Hoping that if she wins a local beauty pageant her father will come home, Raymie practices twirling a baton and performing good deeds as she is drawn into an unlikely friendship with a drama queen and a saboteur.

After finally getting noticed by someone other than school bullies and his ever-angry father, seventeen-year-old Tyler enjoys his tough new reputation and the attentions of a popular girl, but when life starts to go bad again, he must choose between transforming himself or giving in to his destructive thoughts.

"Six students are trapped in their school after a bomb goes off, and must fight to survive while discovering who among them is the bomber"-- Six students are trapped in their school after a bomb. They couldn't be more different, but now they have something in common: survival. When they hear that the bomber is trapped inside the school, the question is: is it one of them?

With their parents struggling to make ends meet, Lily and Ryan grow tired of always eating macaroni and cheese for supper and having their Grandma stay with them, but when Grandma hears their complaints she tells a story about the magic that snow angels can bring.

Wheaton, Kansas seventh-grader Tucker MacBean loves comic books, so when his favorite comic has a contest to create a sidekick, he is hopeful that he can win, thereby fixing his struggling family.

"Trey knows the drill: His dad gets him into a school full of kids with rich parents. Trey makes friends, and his dad makes connections. Soon, there's the con, where Trey's dad suckers the other parents into investing in one of his schemes. Once the money's in the bank, Trey, his sister, and their dad are on the run... until they set up somewhere else and start again. Trey believes his father when he says no one's getting hurt. After all, these parents...

"When five high school students are brought together under mysterious circumstances, they begin to piece together a theory that their parents are working together to kill them all"--

When she moves to Boston to live with her wealthy grandmother, Heaven believes that she has found a place to belong and an opportunity to make something of herself until she begins to realize the terrible truth beneath the glamorous facade of her grandmother's life.

In 1947, twelve-year-old Pattie Mae is sustained by her dreams of escaping Rich Square, North Carolina, and moving to Harlem when her Uncle Buddy is arrested for attempted rape of a white woman and her grandfather is diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor.

A politician's wife retreats with her grown daughters to a Connecticut beach house after a painful public betrayal, an escape marked by new beginnings and her younger daughter's pregnancy.