Showing results for "special fictions" in Family

There is a middle world between life and death, and Tess must navigate it to save her brother in this heart-wrenching story infused with the fractured and fantastical realms of Finnish mysticism. Axel and Tess are bewildered when a stranger shows up in their backyard accompanied by a giant brown bear, but before they can investigate the bizarre encounter, something more harrowing happens: their father is killed in a freak car accident.

The stories Hannah Gale’s father told her of breaking wild horses in Nevada one glorious summer when he was her age have captured her imagination. After her dad is called to fight in Iraq, she regularly stops to watch the horses at the nearby stable to feel closer to him, and finally gathers the nerve to ask the owner for a job. There she helps bring a rescued mare back from the brink, takes her first riding lesson, and witnesses the birth of the filly who steals her heart.

Growing up in the shadow of a famous mother, Clara has never felt good about her body. Now, at 16, she has an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating. After a social media disaster, she decides to escape for the summer to Paris to stay with her estranged dad and her six-year-old brother, Alastair, who is on the autism spectrum. Charged with his care, Clara and Alastair set out to explore the city.

Sam Jones and Zoe Miller have one thing in common: they both want an escape from reality. Loner Sam flies under the radar at school and walks on eggshells at home to manage her mom’s obsessive-compulsive disorder, wondering how she can ever leave to pursue her dream of studying aerospace engineering. Popular, people-pleasing Zoe puts up walls so no one can see her true self: the girl who was abandoned as an infant, whose adoptive mother has cancer, and whose disabled brother is being sent away to live in a facility.

Tim's a struggling black kid on the mean streets of Newark. How far can he run? Where can he hide? What is innocence? Where does it go? Tim doesn't read as well as his classmates in an inner-city Newark high school. He's got good street creds, though, riffing strange rap-rhymes and running like the wind. He's packed into a three-flat with his mother, sister, and Uncle Gentrale. His father, a drunk, recently walked out on the family, wanting some "freedom". He says, "Ahgottahandleonit, son". He doesn't. Nor does Tim.