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ABOUT LAUREN
Lauren is the bestselling author of THE WOODLANDS SERIES and the award-winning YA novel NORA & KETTLE (Gold medal Winner for Multicultural fiction, Independent Publishers Book Awards 2017).
She has a Health Science degree and an honors degree in Obstetrics and Gynecology. A full time writer, hapa and artist, Lauren recently moved to Toronto from Australia with her husband and three children.
PUBLISHER: Clean Teen Publishing, 2019
Nineteen-year-old Langley is crazy…like get out the straight jacket and prepare the padded room kind of crazy. She knows it, and the kicker is—she's choosing to stay that way. She clings to the persistent and intrusive hallucination of her dead sister by choice. Sure, it might be nice to live life in the real world. But not if it means she has to let Sarah go.
Tupper's life is charmed. He has loving adoptive parents, and several athletic college scholarships on the table. But his passion is for the arts, for the beauty of solid ink lines on paper. His illustrations are eerily similar to a keepsake from his birth mother, Anna: comic-book-style drawings scrawled across an old map…her version of a travel diary. At eighteen, Tupper sidesteps his planned future and starts his journey where Anna's ended—following her map from Kansas City to Canada. His travels will put him on a collision course with Langley, and their bond is palpable from the start. But secrets will push between them—Sarah and Anna, two ghosts who could sink their icy fingers into the teens and tear them apart.
PUBLISHER: Clean Teen Publishing, 2018
Nora finally has her beloved sister Frankie back, but that's just the beginning of their struggles. She must now become Kite—a stronger, more independent version of herself—a king and a guardian.
Kettle has Kite's heart. But something holds him back; a feeling that he doesn't deserve good things. It's a looming shadow that threatens to separate them. Kettle must accept that he is also Hiro: a Japanese American with every right to happiness and freedom.
Hiro loves Kite—but Kite won't wait forever for him to tell her. And now they're standing on icy ground. The leverage they had on Kite's abusive father has wavered, and life on the street is affecting Frankie's health. Snow is gathering at the station doors, and doubts are piling high…they must rely on each other, and believe in the magic that got them this far. If they don't, it's not just their future in jeopardy—but the fates of all the street kids in their care—all the Kings.
PUBLISHER: Clean Teen Publishing, 2017
Breaker Van Winkle is a recently returned Vietnam vet, struggling with PTSD and the difficulties of readjusting to civilian life with his mother. Eighteen-year-old Sunny is a high-achieving Chinese-French immigrant who fled Vietnam during the war. Sunny is usually as cheerful as her name implies, but she has her struggles too. Haunted by violent memories of the bombing that killed her parents, and chafing under the rule of her eccentric grandmother, she finds solace deep in the Catskills, at a place she calls the Ugly Tree.
When Breaker stumbles upon Sunny and the Ugly Tree, things start to change. They are drawn to each other, and feel called to the tree. As they spend more time together and their relationship deepens, they notice that their time at the tree is becoming twisted somehow. Sunny's mind yawns and her ambitions begin to slip away. Breaker feels safe and carefree, his memories finally burying themselves in the distant past. They're being lulled toward a tempting, peaceful sleep, but there is a cost to this magical serenity, and it may be more than either of them can bear.
PUBLISHER: Clean Teen Publishing, 2014
What would you be willing to sacrifice to get what you Wanted? It’s the question facing both Rosa and Joseph as they are pushed and pulled in unimaginable directions. It’s the question Superior Grant answered with a resounding, “Anything and everything.” The only thing they want is to be back in each other’s arms. But what will it cost them to get there?
Separated after a failed mission, they are caught in dual hells. Joseph, sinking as he struggles to face what he did to escape and who he had to leave behind. Rosa, straddling the divide between fighting the evil, calculating Superior Grant and trying her best to stay alive. When what they Wanted seems unreachable, can they find the strength—the will—to keep trying? To keep fighting? And find their way back to each other and to Orry?
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The Wanted is the stunning conclusion of The Woodlands Series.
PUBLISHER: Clean Teen Publishing, 2014
You think you're in control. That it's your hands on the reins. But I'm starting to think either someone else is driving, or the reins are attached to nothing. Just flapping and snapping in the breeze. What could be simple, never is. Rosa doesn't want to get used to being separated from Joseph, from Orry. So she must find the strength to battle her way back to her family, while mustering the courage to face her father, his secrets. With her best friend, Rash, by her side, she feels blessed and cursed. He is her saving grace, but will Joseph accept him and forgive her for leaving? Rosa must pull these threads together as she hacks her way to The Wall with the aid of her new companions but, heartbreakingly, without the one person she'd planned to save. Finding her way home is only the beginning. The biggest changes, the shocking truths, are waiting, hovering over the town like a menacing vapor. The Wounded have waited, nursed, and been dormant for too long. And now they're coming... dragging the ghosts of their lost ones behind them.
PUBLISHER: Clean Teen Publishing, 2014
What would you be willing to sacrifice to get what you Wanted? It’s the question facing both Rosa and Joseph as they are pushed and pulled in unimaginable directions. It’s the question Superior Grant answered with a resounding, “Anything and everything.” The only thing they want is to be back in each other’s arms. But what will it cost them to get there?
Separated after a failed mission, they are caught in dual hells. Joseph, sinking as he struggles to face what he did to escape and who he had to leave behind. Rosa, straddling the divide between fighting the evil, calculating Superior Grant and trying her best to stay alive. When what they Wanted seems unreachable, can they find the strength—the will—to keep trying? To keep fighting? And find their way back to each other and to Orry?
​
The Wanted is the stunning conclusion of The Woodlands Series.