Ruth Fitz, a black teenager surrounded by activism in a family rocked by tragedy, discovers that she has begun to receive parchment letters from Harriet Jacobs, the author of the autobiography and 1861 American classic, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and sets out to use her own voice to make history.

"Even though she has six siblings, sixteen-year-old Novah still knows what it's like to feel lonely. Her friends never invite her anywhere because they assume Novah will be too busy overseeing dinner, bath time, and homework--tasks that fall to her when her parents are at work. She wouldn't mind it so much if her "perfect" older sister, Ariana, wasn't always excused from helping out. Needless to say, Novah feels like she's been given a raw deal, especially...

Years ago Nia lost her father to the violence plaguing her small Indiana city, but when the five-year-old boy she babysits for is killed in a drive-by shooting, she and her friends decide enough is enough and set out to find the murderer--never anticipating how close to home that investigation will lead.

"Fourteen-year-old Marigold's family owns Flexx Unlimited, a hip-hop lifestyle company, and she attends the elite school Flowered Arms Academy, but she has never felt entirely comfortable in the mostly White school, and she prefers to hang out with Justice, relatively new to the school, but a star basketball player; so enrolling in Style High with him, a trainee program funded by Mari's family, seems like a good way to spend the summer--until she...