While spending the month of August on the Massachusetts shore with her father, stepmother, and their new baby, almost thirteen-year-old Maggie finds beauty in and draws strength from a great blue heron, even as the family around her unravels.

When Angel's self-absorbed mother leaves her and her younger brother with their poor great-grandmother, the eleven-year-old girl worries not only about her mother and brother, her imprisoned father, the frail old woman, but also about a mysterious man who begins sharing with her the wonder of the stars.

When her father loses his job, seven-year-old Ramona Quimby thinks of ways to deal with the many problems that develop.

When the family's drugstore is failing, seventh-grader Lucy uses her problem solving talents to come up with solution that might resuscitate the business, along with helping the environment. When a local homecoming queen shows up at Lucy Desberg's family's drugstore with a beauty disaster that Lucy helps to fix, word gets out, and suddenly Lucy has a line of makeover customers for every school dance and bat mitzvah in Connecticut.

After taking refuge in the Sullivan home, Mick crosses over into the dangerous world of dogfighting   Something is tearing away at Mick. Despite finding some stability in the comfort of the Sullivan family, and his friendships with Toy, Sully, and Evelyn, he can't seem to escape his roots. Remembering too clearly the bigotry of his old neighborhood and alcoholic older brother, Terry, Mick decides to seek revenge. And what better way to make Terry...

The Torres sisters dream of escape. Escape from their needy and despotic widowed father, and from their San Antonio neighborhood, full of old San Antonio families and all the traditions and expectations that go along with them. In the summer after her senior year of high school, Ana, the oldest sister, falls to her death from her bedroom window. A year later, her three younger sisters, Jessica, Iridian, and Rosa, are still consumed by grief and haunted...

Ruth grows up in the shadow of her brilliant brother, trying to hold her own in a world of poverty and hard edges. When the precarious household errupts in violence, Ruth is the only one who can piece their story together.

Eleven-year-old Henry escapes his family's problems by watching the woodcarving of Mr. Levine, an elderly Holocaust survivor, but when Henry is manipulated into betraying his friend he comes to know true evil.

How well do you know the people you love...?Best friends Noah Sadler and Abdi Mahad have always been inseparable. But when Noah is found floating unconscious in Bristol's Feeder Canal, Abdi can't--or won't--tell anyone what happened.Just back from a mandatory leave following his last case, Detective Jim Clemo is now assigned to look into this unfortunate accident. But tragedy strikes and what looked like the simple case of a prank gone wrong soon...

The death of her abusive, manipulative older sister prompts seventeen-year-old Em to remember their unpleasant life together, with their parents and then later on their own.