When twelve-year-old Ty's brother Thane is recruited out of college to play for the New York Jets, their Uncle Gus uses Ty to get insider information for his gambling ring, landing Ty and Thane in trouble with the mafia.

Thirteen-year-old Olivene Love gets tangled up in a murder mystery when her itinerant preaching family arrives in the small town of Binder, Arkansas in 1957.

After escaping the orphanage where they have spent their lives together, two boys become assistants to a con artist, and while Possum objects to the lying, stealing, and cheating, Billy only cares about making money and taking life easy.

When Xavier's father returns to Boston after serving ten years in federal prison, tensions quickly mount and Xavier's anger explodes on the baseball field, making it less likely that he will achieve his dream of playing in the major leagues than that he will follow his father's path.

What if you aren't the Chosen One? The one who's supposed to fight the zombies, or the soul-eating ghosts, or whatever the heck this new thing is, with the blue lights and the death? What if you're like Mikey? Who just wants to graduate and go to prom and maybe finally work up the courage to ask Henna out before someone goes and blows up the high school. Again. Because sometimes there are problems bigger than this week's end of the world, and sometimes...

"When the strange new girl at her high school takes her to a place underneath the subways of New York, where people like them can go and find a home, Harriet Adu, who is riddled with guilt over her brother's death, gets a second chance at being a better person"--

"Lily doesn't believe in making wishes. Not anymore. Not since Anders died. Wishes can't fix the terrible thing that happened. Wishing won't change how it feels. But Lily doesn't believe in the impossible. She has a secret so extraordinary, so magical, no one would believe that it's true. No one except Anders, of course. Nothing about this summer is turning out how Lily would have wished. But wishes, like seasons, can change"--

After her father is sent to jail, eleven-year-old Groovy Robinson must decide if she can forgive the failings of someone she loves.

Upon learning on Christmas Day that their rich and imperious grandmother may soon die and disown the family unless the one who offended her deeply will confess, each of the three Sullivan sisters sets down her offenses on paper.

In the historic town of Norvelt, Pennsylvania, twelve-year-old Jack Gantos spends the summer of 1962 grounded for various offenses until he is assigned to help an elderly neighbor with a most unusual chore involving the newly dead, molten wax, twisted promises, Girl Scout cookies, underage driving, lessons from history, typewriting, and countless bloody noses.