Books with author S. Matthews

Iz and Joe never get to go on school trips, especially not residential ones. They don't mean to get themselves excluded, but still no one ever wants to take them. Mia isn't usually included in anything. She just doesn't see the world in the same way that other people do. Helen doesn't know if she'll be able to go on the trip. Her brothers and sisters often don't leave her any time to herself. And Chris wouldn't have gone, either, if he'd known what he was letting himself in for.This particular trip will take them further than any of them had imagined ...

Iz and Joe never get to go on school trips, especially not residential ones. They don't mean to get themselves excluded, but still no one ever wants to take them. Mia isn't usually included in anything. She just doesn't see the world in the same way that other people do. Helen doesn't know if she'll be able to go on the trip. Her brothers and sisters often don't leave her any time to herself. And Chris wouldn't have gone, either, if he'd known what he was letting himself in for.This particular trip will take them further than any of them had imagined ...

THE FIRST THING I remember is waking up in the woods. I didn’t know where I was, or how I got there. I didn’t know my own name. All I knew was that the little silver key hung round my neck had always been there.This is how Lexi’s story begins. She is taken into a shelter where there are clean clothes, warm food, and, most importantly, a woman who remembers her. Safe from the wars and the dangers of the street, Lexi begins to rebuild her identity with the small pieces of the past she can fit together. Then the silver key around her neck unlocks the secrets of a life she never knew she had.This is Lexi’s story. This is how she finds her way home.

Althea struggles to adapt to an unexpected twist in her life—not being kidnapped in six whole months.The strange police from the faraway city claim the abilities she thought of as magic are really ‘psionics,’ and say she is far stronger than anyone they have ever seen. Despite their curiosity, they let her remain in the Badlands to protect her from an evil they call corporations.Of course, Althea knows all too well how powerful her healing gift is. For most of her life, she’d been a prize taken in raids. Tribes have killed to own her, and she let them.But the Prophet is done being passive.Having a family changes everything. No longer afraid to use her powers to protect herself, Althea refuses to be taken again… even when corporate mercenaries find her.

Riley McCullough thought her best friend getting ‘dragged’ off to Puerto Vallarta for the first two weeks of summer vacation was the end of the world―at least until the bombs fell. Life in suburban New Jersey with her mother is comfortable, not to mention boring, to an introverted fourteen-year-old. As if her friend’s surprise trip didn’t suck enough, her ‘best summer ever’ falls to pieces when she’s sent across the country to stay with a father she hasn’t seen in six years. Adjusting to a tiny, desert town where everyone stares at her like she doesn’t belong proves difficult, and leaves her feeling more isolated than ever. To make matters worse, her secretive father won’t tell the truth about why he left—or what he’s hiding. Her luck takes a turn for the better when she meets a boy who shares her interest in video games and contempt for small town boredom. Alas, her happiness is short lived. To escape nuclear Armageddon, she shelters with her dad in a bunker he’d spent years preparing. After fourteen days without sun, Riley must overcome the sorrow of losing everything to save the family she still has.

She saw it coming. She knew it would happen—but no one believed her.Almost a year after tragedy shattered her family, sixteen-year-old Paige Thomas can’t break free from her guilt. Her mother ignores her, doting on her clingy little sister, while her father is a barely-functioning shell. He hopes a move to the quiet little town of Shadesboro PA will help them heal, but Paige doesn’t believe in happiness anymore.On her first day at school, a chance encounter with a bullied eighth grader reawakens a gift Paige had forgotten, and ingratiates her into a pack of local outcasts. For weeks, they’ve been trying to cast a ritual to fulfill their innermost desires, but all they’ve done is waste time. After witnessing Paige touch the Ouija board and trigger a paranormal event, the girls are convinced another try with their new fifth member will finally work.Once the darkness is unleashed, it’s not long before they learn it will give them exactly what they asked for—whether they want it or not.

“… a compelling and eminently likable cast of characters.” –Authors Reading16-year-old albino Drake Stevenson lives a life alone in his world of video games and comic books, dreaming of one day saving a real princess. But fantasy becomes reality when his lawyer father suffers a heart attack, and the Stevensons are forced to move to flyover country in order to take up the family business: Stewardship of the oldest and largest cemetery in the state.There, among the weeping angels and willows of Centralia Cemetery, Drake meets Scarlet, an unusual girl who needs his help to find her killer.Complicated by his albinism, a mentally unstable sister bent on high school domination at any cost, and a jock with a deadly secret, Drake sets out to find the shattering truth about a murder no one will speak of, to help a girl no one can see.

Harper Cody used to worry about the SATs or a getting a new laptop for Christmas… but now, she only wants to keep her little sister alive.At 5:59 a.m. early in September, life as she knew it came to an end with a nuclear flash ninety miles away in Colorado Springs. For two months, her family sheltered in the basement of their home, surviving on whatever canned goods Dad could scavenge. Passing evacuees told of a safe haven in the mountains, but her father refused to leave. He thought their home was safe… until a gang of looters kicked in the door.Four years ago at thirteen, Harper won trophies for competition shooting, but killing a man pointing a gun at her is nothing like nailing targets at a range. Hesitation cost her parents’ lives. With no other options, she grabbed her little sister and ran away from the only home she’d ever known into a world she no longer recognized.The promise of safety in Evergreen gives her hope, but unless the girl voted sweetest in her class can find the nerve to kill, Harper—and her kid sister—are as good as dead.

Most Citizens hold Outcasts in dim regard, but Sima never expected they’d throw her off the planet.In 2411, overpopulation has spread a plaque of filthy, congested city to the corners of the Earth. Government has raised corruption to an art form, and no one hears the cries of those left to die in the dark passageways of civilization. Following the End of Nations, people cling to the only division left: social status.Since running away from home four years ago, she’s managed to stay a step ahead of death―or worse. At sixteen, she’s getting too old to survive from begging, despite her best effort to pretend she’s younger. Worse, the sidewalks teem with little kids edging in on her turf, monopolizing Citizens’ charity with their wide, pleading eyes and genuine innocence.A chance meeting with suspiciously nice cops leaves her more confused than ever. Between deadly gangs, unforgiving security forces, and a terrifying madam eager to exploit a girl her age, merely getting older is the biggest threat to her life. With no good choice to make, she risks the least of three evils.Sima thought her life on Earth had been dangerous…She hasn’t seen anything yet.