In 1861, while living with his foster parents at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, twelve-year-old Mike Kelly and his best friend Todd Blakely join the Union army as drummer boys but their dreams of glory end when they experience the full horrors of war at the Battle of Wilson's Creek in Missouri.

Eleven-year-old Michael Patrick Kelly from New York City is sent to a foster home, a Missouri farm with a sadistic owner, a bullying son, and a number of secrets, one of which might be murder.

A group of foster children build a home of their own. A ghost saved twelve-year-old Maddie's life when she was an infant, her Granny Lane claims, so Maddie must always remember that she is special. But it's hard to feel special when you've spent your life shuffled from one foster home to another. And now that she's at the East Tennessee Children's Home, Maddie feels even less special. She longs for a place to call home. She even has a "book of houses"...

Deeply unhappy about the separation of her family because of poverty, twelve-year-old Megan gradually finds contentment and purpose in her new home on the Kansas prairie with a kind and loving adopted family.

Three Irish immigrant children, orphaned in a tenement fire, are sent on the orphan train to Missouri where they are adopted by different families, and although Maelle had vowed to one day reunite with her younger brother and sister, seventeen years later she is about to give up hope.

"When a mysterious painting offers her a trip to the past, will Isla find new hope for her future? On the brink of aging out the foster system, the last thing Isla Laird wants is to spend Christmas in an old-fashioned plantation. What's the point of bonding with her foster mom when it's too late to ever be adopted? But when a mysterious painting suddenly thrusts her into the nineteenth century, Isla is forced to face hurts and memories she's long...

In 1861, while living with his foster parents at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, twelve-year-old Mike Kelly and his best friend Todd Blakely join the Union army as drummer boys but their dreams of glory end when they experience the full horrors of war at the Battle of Wilson's Creek in Missouri.

Relates the author's harrowing family circumstances that led to his placement in the equally daunting foster-care system, and describes how he beat the odds through high academic achievement.

"Seventeen-year-old Beth Anne Reimer, renamed Bex Andrews, is ready to start a new life in foster care. There, she won't be known as a serial killer's daughter. Though her father was never tried for the murders attributed to "The Wife Collector," he disappeared after questioning. The police want to use Bex to lure in her father. But is she baiting a serial killer or endangering an innocent man?"--

Thirteen-year-old Skye, who lives at Keystone Stables with her foster parents and wheelchair-bound foster sister, has been wondering about her real parents, and, with God's help, she is finally able to meet them.