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.

Feeling angry, guilty, and depressed over his girlfriend's suicide, his brother's tragic accident, and his parents' marital discord, John struggles to stay sober as teachers, counselors, and a sweet girl next door try to help.

"New York City in the 1960s is the humming backdrop for this poignant, gritty story about a girl who sees her parents as flawed human beings for the first time, and finds the courage to make a fresh start. Missy's mother has gone back to school to pursue her dream of becoming an artist. Missy's father works in advertising and takes Missy on secret midnight excursions to Harlem and the Village so she can share his love of jazz"--Provided by publisher....

Maverick Falconer is just starting middle school and he wishes he were a hero like his father because maybe then he could deal with his mother's drinking and series of abusive boyfriends, not to mention the kids who bully him in middle school (pretty muchthe same ones who bullied him in elementary school)--but as the year passes he begins to realize that other kids have problems too, and maybe if they can all survive sixth-grade things will get better....

In the mid-1970s Sunny Lewin is back, star of her personal show, facing the prospect of Middle School, and dealing with the problems of her somewhat dysfunctional family--in particular her older brother, Dale, who has been sent off to a military academy because of his delinquent behavior.

Middle schooler Liberty likes to make her own maps of the stars, in fact she is obsessed with them, especially since her family is falling apart; her parents are getting divorced, her nine-year-old sister will barely leave the house and carries a stuffedtiger at all times, her father is suffering from depression, but will not talk about it, and the brothers down the street, once friends, have turned into bullies--so when a tiny meteorite literally...

Forbidden from practicing magic and burdened by her responsibilities, Jin Zhara's life takes an unexpected turn when she becomes involved with the Guardians of Dawn, a group dedicated to fighting a demonic plague that is corrupting magicians. Magic is forbidden throughout the Morning Realms. Magicians are called abomination, and blamed for the plague of monsters that razed the land twenty years before. Jin Zhara already had enough to worry about--appease...

Beverly Tapinski has run away from home plenty of times, but that was when she was just a kid. By now, she figures, it's not running away. It's leaving. Determined to make it on her own, Beverly finds a job and a place to live and tries to forget about her dog, Buddy, now buried underneath the orange trees back home; her friend Raymie, whom she left without a word; and her mom, Rhonda, who has never cared about anyone but herself. Beverly doesn't...