When Adam Blake lands the best elective ever in his senior year, serving as an aide to the school psychologist, he thinks he's got it made. Sure, it means a lot of sitting around, which isn't easy for a guy with ADHD, but he can't complain, since he gets to spend the period texting all his friends. Then the doctor asks him to track down the troubled freshman who keeps dodging her, and Adam discovers that the boy is Julian -- the foster brother he...

While living in Holland, Michael meets Judith, who is frightened, bullied, and beaten by her mother and blames herself for the abuse she is enduring.

"Ezra Ahern wakes up one day to find his older sister, Bea, gone. No note, no sign, nothing but an email address hidden somewhere only he would find it. Ezra never expected to be left behind with their abusive stepfather and their neglectful mother, how is he supposed to navigate life without Bea? Bea Ahern already knew she needed to get as far away from home as possible. But a message in her inbox changes everything, and she finds herself alone in...

An eleven-year-old boy tries to cope with being sexually abused, neglected, and treated cruelly at school.

Twelve-year-old Stan and Elpidia find hope in an unexpected friendship as they navigate challenging family circumstances and a dangerous local gang in the desolate Southern California desert.

When Hadley McCauley tries to take her own life after an explosive accident, her doctor, friends, family, and the investigator want to know what happened that day, but Hadley's not talking.

The youngest of three siblings, fourteen-year-old Anke feels both relieved and neglected that her father abuses her brother and sister but ignores her, but when she catches him with one of her friends, she finally becomes angry enough to take action.

A fictionalized account of the Pakistani child who escaped from bondage in a carpet factory and went on to help liberate other children like him before being gunned down at the age of thirteen.

Sixteen-year-old identical twin daughters of a district court judge and a candidate for the United States House of Representatives, Kaeleigh and Raeanne Gardella desperately struggle with secrets that have already torn them and their family apart.

In Oregon, eleven-year-old Hope begins coping with her mother's verbal abuse by devising survival strategies for herself based on a history unit about the Holocaust, and meanwhile she works toward buying a pair of purple hiking boots by helping at a second-hand shop. Includes "Hope notes" and readers' guide.