Overachievement isn’t a bad word—for Berlin, it’s the goal. She’s securing excellent grades, planning her future, and working a part-time job at Pink Mountain Pizza, a legendary local business. Who says she needs a best friend by her side?

Dropping out of high school wasn’t smart—but it was necessary for Cameron. Since his cousin Kiki’s disappearance, it’s hard enough to find the funny side of life, especially when the whole town has forgotten Kiki. To them, she’s just another missing Native girl.

People at school label Jessie a tease, a rich girl—and honestly, she’s both. But Jessie knows she contains multitudes. Maybe her new job crafting pizzas will give her the high-energy outlet she desperately wants.

When the weekend at Pink Mountain Pizza takes several unexpected turns, all three teens will have to acknowledge the various ways they’ve been hurt—and how much they need each other to hold it all together.

It all started with a boy who loved the piano . . .

They say Léon Delafosse will be France’s next great pianist. As a sixteen-year-old from a small country town, he knows making that happen will keep his family afloat. Even though he’s the youngest student ever accepted into the prestigious Paris Conservatory, there’s no way for an impoverished musician to make his way in 1890s Paris without an outside patron to pave his way.

A young gossip columnist named Marcel Proust takes Léon under his wing, using the beautiful teenager as his own entrance key into high society. As the boys game their way through an extravagant new world, Marcel opens unexpected doors. When the larger-than-life Count Robert de Montesquiou-Fézensac offers his patronage, Léon’s dreams are made real. But the more absorbed he is into dreams of becoming France’s next great thing, the more he strays from the old country life he shared with his mother, his sister, Charlotte, and his best friend, Félix . . . a boy he might love. With each choice Léon makes, he must navigate a fine line between two worlds—or risk losing it all.

The Blackwoods. Everyone knows their name. Blossom Blackwood burst onto the silver screen in 1962, and in the decades that followed, she would become one of the most celebrated actors of her time—and the matriarch of Hollywood’s most famous Black family. To her great-granddaughters, Hollis and Ardith, she has always just been Bebe. And when she passes away, it changes everything.

Hollis Blackwood was never interested in fame. Still, she’s surrounded by it, at home with her family and at the prestigious Dupree Academy alongside Los Angeles’s elite. When private photos of Hollis are leaked in the wake of Blossom’s death, she is thrust into the spotlight she’s long avoided—and finds that trust may be a luxury even she can’t afford.

Ardith Blackwood has always lived in the public eye. A television star since childhood, she was perhaps closer with Blossom than anyone—especially after her mother died from a drug overdose. Ever since, she has worked to be everything her family, her church, and the media want her to be. But as a family secret comes to light and the pressures from all sides begin to mount, she wonders what is left beneath the face she shows the world.

Frederieke Teitler and her sister, Astra, live in a house, in a city, in a world divided. Their father ran out on them when Rieke was only six, leaving their mother a wreck and their grandfather as their only stable family. He’s done his best to provide for them and shield them from antisemitism, but now, seven years later, being a Jew has become increasingly dangerous, even in their beloved home of Czernowitz, long considered a safe haven for Jewish people. And when Astra falls in love and starts pulling away from Rieke, Rieke wonders if there’s anything in her life she can count on—and, if so, if she has the power to hold on to it.

Then—war breaks out in Europe. First the Russians, then the Germans, invade Czernowitz. Almost overnight, Rieke and Astra’s world changes, and every day becomes a struggle: to keep their grandfather’s business, to keep their home, to keep their lives. Rieke has long known that she exists in a world defined by those who have power and those who do not, and as those powers close in around her, she must decide whether holding on to her life might mean letting go of everything that has ever mattered to her. And if that’s a choice she will even have the chance to make.

Based on the true experiences of her grandmother’s childhood in Holocaust-era Romania, National Book Award finalist and Printz honoree Elana K. Arnold weaves a harrowing, heartbreaking tale of love and loss in the darkest days of the twentieth century—and one young woman’s will to survive them.