Thirteen-year-old Manny, a street kid fighting for survival in a Mexican border town, develops a strange friendship with an emotionally disturbed American soldier who decides to help him get across the border.

Twelve-year-old Lily mourns her brother, and has not spoken since the accident she feels she could have prevented, but the summer Tinny comes to town she is the only one who realizes Lily's secret.

Twelve-year-old Lily mourns her brother, and has not spoken since the accident she feels she could have prevented, but the summer Tinny comes to town she is the only one who realizes Lily's secret.

While confined to a mental hospital, thirteen-year-old Callie slowly comes to understand some of the reasons behind her self-mutilation, and gradually starts to get better.

Told in two voices, sixth-grade cousins Hannah and Cal learn a lot about family when circumstances throw them together under one roof and Hannah's love of order clashes with Cal's chaotic behavior.

Fifteen-year-old Lizzie Cohen recalls what it was like growing up with her imaginative but disturbed older sister Tess, and how she is striving to reclaim her own life since Tess died.

Maine high school senior Katie Martin is set to win a field hockey scholarship until her life is derailed by drinking, a car accident, and an angry classmate.

Taylor Markham is now a senior at the Jellicoe School, and has been made leader of the boarders. She is responsible for keeping the upper hand in the territory wars with the townies, and the cadets who camp on the edge of the school's property over summer. She has to keep her students safe and the territories enforced and to deal with Jonah Griggs, the leader of the cadets and someone she'd rather forget. But what she needs to do, more than anything,...