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Elizabeth Harlan’s novels invite readers into richly drawn worlds where young people navigate love, loss, and the complexities of growing up. With emotional depth and compelling storytelling, her books resonate across generations. Explore the full collection and find your next great read.
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Becoming Carly Klein
At sixteen, Carly Klein feels invisible, caught between distracted parents and fallout from their divorce. When her best friend moves away, she’s left reeling for connection and is forced to find new ways to entertain herself. It doesn’t take her long to discover the perfect distraction: her therapist mother’s patients.
Carly becomes obsessed with one patient in particular—Daniel, a handsome, blind junior at Columbia College. Desperate to become part of his life and knowing he’ll never go for a high school girl, she invents a false identity as a student at neighboring Barnard College. But the closer she and Daniel grow, the harder it becomes to separate truth from fiction.
Becoming Carly Klein is a compelling story of first love, the complicated choices we make to feel seen, and the unintended consequences of disguise, deception, and discovery.
Watershed
Jeb and his younger brother Dave were once bound by shared pranks and late-night secrets. But during a long, dry summer, their bond begins to crack under the weight of growing tensions at home and within themselves. Jeb tries to keep the peace with their controlling father, while Dave grows more defiant and disconnected. As Dave hatches a daring plan to shake up their small town, Jeb must decide whether to stand by his brother or walk away.
Watershed is a powerful coming-of age story about the breaking point between loyalty to oneself and brotherly love.
Footfalls
Fourteen-year-old Stevie Farr is coming into her own just as her beloved father is dying of cancer. As the star runner on her high school team, she pins her hopes on a single race, convincing herself that winning will somehow keep her father alive. Caught between the rush of adolescence and the slow ache of impending loss, Stevie struggles to make sense of a world that feels both magical and cruel. With support from a thoughtful counselor and a caring upperclass boy on the track team, she learns that love and grief can co-exist and begins to heal.
Footfalls is a moving story about growing up, loving and losing, and finding your stride after heartbreak.
Nonfiction By Elizabeth Harlan
In addition to her Young Adult novels, Elizabeth has also authored works of nonfiction including a biography of the magnanimous George Sand.
Endorsements
With sparkling prose and witty dialogue, Harlan captures the electric energy and tension of a teen awkwardly keeping secrets… Though many of the core themes carry through for teens of any generation, Harlan illuminates hallmarks of the Gen X era of latchkey parenting and feeling free to explore a city undisturbed by adults…
BookLife Reviews
Why is one sibling resilient, while the other breaks like the branch of an apple tree, unable ‘to carry the burden of the fruit it bears’? … Played out in sweeping gestures, Harlan’s response to the question is open-ended but richly textured.
Publishers Weekly
In Harlan’s stunner of a book, Stevie Farr deals with her awakening sexuality, her drive for achievement as a cross-country runner, and her father’s fatal illness. Handling the story honestly, the author gives it stature and grace, epitomizing Stevie as youth in all its awkward attempts to grow in understanding while suffering the convictions of guilt that only the truly innocent can feel.
Publishers Weekly