Todd Haberkorn

It's 1945, and the world is in the grip of war. Hideki lives with his family on the island of Okinawa, near Japan. When WWII crashes onto his shores, Hideki is drafted into the Blood and Iron Student Corps to fight for the Japanese army. He is handed a grenade and a set of instructions: Don't come back until you've killed an American soldier. Ray, a young American Marine, has just landed on Okinawa. This is Ray's first-ever battle, and he doesn't...

After the death of his older brother, Daniel Anderson became engrossed in recording details about dead people, how they died, and whether their deaths mattered but he is eventually drawn back into interaction with the living.

Wyatt Palmer is just another undersized freshman hoping to fit in at high school, but when his best friend Matt Diaz's pet ferret ends up in the hands of the Bevins, the most popular boys at Coral Cove High, Wyatt and Matt try to get the animal back by attending a party for the cool clique and stumble onto the Bevin family's dark secret.

In 1952 eleven-year-old Azalea is sent to Paris Junction, Arkansas, to help out her grandmother who has injured her foot, but does not really seem to want her help; Billy Wong is a Chinese-American boy whose uncle owns the local grocery store, in town to attend the "white" school, since the Chinese mission school has closed, but frustrated by the overt prejudice of the local children--and over the summer the two begin to forge a friendship.