Lunch Money

Follow your passion. Reach for the sky. You hear those words at graduation. And sixteen-year-old Hawk Hanover knows better.

Face it: no teenager can solve his parent's problems. Make real money. Take control of his own life. The police call them minors for a reason. Worse still, the IRS calls them dependents.

That means Hawk has to stand by and watch his single mom struggle to make ends meet. That means he has to ride out two long years in a new school with a hostile principal.

No friends either. Unless you count Jeanine Tompkins, the constantly dumped-on queen of weird.

The time has come for them to stop being minors and dependents. The time has come for them to attack their problems together. By any means necessary.

Until they discover too late that sometimes crime overpays . . .

And their troubles escalate from finishing high school to continuing life.

An angsty, enemies-to-friends (and maybe more) young adult thriller, "Lunch Money" portrays the life-altering impact of the relationships we hold closest to us. Guaranteed to be a satisfying and riveting read.