That's when I noticed the couple we later named Bony and Mr. Creep sitting two rows in front of us. He had his arm around her, not like a father would do, or like I imagined a father would do—slinging his arm over the back of her chair. No, his arm was around her shoulders like she was his date. Bony kept wriggling but he would just grip her harder. Finally she gave up and sat still.
He leaned over and licked her cheek.
When stepsisters Nick and Luna suspect that a girl they meet at a Florida alligator farm is being held captive, they enlist an older boy with a set of wheels to help rescue her. Their parents are too busy renovating a bed and breakfast to realize the girls are in real danger.
Elizabeth Stuckey-French is the author of The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady—a Ladies' Home Journal Book Club selection—Mermaids on the Moon, and The First Paper Girl in Red Oak, Iowa. She teaches at Florida State University.
Patricia Henley is the author of four short story collections—including Other Heartbreaks—and two novels, In the River Sweet and Hummingbird House, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Where Wicked Starts

Literature & Fiction

Henley, Patricia

Stuckey-French, Elizabeth

Literary

Lacewing Books

Here and now I am in this place far away from my home. Here, with the cold wind blowing down from the north and the stars piercing through the cloudless sky. Here I am.
But my story does not start here.
My story starts months ago and hundreds of miles south of where I am now. My story starts in the place I used to call home. My story starts with violence and heartbreak.
After her brother is involved in a grisly murder-suicide, fifteen-year-old Laney is sent to live with her grandmother in the Adirondack Mountains. Laney gradually warms to her new home—especially her relationship with a mysterious neighbor—but before she can appreciate her new life, she must uncover the secrets that have haunted her family for decades.
Myfanwy Collins was born in Montreal but moved to the Adirondack Mountains in New York when she was still a child. She has since lived all over New England and worked as a waitress, a bartender, a nanny, a chambermaid, a clerk, a high school English teacher, a secretary, a ghost writer, and a traveling worker with Cirque du Soleil. She is the author of a novel, Echolocation, and a collection of short stories, I Am Holding Your Hand.

The Book of Laney

Collins, Myfanwy

"I knew kids like Ralph—and they scared me—but none of them had his heart, his humor, or ultimately his entertaining story."—Mitch Albom
"McNally's writing is so compelling, not to mention funny, that you're often surprised by sudden, more tender moments."—Sarah Dessen
"A serious joy."—Richard Russo
Every school year was a chance to start all over again, and so while the first seven months of 1978 had sucked, I had high hopes that August would be the beginning of the year not sucking. And because it would be my last year of grade school, I had secretly hoped that eighth grade would be different somehow, that a cute girl from another state would transfer to my school and fall insanely in love with me . . . 
Two boys, Hank and Ralph, create moments of outrageous transcendence in this comic novel about adolescence in the 1970s—a time, like today, when adults couldn't be trusted and just getting by was hard work. Amid the clatter of Cheap Trick and Styx, CB radios and Creature Features, this novel belts out timeless truths about boyhood, friendship, and redemption. Lord of the Ralphs is a reincarnation of the author's beloved novel for adults, The Book of Ralph, revised and expanded specifically for YA readers.
John McNally is the author of three novels, two short story collections, and two books about writing. He is professor and writer-in-residence at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Lord of the Ralphs

McNally, John

Genre Fiction

It wasn't Duke Walczak's fault that I took off for Florida, like Kathy thought. The truth is, we started getting sideways with each other on our class trip to New York and Washington D.C. nearly a year earlier—which, looking back, is ironic since she was the one dead set on going.
From the author of Wish You Were Here andStranded in Harmony (American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults), and Vermeer's Daughter (a School Library Journal Best Adult Book for Young Adults).
In 1964, Paul Carpetti discovers Jack Kerouac's On the Road while on a school trip to New York and begins to question the life he faces after high school. Then he meets a volatile, charismatic Kerouac devotee determined to hit the road himself. When the boys learn that Kerouac is living in St. Petersburg, Florida, they go looking for answers.
Barbara Shoup is the author of seven novels and the co-author of two books about the fiction craft. She is the recipient of numerous grants from the Indiana Arts Council, two creative renewal grants from the Arts Council of Indianapolis, the 2006 PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship, and the 2012 Eugene and Marilyn Glick Regional Indiana Author Award. She was the writer-in-residence at Broad Ripple High School Center for the Humanities and the Performing Arts in Indianapolis for twenty years. Currently, she is the executive director of the Indiana Writers Center.

Looking for Jack Kerouac

Shoup, Barbara

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Books by Lacewing Books

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Lacewing Books publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Where Wicked Starts

The Book of Laney

Lord of the Ralphs

Looking for Jack Kerouac