"Franny Chapman just wants some peace. But that's hard to get when her best friend is feuding with her, her sister has disappeared, and her uncle is fighting an old war in his head. Her saintly younger brother is no help, and the cute boy across the street only complicates things. Worst of all, everyone is walking around just waiting for a bomb to fall. It's 1962, and it seems the whole country is living in fear."--Dust jacket flap.

In a series of poems, fifteen-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her family's wheat farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years of the Depression.

"Life on the Rush farm in South Dakota is not easy. Even so, over the past four years, Ethan Cooper and his siblings have grown to feel they belong with their adoptive family. Then Chad Rush makes an unexpected announcement. The family is moving again--this time to Mexico! Ethan is scared. What dangers will they face in another country? What will it be like to live on an oil homestead instead of a farm? And what about his dreams of getting an education?...

In San Diego in 1918, as deadly influenza and World War I take their toll, sixteen-year-old Mary Shelley Black watches desperate mourners flock to séances and spirit photographers for comfort and, despite her scientific leanings, must consider if ghosts are real when her first love, killed in battle, returns.

"It's 1963, and things are changing for Jezebel Turner. Her beloved grandmother has just passed away. The local police deputy won't stop harassing her family. With school integration arriving in South Carolina, Jez and her twin brother, Jay, are about to begin the school year with a bunch of new kids. But the biggest change comes when Jez and Jay turn eleven--and their uncle, Doc, tells them he's going to train them in rootwork. Jez and Jay have always...

Fifteen-year-old Barry O'Neill, traveling from Ireland to America on the maiden voyage of the Titanic, finds his life endangered when the ship hits an iceberg and begins to sink.

Best friends Adelle and Connie have been best friends for years, united by their love of a little-known gothic romance novel called Moira. Unable to reach Moira's reclusive author, Robin Amery, the girls have to settle for reading the book over and over again, dreaming about how much better their lives would be in the world of this romantic fantasy, with its intrigue and excitement. But when the girls are tempted by a mysterious man to enter the world...

When the massive metal tank filled with sticky brown molasses that rises up over her crowded North End neighborhood explodes, young Carmen must fight for her life, as a tsunami of molasses rushes through the streets.

Eleven-year-old John Hale has already survived one brutal Dakota winter, and now he's about to experience one of the deadliest blizzards in American history. The storm of 1888 was a monster, a frozen hurricane that slammed into America's midwest without warning. Within hours, America's prairie would be buried under ten feet of snow. Hundreds would be dead, thousands terrified and lost and freezing. John never wanted to move to the wide-open prairie....

"It's 1951, and twelve-year-old Pete Collison is a regular kid in Brooklyn, New York, who loves Sam Spade detective books and radio crime dramas. But when an FBI agent shows up at Pete's doorstep, accusing Pete's father of being a Communist, Pete is caught in a real-life mystery. Could there really be Commies in Pete's family?"-- Provided by publisher.