Books with title Loners

It was just another ordinary day at McKinley High—until a massive explosion devastated the school. When loner David Thorpe tried to help his English teacher to safety, the teacher convulsed and died right in front of him. And that was just the beginning.A year later, McKinley has descended into chaos. All the students are infected with a virus that makes them deadly to adults. The school is under military quarantine. The teachers are gone. Violent gangs have formed based on high school social cliques. Without a gang, you're as good as dead. And David has no gang. It's just him and his little brother, Will, against the whole school. In this frighteningly dark and captivating novel, Lex Thomas locks readers inside a school where kids don't fight to be popular, they fight to stay alive.

"As original as The Hunger Games, set within the walls of a high school exactly like yours." - Kami Garcia, New York Times best-selling co-author of the Beautiful Creatures novelsIt was just another ordinary day at McKinley High--until a massive explosion devastated the school. When loner David Thorpe tried to help his English teacher to safety, the teacher convulsed and died right in front of him. And that was just the beginning.A year later, McKinley has descended into chaos. All the students are infected with a virus that makes them deadly to adults. The school is under military quarantine. The teachers are gone. Violent gangs have formed based on high school social cliques. Without a gang, you're as good as dead. And David has no gang. It's just him and his little brother, Will, against the whole school. In this frighteningly dark and captivating novel, a 2012 Booklist Editor's Choice, Lex Thomas locks readers inside a school where kids don't fight to be popular, they fight to stay alive."Take Michael Grant's Gone and Veronica Roth's Divergent, rattle them in a cage until they're ready to fight to the death, and you'll have something like this nightmarish debut...Thomas' whirlwind pace, painful details, simmering sexual content, and moments of truly shocking ultra-violence thrust this movie-ready high school thriller to the head of the class." - Booklist (starred review)

"As original as The Hunger Games, set within the walls of a high school exactly like yours." - Kami Garcia, New York Times best-selling co-author of the Beautiful Creatures novelsIt was just another ordinary day at McKinley High--until a massive explosion devastated the school. When loner David Thorpe tried to help his English teacher to safety, the teacher convulsed and died right in front of him. And that was just the beginning.A year later, McKinley has descended into chaos. All the students are infected with a virus that makes them deadly to adults. The school is under military quarantine. The teachers are gone. Violent gangs have formed based on high school social cliques. Without a gang, you're as good as dead. And David has no gang. It's just him and his little brother, Will, against the whole school. In this frighteningly dark and captivating novel, a 2012 Booklist Editor's Choice, Lex Thomas locks readers inside a school where kids don't fight to be popular, they fight to stay alive."Take Michael Grant's Gone and Veronica Roth's Divergent, rattle them in a cage until they're ready to fight to the death, and you'll have something like this nightmarish debut...Thomas' whirlwind pace, painful details, simmering sexual content, and moments of truly shocking ultra-violence thrust this movie-ready high school thriller to the head of the class." - Booklist (starred review)

Lona has dropped out of art school and no one is quite sure why, least of all Lona. It’s just that nothing in her life seems to make sense anymore, including art. She spends her days sneaking into the darkroom at her old school to develop photographs and her nights DJ-ing at the local roller disco. Her aimlessness terrifies her, but everyone else appears oblivious to her fears: her parents are bewildered by her sudden lack of ambition, her brother is preoccupied with his new girlfriend, and her best friend Tab seems to be drifting away. Even a budding relationship with a bass-playing, cello-shredding med student isn’t enough to shake her existential angst. Lona knows it’s up to her to figure out what she wants to do with her life: the problem is, she has absolutely no idea where to start. Georgina Young is a writer and designer from Melbourne. She has previously had her work published in Voiceworks magazine, as well as in Branches, an anthology published by the Bowen Street Press. Loner is her first novel. ‘Georgina Young made me squirm and swoon and sigh as I fell head over heels for the exquisite paradoxes of her protagonist. Lona wonders why she can never say exactly the thing she means—lucky for us, we have Young, and she articulates all those things with smarts and humour and grace. This is a book to push into the hands of everyone you know, especially those who ever had trouble knowing themselves.’ Kate Mildenhall ‘I loved this razor-sharp, whip-smart, exquisitely funny debut.’ Nina Kenwood ‘Loner is a very clever, unconventional and hilarious coming-of-age story. I loved it!’ Eliza Henry-Jones 'A compassionate and clever story for dropouts and screw-ups. Georgina Young has bottled the fears and feelings of every young woman who has had to learn to stop hiding inside herself.’ Brodie Lancaster

In Glastonbury, Connecticut, school is different from normal. In a school where cliques are taken to the extreme, there are three cliques. The brainy Nerds, the artsy Theaterheads, and the cruel Populars. The three cannot associate with each other at all; they must stay completely separate. The Clique Code controls all, and if you break it, you become a Loner - the outcasts of the cliques. They are shunned by the rest of the school, kicked around and bullied, not even allowed to sit at the tables at lunch; forced to sit on the floor. Life as a Loner is hell. Laylah Shiresman, a thirteen year old Popular, is living her life inside the middle school of strict laws and seclusion. She seems to be a perfectly normal girl, quiet and kept to herself, staying mostly away from rumors and the prying eyes of her so called "friends". But she hides a dangerous secret: She is dating Austin Sears, a Theaterhead boy, behind her clique's back. Dating someone outside your clique is strictly forbidden; an act worthy of immediate exile. And then there is Jade Ross. A Loner girl of many secrets, no one knows of her past life or connections. She moved to Glastonbury in the fifth grade and never spoke to anyone about the times before then. Exiled for reasons unknown, Jade in herself is a mystery. Then there is Dahlia Russel; a Nerd, disrespected and mistreated. She is not like the typical Nerd, she doesn't like comic books and math or get straight A's in all her classes. She secretly likes to sing and and act; a Nerd with the heart of a Theaterhead. But instead of being praised for it, she is teased for it and put down repeatedly by her Nerd "comrades"; and she is beginning to get sick of it. Then, the four teens come together in a way none of them thought possible; and they begin their uprising against the code. But they know that it is not over yet. No, it is not over. IT HAS ONLY JUST BEGUN.

Set in Melbourne, Loner is a humorous and heartfelt exploration of new adulthood. Lona kills her days by sneaking into the dark room at her old art school to develop photographs. She kills her nights DJ-ing the roller disco at Planet Skate. She is in inexplicably, debilitatingly love with a bespectacled Doctor Who-obsessed former classmate, and in comfortable, platonic love with her best friend Tab. Lona works hard to portray a permanent attitude of cynicism and ennui but will her carefully constructed persona be enough to protect her from the inevitable sorrows and unexpected joys of adult life? Loner re-examines notions of social isolation experienced by young people, suggesting sometimes our own company can be a choice and not a failing.