Thirteen-year-old Toby, a prematurely gray-haired Pittsburgh Pirates fan and baseball card collector, tries to cope with his brother's drug use, his father's absence, and his mother dating Stanley the Food King.

Told in their separate voices, thirteen-year-old soccer star Kevin and police sergeant Brown, who knew his father, try to keep Kevin out of juvenile hall after he is arrested on very serious charges.

Sloane Emily Jacobs and Sloane Devon Jacobs, from very different worlds but both with problem families, meet in in Montreal where they will stay in the same hotel while attending camp, one for figure skating, the other for ice hockey.

"Adam Moynihan's life used to be awesome. Straight As, close friends and a home life so perfect that it could have been a TV show straight out of the 50s. Then, his oldest brother died. Now, his fun-loving mom cries constantly, he and his remaining brother can't talk without fighting, and the father he always admired proved himself a coward by moving out when they needed him most. Jolene Timber's life is nothing like the movies she loves -- not the...

Unable to cope with her father's alcoholism, thirteen-year-old Sam corresponds with an older student, sharing her family problems and asking for advice.

Fourteen-year-old Tree, resentful of her working mother who leaves her in charge of a retarded brother, encounters the ghost of her dead uncle and comes to a deeper understanding of her family's problems.

Grieving for her older brother Lucas, Oakley Nelson agrees to spend a few months with her mother at Aunt Jo's California beach house, where a notebook of letters from Lucas to Oakley challenges her to feel better and enjoy life, but a budding romance reminds her of the chances Lucas will never have.

"When best friends Metai and Jamila are reunited after a summer apart, their friendship threatens to combust from the pressure of secrets, middle school, and looming auditions for a potentially life-changing new talented-and-gifted program"--

Rene, a high school freshman with obsessive-compulsive disorder, finds life to be like a scary movie, and even after he makes friends with the ultra-cool Giovanni he still feels responsible for saving his favorite teacher, dealing with his missing father, courting the beautiful Ariel, and trying to pretend to be normal for the school psychologist.

As she tries to escape her poor Chicago neighborhood by winning a scholarship to a prestigious boarding school, shy and studious eighth-grader Patrice discovers that she has more options in life than she previously realized.