Thirteen-year-old Finnegan Zwake discovers a body in the basement of his parents' house, in a storage area behind the gold treasure from their last expedition, and missing from the storage space is a Mayan gold figure.

"Scout, once a stray puppy with a troubled past, has grown into one of the best search-and-rescue dogs in Mississippi. And now he's ready for bigger and better things: Scout is joining the National Guard. But Scout's new life as a K9 recruit is far from easy as he adjusts to his challenging training and a brand-new family. Twelve-year-old Matt is determined to help Scout feel at home in Nevada, but when a terrifying flash flood hits town, the pair...

After being assigned to perform community service at a nursing home, sixteen-year-old Alex befriends a cantankerous old man who has some lessons to impart about jazz guitar playing, love, and forgiveness.

Unable to control his binge eating, a morbidly obese teenager nicknamed Butter decides to make live webcast of his last meal as he attempts to eat himself to death.

Nick has his driver's license and he's not afraid to use it. But turning sixteen isn't what he thought it would be. While other boys his age are worried about prom dates and applying for college, Nick is neck deep in enemies out to stop him from living another day. No longer sure if he can trust anyone, his only ally seems to be the one person he's been told will ultimately kill him.

When thirteen-year-old Pierre Anthon leaves school to sit in a plum tree and train for becoming part of nothing, his seventh grade classmates set out on a desperate quest for the meaning of life.

After his best friend snitches on him, Josh must learn to control his anger.

As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnate is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.

"Jake volunteers at a nursing home because he likes helping people. He likes skating and singing, playing Bingo and Name That Tune, and reading mysteries and comics aloud to his teachers. He also likes avoiding people his own age . . . and the cruelty of mirrors . . . and food. Jake has read about kids like him in books--the weird one, the outsider--and would do anything not to be that kid, including shrink himself down to nothing. But the less he...

When his retired parents buy a group of tourist cabins on Cape Cod, fifteen-year-old Kenyon Baker's days are filled with repair work until he becomes friends with an eccentric girl and makes her the subject of a series of photographs.