Fifteen top young-adult authors let us in on provocative secrets in a fascinating collection that will have readers talking.
A baby no one knows about. A dangerous hidden identity. Off-limits hookups. A parent whose problems your friends won’t understand. Everyone keeps secrets—from themselves, from their families, from their friends—and secrets have a habit of shaping the lives around them. Acclaimed author Ann Angel brings together some of today’s most gifted YA authors to explore, in a variety of genres, the nature of secrets: Do they make you stronger or weaker? Do they alter your world when revealed? Do they divide your life into what you’ll tell and what you won’t? The one thing these diverse stories share is a glimpse into the secret self we all keep hidden.
With stories by: Ann Angel Kerry Cohen Louise Hawes Varian Johnson erica l. kaufman Ron Koertge E. M. Kokie Chris Lynch Kekla Magoon Zoë Marriott Katy Moran J. L. Powers Mary Ann Rodman Cynthia Leitich Smith Ellen Wittlinger
About the Author
Ann Angel is the author of many biographies, including Janis Joplin: Rise Up Singing, which won a YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults. Previously, she served as contributing editor for the anthology Such a Pretty Face: Short Stories About Beauty. A graduate of Vermont College’s MFA program in writing for children and young adults, Ann Angel directs the English graduate program at Mount Mary University in Milwaukee, where she lives with her family.
Praise For…
The collection offers many worthy entries. —Kirkus Reviews
Rather than providing tidy solutions to the characters’ dilemmas, the stories focus on the feelings of entrapment and anxiety that go along with living a lie. —Publishers Weekly
This collection will resonate with many young adults who have their own secrets as well as readers who vicariously live through the risqué lifestyles of others.... A very discussible title for fans of Chris Lynch’s and Ellen Hopkins’s hard-hitting realistic fiction. —School Library Journal
This new collection of short stories about secrets is an ideal combination of form and subject.... The balance and diversity that Angel has achieved here is marvelous, and nearly any teen who picks this up will find a bit of herself or himself—or at least a friend—inside these pages. A collection to treasure and share widely. —Booklist
The assortment of approaches to the theme of our secret selves offers plenty of surprises for the reader. —Horn Book
A thought- provoking collection. —Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
Older students who are ready for more mature topics will find these stories perfect for opening a discussion or individual pieces just might reach someone struggling with the same secret. —School Library Connection
