In 1945, Gordy's grandmother takes him and his family into her North Carolina home after his abusive father is arrested, and he just begins to respond to his grandmother's loving discipline when his father returns.

Rosalie Tomkin intends to leave Boulder Creek as soon as she can scrape together the funds to do so, and never look back. Michael Randolph is in the fight of his life for the family business and can afford no distractions. Thrown together, neither of them wants to stay together any longer than they must.

Fifteen-year-old Frankie relates the events of the year leading up to her mother's mysterious disappearance and her own struggle to discover and accept the truth about her parents' relationship.

While trying to expose a private security firm hired by the government to weaponize scrabs, Clara and Team Seven face their biggest threat yet--their own demons. When the world was crumbling, Clara escaped her abusive home and joined Team Seven, a monster-fighting squad of runaways and misfits. They discovered the sinister truth behind the scrab invasion: they're being trained and weaponized by MDG, a private security firm hired by the government....

Through a hot, dry Oklahoma summer, twelve-year-old Franny tends wild animals brought by her neighbors, hears gossip during a weekly quilting bee, befriends a new neighbor who has some big secrets, and learns to hope.

Thirteen-year-old Tyler, who has trouble controlling his anger, spends an important summer with his cousins in New York City, playing baseball and sorting out how he feels about violence, war, and in particular the Vietnamese conflict that took his grandfather's life.

"Seventeen-year-old Clara runs away from home to join a vigilante monster-flghting squad, only to discover that sometimes the most dangerous monsters are where you least expect them." -- Clara is ready to fight back against her abusive father, against the only life she's ever known, and most of all, against scrabs, the earth-dwelling monsters that are currently ravaging the world. When an opportunity arises for Clara to join an international monster-fighting...

In 1907 Wisconsin, seventeen-year-old Marie Reehs is determined: she will not marry a violent man, as did her mother and grandmother before her. Day after day, Marie toils at the local laundry, watched by an older man who wants to claim her for his own. Night after night, she is haunted by the memory of her mother, who died in a mysterious accident to which her father was the only witness. She longs for an independent life, but her older sister wants...

Coal mining community deputy Ivan Zoschenko remembers the injury that ended his football career, prepares for a former teammate's release from prison, and confronts a secret that has troubled his conscience.