Thirteen-year-old Zinnia Taylor uncovers family secrets and self truths while clearing a mysterious settler trail that begins on her family's farm in Kentucky.

Twelve-year-old Jonathan Grisby has been sent to the Slabhenge Reformatory School for Troubled Boys, a former lunatic asylum that is currently run by a sadist who enjoys punishing the boys and setting them against each other. But when a lightning strike kills all the adults, the boys find themselves suddenly free--and trapped on Scar Island, which seems to be sinking into the ocean.

Eleven-year-old tomboy Livie is sure that she is responsible for the accident that has put her mother into a coma, so, trying to make amends, she travels through the Louisiana swamps to get a spell that will make her mother well again.

Linebacker Reggie Scott is forced to deal with the repercussions of an incident that shakes his belief in the game he loves. When he is persecuted by angry fans for being a "dirty" player, Reggie is forced to confront his own guilt and decide whether he can continue to play his senior season and beyond.

A year after her mother has deserted the family, eleven-year-old Shelby goes to stay with her, deep in the Louisiana bayou, where they both confront old hurts and regrets.

Twelve-year-old Addison Jones would love to try out for the track team, and she knows that she is faster than the other girls, but her single mom is working two jobs and every day after school Addison has to take care of her little brother--without telling her mom Addison and her best friend, Sofia, work out a plan that will allow her to run, but soon the strain and guilt of lying to her mother begins to take its toll.

Emotionally crippled by his obsessive-compulsive disorder, teenager Matthew Corbin rarely leaves his room on a cul-de-sac in London, and he passes the day observing and writing down his neighbors doings from his window--but when a toddler staying next door disappears Matt is the key to solving a mystery and possibly saving a child's life...if he can manage to expose himself, and his secret guilt to the outside world.