Jonathan Friesen

Why’d I do it? I suppose it’s the only question that really matters. Seventeen-year-old Crow will stop at nothing to protect her younger sister—even if it costs her her own life. But then she’s given a chance to come back and make things right. There are a few catches, though. First, she won’t come back as herself. And before she can set things straight, she’ll have to figure out what’s what—and things aren’t exactly as clear-cut as she remembered. Powerful and hard-hitting, this is a compelling story about what it means to live your life—for your own sake—from an award-winning author.

Jonah wishes he could get the girl, but he's an outcast and she's the most perfect girl he knows. And their futures seemed destined to fork Jonah's physical condition is debilitating, and epileptic seizures fill his life with frustration. Whereas Stormi is seemingly carefree, and navigates life by sensing things before they happen. And her most recent premonition is urging her to leave town. When Stormi begs Jonah for help, he finds himself swept into a dark mystery his small town has been keeping for years. And the answers Stormi needs about her own past could possibly destroy everything Jonah has ever known--including his growing relationship with Stormi herself. Advance "Friesen's story unfolds with so much intrigue, swells with so much heart, I had to keep reading. And the writing? Beautiful!" --Jay Asher, author of the #1 New York Times bestselling novel Thirteen Reasons Why "As someone with Tourette Syndrome, I grew up with a condition that others did not understand. It affected the way I was viewed and the way I viewed myself. I applaud Jonathan Friesen for telling a story about overcoming such a challenge in Unfolding. Hopefully, this will inspire others growing up with such conditions as well as help everyone else better understand what is involved." --Tim Howard, former US national team goaltender and current goalkeeper for the Colorado Rapids

It was supposed to be just another flight, another escape into a foreign place where she could forget her past, forget her attachments. Until Clara found herself seated next to an alluring boy named Elias Phinn—a boy who seems to know secrets she has barely been able to admit to herself for years. When her carry-on bag is accidentally switched with Elias’s identical pack, Clara uses the luggage tag to track down her things. At that address she discovers there is not one Elias Phinn, but two: the odd, paranoid, artistic, and often angry Elias she met on the plane, who lives in an imaginary world of his own making called Salem; and the kind, sweet, and soon irresistible Elias who greets her at the door, and who has no recollection of ever meeting Clara at all. As she learns of Elias’s dissociative identity disorder, and finds herself quickly entangled in both of Elias’s lives, Clara makes a decision that could change all of them forever. She is going to find out what the Salem Elias knows about her past, and how, even if it means playing along with his otherworldly quest. And she is going to find a way to keep the gentle Elias she’s beginning to love from ever disappearing again.

Read Jonathan Friesen's posts on the Penguin Blog. This Schneider Family Book Award winner changed the face of Tourette's Syndrome for modern teens. Wrought with tension, romance, and hope, Jerk, California tells the story of Sam, who sets out on a cross-country quest to learn the truth about his family and his inherited Tourette's Syndrome, along the way finding both love and acceptance.