Showing results by author "Abby Sher" in All Categories

We meet 16-year-old Vali on the eve of a raid of her small Vermont town that sends her, her mother, and her younger brother on the run from the Deportation Forces. In this near-future America, all citizens are chipped at birth and this chip is used to track their movements from bus stops to schools to grocery stores. Vali and her mother are undocumented, but at least Vali has a counterfeit chip—until it starts malfunctioning. Now on the run, Vali and her family are desperately trying to make it to California, a sanctuary state that is being walled off from the rest of the country.

Full of heartbreak, buoyant with humor, and marked by exceptionally vivid storytelling, Amen, Amen, Amen is a brilliant account of soul-searching, self-discovery, and the bounds and boundlessness of obsession and devotion.

Zoe and Hank (short for Hannah) have been inseparable since they met in elementary school. The leader of the pack, Zoe is effortlessly popular while Hank hides comfortably in her shadow. But when Zoe's parents unexpectedly divorce, Zoe's perfect facade starts cracking little by little. Sinking under the weight of her broken family, Zoe develops an eating disorder. Now she must rely on Hank for help.

The year is 2033, and in this near-future America where undocumented people are forced into labor camps, life is bleak. Especially so for seventeen-year-old Rania, a Lebanese teenager from Chicago. When she and her mother were rounded up by the Deportation Force, they were given the brutal job of digging in the labor camp’s mine searching for the destructive and toxic, but potentially world-changing chemical, aqualinium.

Lenny (short for Eleanor) feels like the world is about to end. Her best friend is moving to San Francisco and her dad is dying. To cope with her stress, Lenny is making a list of all the ways the world can end - designer pathogens, blood moon prophecies, alien invasion - and stockpiling supplies in a bunker in the backyard. Then she starts to develop feelings for her dad's very nice young doctor - and she thinks he may have feelings for her, too. Spoiler alert: he doesn't.