Here's the latest fun, sweet series from the author of the Cupcake Diaries and Sprinkle Sundays series! Everything’s better with a donut. Lindsay Cooper is about to start middle school. In her free time, she works at her family’s restaurant, The Park View, handing out the world’s most delicious donuts at the Donut Dreams counter. Her grandmother started the counter as a way to send Lindsay’s dad to college, and Lindsay wants to use her job the same way—to make her dream of going to school far away from her small town a reality. Home feels different ever since Lindsay’s mom passed away two years ago. And not having her mom around to help her get through the start of middle school doesn’t help her “first day of school” angst. But with her cousins Kelsey and Molly by her side, not to mention her BFF Casey, Lindsay soon discovers family and friends go a long way towards filling any hole in your heart. And life can still be as fun as a pink donut with rainbow sprinkles! From cupcakes to ice cream and donuts! When she’s not daydreaming about yummy snacks, Coco Simon edits children’s books and has written close to one hundred books for children, tweens, and young adults, which is a lot less than the number of cupcakes, ice cream cones, and donuts she’s eaten. She is the author of the Cupcake Diaries, the Sprinkle Sundays, and the Donut Dreams series. Her newest series is Cupcake Diaries: The New Batch. Chapter One: Donuts Are My Life Chapter One Donuts Are My Life My grandmother started Donut Dreams, a little counter in my family’s restaurant that sells her now-famous homemade donuts, when my dad was about my age. The name was inspired by my grandmother’s dream to save enough money from the business to send him to any college he wanted, even if it was far away from our small town. It worked. Well, it kind of worked. I mean, my grandmother’s donuts are pretty legendary. Her counter is so successful that instead of only selling donuts in the morning, the shop is now open all day. Her donuts have even won all sorts of awards, and there are rumors that there’s a cooking show on TV that might come film a segment about how she started Donut Dreams from virtually nothing. My grandmother, whom I call Nans—short for Nana—raised enough money to send my dad to college out of state all the way in Chicago. But then he came back. I’ve heard Nans was happy about that, but I’m not because it means I’m stuck here in this small town. So now it’s my turn to come up with my own “donut dreams,” because I am dreaming about going to college in a big, glamorous city somewhere far, far away. Dad jokes that if I do go to Chicago, I have to come back like he did. No way, I thought to myself. Nobody ever moves here, and nobody ever seems to move away, either. It’s just the same old, same old, every year: the Fall Fling, the Halloween Hoot Fair, Thanksgiving, Snowflake Festival, New Year’s, Valentine’s Day and the Sweetheart Ball… I mean, we know what’s coming. Everyone makes a big deal about the first day of school, but it’s not like you’re with new kids or anything. There’s one elementary school, one middle school, and one high school. Our grandparents used to go to a regional school, which meant they were with kids from other towns in high school. But the school was about forty-five minutes away, and getting there and back was a big pain, so they eventually decided to keep everyone at the high school here. It’s a big old building where my dad went to school, and his brother and my aunt, and just about everyone else’s parents. Some kids do go away for college. My BFF Casey’s sister, Gabby, is one of them. She keeps telling Casey that she should go to the same college so they can live together while Gabby goes to medical school, which is her dream. It’s a cool idea, but what’s the point of moving away from everything if you just end up moving in with your sister? Maybe it’s that I don’t have a sister, I have a brother, and living with him is messy. I mean that literally.Skylar is ten. He spits globs of toothpaste in the sink, his clothes are all over his room, and he drinks milk directly from the carton, which makes Nans shriek. My grandparents basically live with us now, which is a whole long story. Well, the short story is that my mother died two years ago. After Mom died, everyone was a mess, so Nans and Grandpa ended up helping out a lot. Their house is only a short drive down the street from us, so it makes sense they’re around all the time. Even their dog comes over now, which is good because I love him, but weird because Mom would never let us get a pet. I still feel like she’s going to come walking in the door one day and be really mad that there’s a dog running around with muddy paws. My mother was an artist. She was an art teacher in the middle school where I’m starting this year, which will be kind of weird. There’s a big mural that all her students painted on one wall of the school after she