When fifteen-year-old Lance Covington finds an abandoned baby in the backseat of a car, he knows she's the newborn daughter of a meth addict he's been trying to help. But when the police arrest him for kidnapping, Lance is thrust into a criminal world of baby trafficking and drug abuse. His mother, Barbara, looks for help from Kent Harlan - the man whom she secretly loves and who once helped rescue her daughter from a mess of her own. Kent flies to...

"As the daughter of a drug dealer, Wavy knows not to trust people, not even her own parents. It's safer to keep her mouth shut and stay out of sight. Struggling to raise her little brother, Donal, eight-year-old Wavy is the only responsible adult around. Obsessed with the constellations, she finds peace in the starry night sky above the fields behind her house, until one night her star gazing causes an accident. After witnessing his motorcycle wreck,...

Adopting the custom of bacha posh in 2007 Kabul, which allows her to dress and be treated as a boy, attend school and chaperone her sisters until she is of marriageable age, Rahima, the daughter of a drug-addicted father, discovers that she is not the first in her family to adopt this unusual custom.

When her mother dies of a drug overdose, sixteen-year-old Arlie must adjust to living with an uncle she has never met and going to school on a regular basis.

After two years in a loving home, TJ's mother got him back. She was clean. No pot. No meth. His chest felt like it was burning. His heart was racing. Trapped. He felt trapped. He didn't have a say. Everything he had come to care about was gone. And the brutal life he'd escaped quickly reclaimed him. Kaden Cruz didn't run after him. Instead his voice boomed, You owe us.; TJ didn't look back. But he knew this wasn't the end of Kaden Cruz. He could still...

Domenica Ruta grew up in a working-class, unforgiving Italian town north of Boston where in the 17th century women were hanged as witches. Her mother, Kathi, a notorious figure in the hardscrabble place, was a drug addict and sometime dealer whose life swung between welfare and riches, whose highbrow taste was at odds with her base appetites. And yet she managed, despite the chaos she created, to instill in her daughter the idea that art could transcend...

The abuse of illegal drugs (especially opioids) and prescription drugs is on the rise in many countries throughout the world. This abuse causes mental and physical illness and the loss of careers and connections with friends and family. Drug abusers can also end up in prison or even dead as a result of an overdose. It's estimated that more than 100,000 Americans died from drug overdoses between May 2020 and April 2021. This was the highest number...

Ben Storm is living the perfect life in Texas at a children's home. Suddenly his entire source of stability and friendships are ripped away when he is told he will be moving to Southern California. After a few months, his relatives turn him over to a man they say is his dad and he finds himself living a tenuous situation with a father he has never known. Unable to forge a relationship with his father due to years spent apart because of his dad's chemical...

"When Jarrett J. Krosoczka was in high school, he was part of a program that sent students to be counselors at a camp for seriously ill kids and their families. Going into it, Jarrett was worried: Wouldn't it be depressing, to be around kids facing such a serious struggle? Wouldn't it be grim? But instead of the shadow of death, Jarrett found something else at Camp Sunshine: the hope and determination that gets people through the most troubled of...