Francisco X. Stork

Marcelo Sandoval hears music that nobody else can hear — part of an autism-like condition that no doctor has been able to identify. But his father has never fully believed in the music or Marcelo's differences, and he challenges Marcelo to work in the mailroom of his law firm for the summer . . . to join "the real world."

Sixteen-year-old Hector is the hope of his family, but when he seeks revenge after his brother's gang-related death and is sent to a San Antonio reform school, it takes an odd assortment of characters to help him see that hope is still alive.

Marcelo Sandoval, a seventeen-year-old boy on the high-functioning end of the autistic spectrum, faces new challenges, including romance and injustice, when he goes to work for his father in the mailroom of a corporate law firm.

16-year-old Vicky Cruz wakes up in a hospital's mental ward after a failed suicide attempt. Now she must find a path to recovery - and perhaps rescue some others along the way. When Vicky Cruz wakes up in the Lakeview Hospital Mental Disorders ward, she knows one thing: After her suicide attempt, she shouldn't be alive. But then she meets Mona, the live wire; Gabriel, the saint; E.M., always angry; and Dr. Desai, a quiet force. With stories and honesty, kindness and hard work, they push her to reconsider her life before Lakeview, and offer her an acceptance she's never had. But Vicky's newfound peace is as fragile as the roses that grow around the hospital. And when a crisis forces the group to split up, sending Vick back to the life that drove her to suicide, she must try to find her own courage and strength. She may not have them. She doesn't know. Inspired in part by the author's own experience with depression, The Memory of Light is the rare young adult novel that focuses not on the events leading up to a suicide attempt, but the recovery from one - about living when life doesn't seem worth it, and how we go on anyway.

"Ismael Diaz is on death row. As he sits in his cell waiting to die, he writes a diary that reconstructs his life and the circumstances that led him to commit murder. The reader meets a man who is a successful real estate lawyer in Boston until he trespasses on a neighbor's property to put out a "spring cleaning" fire. This incident sets off a chain reaction that results in the loss of everything that has made his life worthwhile. At loose ends, he decides to go back and seek out the people of his past, including his long-lost love, Armanda. He succeeds in finding her but discovers that she has lost her youthful innocence as the result of a nightmarish life of drug addiction, prostitution, and the murder of her (and Ismael's) child. Diaz's attempts to rescue Armanda finally lead him to death row. As he writes his story in prison, he also learns the "way of the jaguar" from another inmate. Partly ancient Aztec philosophy and partly an idiosyncratic, extrapolated doctrine, it entails facing down La Pelona - death itself - and accepting life. This knowledge finally enables Diaz to make the most important decision he has ever made."--BOOK JACKET.

Seventeen-year-old Pancho is bent on avenging the senseless death of his sister, but after he meets D.Q, who is dying of cancer, and Marisol, one of D.Q.'s caregivers, both boys find their lives changed by their interactions.