Lucas Ray is shocked when an adorable puppy jumps out of an abandoned building and into his arms. Though the apartment he shares with his mother, a disabled veteran, doesn't allow dogs, Lucas can't resist taking Bella home. Bella is inexplicably drawn to Lucas, even if she doesn't understand the necessity of games like No Barks. As it becomes more difficult to hide her from the neighbors, Lucas begins to sneak Bella into the VA where he works. There,...

Struggling with her mother's advancing mental illness in the months after her father's death from complications of AIDS, a girl in the 1983 Boston suburbs befriends an imaginative boy with his own troubles before threats to her safety force her to make a difficult choice.

Arriving in America, the so-called beautiful country, Anna, a young Taiwanese girl, finds it anything but beautiful as she and her family struggle to make a place for themselves in this world and learn the true meaning of home.

"One teenager in a skirt. One teenager with a lighter. One moment that changes both of their lives forever. If it weren't for the 57 bus, Sasha and Richard never would have met. Both were high school students from Oakland, California, one of the most diverse cities in the country, but they inhabited different worlds. Sasha, a white teen, lived in the middle-class foothills and attended a small private school. Richard, a black teen, lived in the crime-plagued...

"Twelve-year-old Trevor has an adult problem to deal with: how to protect himself, his sisters, and his mother from his abusive stepfather (currently in prison) and he thinks the way to do that is to take up boxing--although he would really rather draw"--Title verso page.

In the vein of When You Trap a Tiger and Shouting at the Rain, this is the story of the journey one girl undertakes to find herself. After Breda Moriarity gets caught stealing one too many times, Breda's mom sends her to Ireland, a place she has never been, to live with the grandfather she has never met. While Breda doesn't want to be in this strange land, she finally gets to meet Granda, her mom's father. He's a grumpy farmer who is also a seanchai,...

Rumi Seto plans to spend her life writing music with her younger sister, Lea. When Lea dies in a car accident, her mother sends Rumi to live with her aunt in Hawaii while she deals with her own grief. Struggling with the loss of her sister, abandoned by her mother, and without music in her life, Rumi turns to the friendship of a teenage surfer named Kai, and an eighty-year-old named George Watanabe. And Rumi is determined to write the song she and...

"Gaining courage from Joan of Arc, fourteen-year-old Mary Murphy navigates the waters of Chesapeake Bay in a submersible built with her friend, Kip, escaping the home where her violent father has just returned from prison. Includes facts about domestic violence and submersibles."-- Publisher's description.

Fourteen-year-old Max records his efforts to control his anorexia in a therapist-prescribed journal that also chronicles his parents' difficult relationship and his feelings for a new girl at school, Evie.