A.S. King

Astrid Jones desperately wants to confide in someone, but her mother's pushiness and her father's lack of interest tell her they're the last people she can trust. Instead, Astrid spends hours lying on the backyard picnic table watching airplanes fly overhead. She doesn't know the passengers inside, but they're the only people who won't judge her when she asks them her most personal questions--like what it means that she's falling in love with a girl. As her secret relationship becomes more intense and her friends demand answers, Astrid has nowhere left to turn. She can't share the truth with anyone except the people at thirty thousand feet, and they don't even know she's there. But little does Astrid know just how much even the tiniest connection will affect these strangers' lives--and her own--for the better. In this truly original portrayal of a girl struggling to break free of society's definitions, Printz Honor author A.S. King asks readers to question everything--and offers hope to those who will never stop seeking real love.

The Shoveler, the Freak, CanIHelpYou?, Loretta the Flea-Circus Ring Mistress, and First-Class Malcolm. These are the five teenagers lost in the Hemmings family's maze of tangled secrets. Only a generation removed from being simple Pennsylvania potato farmers, Gottfried and Marla Hemmings managed to trade digging spuds for developing subdivisions and now sit atop a seven-figure bank account, wealth they've declined to pass on to their adult children or their teenage grand children. "Because we want them to thrive," Marla always says. What does thriving look like? Like carrying a snow shovel everywhere. Like selling pot at the Arby's drive-thru window. Like a first class ticket to Jamaica between cancer treatments. Like a flea-circus in a doublewide. Like the GPS coordinates to a mound of dirt in a New Jersey forest. As the rot just beneath the surface of the Hemmings precious white suburban respectability begins to spread, the far flung grand children gradually find their ways back to each other, just in time to uncover the terrible cost of maintaining the family name.

Lucky Linderman didn't ask for his life. He didn't ask his grandfather not to come home from the Vietnam War. He didn't ask for a father who never got over it. He didn't ask for a mother who keeps pretending their dysfunctional family is fine. And he didn't ask to be the target of Nader McMillan's relentless bullying, which has finally gone too far.But Lucky has a secret--one that helps him wade through the daily mundane torture of his life. In his dreams, Lucky escapes to the war-ridden jungles of Laos--the prison his grandfather couldn't escape--where Lucky can be a real man, an adventurer, and a hero. It's dangerous and wild, and it's a place where his life just might be worth living. But how long can Lucky keep hiding in his dreams before reality forces its way inside?

In this masterpiece about freedom, feminism, and destiny, Printz Honor author A.S. King tells the epic story of a girl coping with devastating loss at long last--a girl who has no idea that the future needs her, and that the present needs her even more.Graduating from high school is a time of limitless possibilities--but not for Glory, who has no plan for what's next. Her mother committed suicide when Glory was only four years old, and she's never stopped wondering if she will eventually go the same way...until a transformative night when she begins to experience an astonishing new power to see a person's infinite past and future. From ancient ancestors to many generations forward, Glory is bombarded with visions--and what she sees ahead of her is terrifying: A tyrannical new leader raises an army. Women's rights disappear. A violent second civil war breaks out. And young girls vanish daily, sold off or interned in camps. Glory makes it her mission to record everything she sees, hoping her notes will somehow make a difference. She may not see a future for herself, but she'll do anything to make sure this one doesn't come to pass.

Four talented teenagers are traumatized-coping with grief, surviving date rape, facing the anxiety of standardized tests and the neglect of self-absorbed adults--and they'll do anything to escape the pressure. They'll even build an invisible helicopter, to fly far away to a place where everyone will understand them... until they learn the only way to escape reality is to face it head-on.

A dozen stories for adults featuring a mouthful of lottery tickets, a giant cow, two yachts, a six-pack of Fresca, and Monica, who never shuts up. When Liz and Reg find their dream house, they don’t expect to find Lois and her magical Fresca. Same as Deirdre doesn’t expect to find what she finds in the trash bin. Debra can’t help but send pieces of herself to her ex-husband same as Jim can’t help thinking about the pieces of men that are taken without permission. Award-winning author A.S. King shares her short fiction including the Best New American Voices-nominated title track, “Monica Never Shuts Up” and keeps us thinking, exploring, and laughing all at the same time.

“O movimento é impossível.” É o que Astrid Jones, 17 anos, aprendeu na sua aula de filosofia. E, vivendo na pequena cidade em que mora, ela começa a acreditar que isso é mesmo verdade. São sempre as mesmas pessoas, as mesmas fofocas, a mesma visão de mundo limitada, como se estivessem todos presos em uma caverna, nunca enxergando nada além. Nesse ambiente, ela não tem com quem desabafar suas angústias, e por isso deita-se em seu jardim, olha os aviões no céu, e expõe suas dúvidas mais secretas aos passageiros, já que eles nunca irão julgá-la. Em seu conflito solitário, ela se vê dividida entre dois mundos: um em que é livre para ser quem é de verdade e dar vazão ao que vai em seu íntimo, e outro em que precisa se enquadrar desconfortavelmente em convenções sociais. Em um retrato original de uma garota que luta para se libertar de definições ultrapassadas, este livro leva os leitores a questionarem tudo e oferece esperança para aqueles que nunca deixarão de buscar o significado do amor verdadeiro.

From Michael L. Printz Award winner A.S. King, a weird and insightful new novel about a girl intent on picking the lock of her toxic family with punk rock and opera.Jane's mother is an artist constantly on tour to earn a living and support the family. While her mother is away, Jane lives in a Victorian mansion with her younger brother and their controlling, mendacious father and aunt, both of whom have conspired to confine Jane and Henry’s mother to a system of pneumatic tubes whenever she’s at home. Pick the Lock follows Jane’s bizarre and brilliant journey to rediscover and reconnect with her mother through punk rock and opera.

Kann man vergessen, was war? Muss man verzeihen, um den anderen zu retten? Wie viel Mut braucht die Wahrheit? Vera hasst Charlie. Aus tiefstem Herzen. Obwohl er einmal ihr bester Freund war. Obwohl sie seine dunkelsten Geheimnisse kannte. Obwohl sie ihn so geliebt hat. Und doch ist sie die Einzige, die weiß, was in jener Nacht wirklich geschah. Der Nacht, in der Charlie starb.

Vera’s spent her whole life secretly in love with her best friend, Charlie Kahn. And over the years she’s kept a lot of his secrets. Even after he betrayed her. Even after he ruined everything.   So when Charlie dies in dark circumstances, Vera knows a lot more than anyone—the kids at school, his family, even the police. But will she emerge to clear his name? Does she even want to?   Edgy and gripping, Please Ignore Vera Dietz is an unforgettable smart, funny, dramatic, and always surprising.

Vera Dietz e Charlie Kahn foram melhores amigos desde crianças até completarem 17 anos. Mas agora Charlie está morto. E morreu de uma maneira horrível e misteriosa. E morreu brigado com Vera. A vida não tem sido fácil desde então. Vera não sabe direito como agir, como pensar, o que sentir. Sua mãe foi embora quando ela tinha apenas 12 anos, e seu pai é adepto da filosofia de ignorar os problemas até que eles desapareçam por mágica. Mas Vera precisa fazer suas entregas no Templo da Pizza. Precisa abrir o coração para o amor. Precisa concluir o Ensino Médio. Precisa colecionar palavras para a aula de Vocabulário. Precisa entender o que realmente aconteceu com Charlie. Precisa seguir em frente.

Gerald Faust knows exactly when he started feeling angry: the day his mother invited a reality television crew into his five-year-old life. Twelve years later, he’s still haunted by his rage-filled youth—which the entire world got to watch from every imaginable angle—and his anger issues have resulted in violent outbursts, zero friends, and clueless adults dumping him in the special education room at school. Nothing is ever going to change. No one cares that he’s tried to learn to control himself, and the girl he likes has no idea who he really is. Everyone’s just waiting for him to snap…and he’s starting to feel dangerously close to doing just that. In this fearless portrayal of a boy on the edge, highly acclaimed Printz Honor author A.S. King explores the desperate reality of a former child “star” who finally breaks free of his anger by creating possibilities he never knew he deserved.

“I am sixteen years old. I am a human being.” Actually Sarah is several human beings. At once. And only one of them is sixteen. Her parents insist she’s a gifted artist with a bright future, but now she can’t draw a thing, not even her own hand. Meanwhile, there’s a ten-year-old Sarah with a filthy mouth, a bad sunburn, and a clear memory of the family vacation in Mexico that ruined everything. She’s a ray of sunshine compared to twenty-three-year-old Sarah, who has snazzy highlights and a bad attitude. And then there’s forty-year-old Sarah (makes good queso dip, doesn’t wear a bra, really wants sixteen-year-old Sarah to tell the truth about her art teacher). They’re all wandering Philadelphia—along with a homeless artist allegedly named Earl—and they’re all worried about Sarah’s future. But Sarah’s future isn’t the problem. The present is where she might be having an existential crisis. Or maybe all those other Sarahs are trying to wake her up before she’s lost forever in the tornado of violence and denial that is her parents’ marriage. “I am a human being. I am sixteen years old. That should be enough.”

A surreal and timely novel about the effects of isolation and what it means to be connected to the world from the Printz Award-winning author of  Dig . Time has stopped. It's been June 23, 2020 for nearly a year as far as anyone can tell. Frantic adults demand teenagers focus on finding practical solutions to the worldwide crisis. Not everyone is on board though. Javelin-throwing prodigy Truda Becker is pretty sure her "Solution Time" class won't solve the world's problems, but she does have a few ideas what might. Truda lives in a house with a switch that no one ever touches, a switch her father protects every day by nailing it into hundreds of progressively larger boxes. But Truda's got a crow bar, and one way or another, she's going to see what happens when she flips the switch.

From Michael L. Printz Award winner A.S. King and an all-star team of contributors including Anna-Marie McLemore and Jason Reynolds, an anthology of stories about remarkable people and their strange and surprising collections. From David Levithan’s story about a non-binary kid collecting pieces of other people’s collections to Jenny Torres Sanchez's tale of a girl gathering types of fire while trying not to get burned to G. Neri's piece about 1970's skaters seeking opportunities to go vertical—anything can be collected and in the hands of these award-winning and bestselling authors, any collection can tell a story. Nine of the best YA novelists working today have written fiction based on a prompt from Printz-winner A.S. King (who also contributes a story) and the result is itself an extraordinary collection.

In the late seventeenth century, famed teenage pirate Emer Morrisey was on the cusp of escaping the pirate life with her one true love and unfathomable riches when she was slain and cursed with "the dust of one hundred dogs," dooming her to one hundred lives as a dog before returning to a human body-with her memories intact. Now she's a contemporary American teenager and all she needs is a shovel and a ride to Jamaica.