When Meri Beckley looks at the peaceful Chicago streets, she feels pride in the era of unprecedented hope and prosperity over which the governor presides. But when her mother is killed, Meri suddenly has questions that no one else seems to be asking. And when she tries to uncover her mother's state of mind in her last weeks, she finds herself drawn into a secret world with a history she didn't know existed. Faced with a choice between accepting the...

Perfect Mexican daughters do not go away to college; they do not move out of their parents' house after high school graduation; and they never abandon their family. But Julia is not your perfect Mexican daughter: that was Olga's role. When a tragic accident on the busiest street in Chicago leaves Olga dead, Julia is left behind to reassemble the shattered pieces of her family. And no one seems to acknowledge that Julia is broken, too. Instead, her...

Eighteen-year-old Matt's atheism is tested when, after a horrific accident of his own making that plunges him into a dark, quiet place, he hears a voice that calls everything he has ever disbelieved into question.

Depressed after the death of her stepfather, high school junior Zara goes to live with her grandmother in a small Maine town, where new friends tell Zara the strange man she keeps seeing may be a pixie king, and that only "were" creatures can stop him from taking souls.

Sofia lost her mother eight months ago, and her friends were 100% there for her. Now it's a new year and they're ready for Sofia to move on. Problem is, Sofia can't bounce back, can't recharge like a cellphone. She decides to write Dear Kate, an advice columnist for Fifteen Magazine, and is surprised to receive a fast reply. Soon the two are exchanging emails, and Sofia opens up and spills all, including a few worries that are totally embarrassing....

"As the youngest of eight, painfully average Pup Flanagan is used to flying under the radar. He's barely passing his classes. He lets his longtime crush walk all over him. And he's in no hurry to decide on a college path. The only person who ever made him think he could be more was his older brother Patrick. But that was before Patrick died suddenly, leaving Pup with a family who won't talk about it and acquaintances who just keep saying, "sorry for...

When an unlikely friendship is sparked between relatively popular Kit Lowell and socially isolated David Drucker, Kit asks David for his help figuring out the how and why of her father's tragic car accident.

"It's been a year--a year of missing Nina. A year of milestones--holidays, birthdays, everything without her. Leo feels like she should remember what happened that night. But all she knows is that she left the party and got into a car with Nina and Nina's boyfriend, East. East, who once promised Nina he'd watch out for her younger sister. East, who has been trying to keep that promise every day since. But East won't give Leo the one thing she wants--the...

"When Georgia revives the spirit of a recently deceased classmate at her family's funeral home, she's forced to sort out her complex feelings about grief and mortality"--

"Following the sudden deaths of her father and autistic younger brother, Cedar Lee spends the summer working at a Shakespearean theater festival, making a new friend, and coming to terms with her grief"--