug so tight they become one. But everything...

"A rich, magical new novel on belonging and identity, love and trauma, nature and renewal, from the Booker-shortlisted author of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World. Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. In the taverna, hidden beneath garlands of garlic, chili peppers and creeping honeysuckle, Kostas and Defne grow in their forbidden love for each other. A fig tree stretches...

"Fourteen-year-old Linda lives with her parents in the beautiful, austere woods of northern Minnesota, where their nearly abandoned commune stands as a last vestige of a lost counter-culture world. Isolated at home and an outlander at school, Linda is drawn to the enigmatic, attractive Lily and new history teacher Mr. Grierson. When Mr. Grierson is charged with possessing child pornography, the implications of his arrest deeply affect Linda as she...

Twelve-year-old Héctor Muñoz, fleeing from bullies, discovers a magical closet that not only provides him sanctuary, but also unites him with two other kids facing similar problems at their own schools, helping them find friendship and strength in each other.

The octicorn -- half octopus and half unicorn-- introduces himself and tells readers why, though strange and unique, octicorns make great friends.

When a flood forces Nory and her best friends to evacuate Dunwiddle and relocate to prestigious Sage Academy, the upside-down magic students have a hard time fitting in.

How is it that the internet connects us to a world of people, yet so many of us feel more isolated than ever? That we have hundreds, even thousands of friends on social media, but not a single person to truly confide in? Radha Agrawal calls this "community confusion," and in Belong she offers every reader a blueprint to find their people and build and nurture community, because connectedness -- as more and more studies show -- is our key to happiness,...

Once Portland-famous and now infamous, seventeen-year-old Naema Bradshaw is an Eloko--a charismatic person gifted with a melody that people adore--who navigates a personal and public reckoning, confronts the limits of her privilege, and discovers the nature of her Black girl magic. Teen influencer Naema Bradshaw was famous, privileged-- and she an Eloko, a person who is gifted with a song that woos anyone who hears it. Everyone loved her-- until...

Cartwheel has arrived in a new country, and feels the loss of all she's ever known. She creates a safe place for herself under an "old blanket" made out of memories and thoughts of home. But when she meets a new friend, the relationship helps her take her first steps into a new culture, and Cartwheel begins to weave a "new blanket, " one of friendship and a renewed sense of belonging.