Farrington High Series

The world implodes for seventeen-year-old David and his younger sisters when their father kills their mother. Stuck in a cramped apartment with an aunt he suspects is only interested in the money from his after school construction job, all David wants to do is separate himself from the violence in his past. Guilt drives him to concentrate on fulfilling his mother’s last wishes for him—that he prepare for college. But he is happier working with his hands under the tutelage of his crew boss than sitting in classrooms that feel like a prison. David deals with homework, and hormones that draw him ever closer to Yolanda, the hottest girl in the in-crowd. When Yolanda and David finally come together, sparks fly. But she means trouble, because she belongs to pack leader Malik. Malik has it out for David, not only as a romantic rival, but also on the basketball court and—most importantly—as a threat to David’s freshman sister. And Yolanda has her own secret, and a past filled with as much destructive violence as David's. Readers will enjoy David's unruly wooing of Yolanda, and their paths toward a future free from violence and abuse. PULL is the winner of the 2010 National Readers Choice Award for Young Adult fiction presented by the Oklahoma Romance Writers of America. PULL was named one of YALSA’s 2012 Quick Picks For Reluctant Young Adult Readers, and placed on School Library Journal's 2011 Best Books For Youth in Detention lists.

Being God is book 2 in the Farrington High series and the sequel to Pull, a 2012 YALSA Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers. Malik Kaplan, the villain of Pull, has a cross to bear, or maybe it’s a Star of David; being the black teenaged son of a Catholic mother and Hebrew Israelite father frequently makes life confusing. His grandfather, uncle, and older brother all ruled as the neighborhood BAMF. Only his father is a “forgotten Kaplan,” and seems disinterested in his only surviving son. Malik is determined to be the worst of the worst and not repeat his father’s mistakes; even if that costs him the people he cares about. At least he can drink. Alcohol keeps him going; alcohol is destroying his life. But he doesn’t see any problem, not even after he finds himself in court, blamed for a crime he didn't commit. Suddenly he’s faced with court-ordered community service shepherding an angry ten-year-old who hates the world, an “offer he can’t refuse” from the boy’s gang leader brother, and an opponent he can’t crush: Barney, a fourteen-year-old girl who watched her alcoholic father abuse and murder her mother. She wants nothing to do with any bad boy, especially not one who thinks drinking is the way to forget his sins. Malik will have to learn to face his own problems and repair his relationship with his father to have any hope of a future - and the girl.

Neill is a walking statistic; Black, teenaged, and gay. He was strong enough to come out to his family in 8th grade and sensitive enough to know just how much that truth hurt the older brother he worships. He is also intelligent enough to fulfill his family’s dream that he become a doctor - a dream he doesn’t share. But after disappointing his family once, he can’t imagine doing so again. Sheila is young and white, a former poor little rich girl (now just poor) facing life with a mother whose continued infidelity caused her father’s suicide. When Sheila arrives at her new home in Chicago’s inner city she finds herself one of only a handful of white students. She sees no hope of ever being happy again. At first glance the only thing Sheila and Neill have in common is the on-going affair between her mother and his older, married brother. But invisible ties draw these two outliers together. When Sheila’s mother is found dead, and Neill’s brother is arrested for the crime, they have to become a team to keep the real killer from going unpunished and to make their own unique futures. Minority of One is a story for anyone who has ever felt friendless and alone, the only one of their kind. It’s for everyone who ever found someone special, someone willing to go to the mat to help uncover the truth about themselves and find their rightful place in the world.