When an eleven-year-old boy takes over a friend's newspaper route in July, 1959, in Memphis, his debilitating stutter makes for a memorable month.

Hazel Kaplansky and new student Samuel Butler investigate rumors that a Russian spy has infiltrated their small Vermont town, amidst the fervor of Cold War era McCarthyism, but more is revealed than they could ever have imagined.

"In the summer of 1965, Sophie's family becomes the first African Americans to move into their upper middle-class neighborhood in Los Angeles. When riots erupt in nearby Watts, she learns that life and her own place in it are a lot more complicated than they had seemed"--

On Cape Cod in 1972, eleven-year-old Naomi, known as Chirp for her love of birds, gets help from neighbor Joey as she struggles to cope with her mother's multiple sclerosis and its effect on her father and sister.

In Bolivia in 1999, when their father is unjustly arrested and their mother leaves, Francisco, seventeen, and his sister Pilar, eight, must move to the dirty, dehumanizing, and corrupt prison. 1999, Bolivia. Francisco's father is arrested on false charges and sent to prison by a corrupt system. Now Francisco and his young sister must move into prison with their father. There, they find a world unlike anything they've ever known. Prison life is dirty,...

Even though his classmates from first grade on have considered him strange and a loser, Daniel Zinkoff's optimism and exuberance and the support of his loving family do not allow him to feel that way about himself.

It's 1964 in Greenwood, Mississippi, and Sunny's town is being invaded by people from up north who are coming to help people register to vote. Her personal life isn't much better, as a new stepmother, brother, and sister are crowding into her life, giving her little room to breathe.--From publisher description.

Bullied and shamed her whole life for being fat, twelve-year-old Ellie finally gains the confidence to stand up for herself, with the help of some wonderful new allies.--

After moving with her mother and deaf brother to Grandma's small Georgia town in the 1960s, Alice copes with feelings of isolation by befriending the elderly black woman who lives next door.

Gwyn Hillerman acts as a nurse at her father's medical practice in 1935 rural Alaska. Her mother, hating Alaska, had returned to Chicago with Gwyn's younger sister. There Sophia's engagement to Dr. Jeremiah Vaughan ends when he loses his medical license after the death of an affluent patient. Then the government decides to send a group of families to Alaska for a better life, and Dr. Hillerman urges Jeremiah to join his practice.