Wolf on the Fold

by Judith Clarke

"Fourteen-year-old Kenny's dad has just died, and now Kenny must become the breadwinner.
'Be careful going through the flatlands,' his mother warns him. 'Don't stop for anyone.' But Kenny does stop, and what happens next will define the man he becomes. These stories, which track the lives of Kenny, his family, and his friends over decades, are about the place where adolescence collides with adulthood. The second story involves Kenny's two daughters, who find they must rely on each other despite their differences. The third story is a snapshot of a school bully with a secret; years later, two of her victims meet her in a shop and are forced to reevaluate their feelings about her."

From the publisher; found on BN.com

Hoot

by Carl Hiaasen

"Roy Eberhardt is accustomed to being the new kid in school, so when his father’s job moves the family to Coconut Cove, Florida, Roy enters Trace Middle School with the full knowledge of what it feels like to have no real friends. What he doesn’t expect is an immediate encounter with the school bully. Dana Matherson is everyone’s fear, but at the very moment he mashes Roy’s face against the school-bus window, Roy notices a barefoot boy running away from the school bus and across a field. His curiosity about the boy leads him to Beatrice, the boy’s stepsister, and Beatrice leads him to the burrowing owls that are about to become homeless because a Mother Paula’s All-American Pancake House is about to be built on the land where the owls live. The three unlikely allies take on the construction guys, the corporate PR honchos, and the police–all for the sake of the owls."

From the publisher's website