New Releases by Laura Wiess

“Laura Wiess’s masterful prose kept me turning the pages. This is the first book in a very long time that made me say, ‘Wish I’d written this’” (Ellen Hopkins, author of Crank, on Such a Pretty Girl). Laura Wiess captures the visceral emotion of a girl’s journey from innocence to devastating loss and, ultimately, to a strange and unexpected kind of understanding—in this beautiful and painfully honest new novel. Are there any answers when someone you love makes a tragic choice? Before and After. That’s how Rowan Areno sees her life now. Before: she was a normal sixteen-year-old—a little too sheltered by her police officer father and her mother. After: everything she once believed has been destroyed in the wake of a shattering tragedy, and every day is there to be survived. If she had known, on that Friday in March when she cut school, that a random stranger’s shocking crime would have traumatic consequences, she never would have left campus. If the crime video never went viral, maybe she could have saved her mother, grandmother—and herself—from the endless replay of heartache and grief. Finding a soul mate in Eli, a witness to the crime who is haunted by losses of his own, Rowan begins to see there is no simple, straightforward path to healing wounded hearts. Can she learn to trust, hope, and believe in happiness again?

Seventeen-year-old Hanna has been in love with Seth for as long as she can remember, but now that her feelings are requited and she and Seth are in an actual relationship, it feels like love just isn't enough. Seth is controlling and all they seem to do anymore is hurt each other. If that's what love is, Hanna doesn't want any part of it. Besides, she has something else on her mind: graduation. But she's been ignoring the school's community service requirement for years, and now she needs to clock in some hours in a hurry. She volunteers as a caretaker for the Schoenmakers, an elderly couple who live on a farm behind Hanna's house. Mrs. Schoenmaker has advanced Parkinson's, and her husband can't always be there to watch over her. While caring for Mrs. Schoenmaker, Hanna gets drawn into an audiobook that the older woman is listening to, a love story of passion and sacrifice and shared hurts and complete devotion. She's fascinated by the idea that love like that can truly exist, and without her even realizing it, the story begins to change her. But what Hanna doesn't know is that the story she's listening to is not fiction -- and that Mrs. Schoenmaker and her husband's devotion to each other is about to reach its shattering, irrevocable conclusion...

Lauded by critics and authors for her heartbreakingly real heroines, Laura Wiess brings readers another devastating tale of betrayal and redemption rich with the raw emotion that made Such a Pretty Girl a classic. How can you make someone love you when they won’t? And what if that person happens to be your mother? Sayre Bellavia grew up knowing she was a mistake: unplanned and unwanted. At five months shy of eighteen, she’s become an expert in loneliness, heartache, and neglect. Her whole life she’s been cursed, used, and left behind. Swallowed a thousand tears and ignored a thousand deliberate cruelties. Sayre’s stuck by her mother through hell, tried to help her, be near her, be important to her even as her mother slipped away into a violent haze of addiction, destroying the only chance Sayre ever had for a real family. Now her mother is lying in a hospital bed, near death, ravaged by her own destructive behavior. And as Sayre fights her way to her mother’s bedside, she is terrified but determined to get the answer to a question no one should ever have to ask: Did my mother ever really love me? And what will Sayre do if the answer is yes?

Meredith was promised nine years of safety, but they only gave her three. Her father, who was sent to prison for sexually abusing Meredith and other children in the small town, has been released early on good behaviour. He was supposed to be locked up until Meredith's eighteenth birthday, when she would be free of her abusive father and her delusional mother, who dwells on a fantasy that the three of them will be a happy family once more. But Meredith is only fifteen, and her father is out of prison…and her mother is bringing him home. And Meredith won't let him hurt her, or anyone else, ever again. No matter what the cost. Lyrical, suspenseful, and emotionally shattering, SUCH A PRETTY GIRL is the compelling story of one young woman's painful fight for survival - and her journey back to herself.

A devastating novel of desperation and revenge from Laura Wiess. This follow-up to her heartbreaking debut, Such a Pretty Girl, once again spins a shattering tale of the tragedies that befall young women who are considered society’s leftovers. Blair and Ardith are best friends who have committed an unforgivable act in the name of love and justice. But in order to understand what could drive two young women to such extreme measures, first you'll have to understand why. You’ll have to listen as they describe parents who are alternately absent and smothering, classmates who mock and shun anyone different, and young men who are allowed to hurt and dominate without consequence. You will have to learn what it's like to be a teenage girl who locks her bedroom door at night, who has been written off by the adults around her as damaged goods. A girl who has no one to trust except the one person she's forbidden to see. You’ll have to understand what it's really like to be forgotten and abandoned in America today. Are you ready?