New Releases by Jeannine Garsee

Over the summer, Rinn stopped taking her bi-polar meds and blames herself and the voices she heard for her grandmother''s tragic death. To get a new start, Rinn and her mother are moving back to her mom''s small hometown and Rinn has promised to never miss a pill again. The fresh start is just what Rinn needs. She falls in with the popular girls at her new school and she falls for very cute "farmer boy" Nate. But River Hills High School has a secret. The ghost of Annaliese, a girl who died when Rinn''s mother was a student there, haunts a hallway the teens call The Tunnel. Rinn''s not sure she believes it, but slowly Annaliese seems to be punishing those who enter the tunnel alone. A chorus soloist loses her voice, a star cheerleader falls off the pyramid, and then it gets worse-worse as in death. Rinn still doesn''t know if Annaliese is real, and there''s only one way to find out. Rinn needs to ditch her bi-polar meds again and see what the voices are really trying to say....

Martha Kowalski is a quick-witted girl stuck in a bad situation. She''s just moved to the slums of Cleveland with an alcoholic mother and Momma''s new gun-loving, redneck boyfriend. Yes, there are pockets of goodness in her new life--a friend at school, a boy who lives upstairs, and cello lessons--but every day is filled with abuse from the unrelenting life of the ghetto. One day, Martha finds herself out on the street, and that''s when her luck changes. A wealthy family invites her to live with them and within days she is enrolled in private school, is outfitted in the perfect new wardrobe, and is falling for the cutest guy she''s ever seen! But life isn''t so simple, and soon Martha realizes that she''s not the only one with a past.

Everyone in Shawna Gallagher''s life expects perfection and Shawna does her best to oblige. She gets good grades, dates the right boys, and is tirelessly polite. But when her estranged mother dies suddenly, Shawna''s not sure how to have the "perfect" reaction. She''s still angry that her mother left ten years ago and embarrassed that she started a new family with another woman. Shawna''s grief is further clouded by the step-brothers who knew her mother better than she did-this was her mother, not theirs. But when Shawna''s controlling father gets involved, Shawna realizes she may not know the whole truth about the past. As the family secrets continue to unravel, perfection becomes more and more difficult to achieve. Jeannine Garsee has delivered a compulsively readable novel, from the dramatic story full of family secrets, to the very real, honest narrator who feels both recognizable and relatable.