When the state of Maine threatens to shut down their island's one-room schoolhouse because of dwindling enrollment, eleven-year-old Tess, a strong believer in luck, and her family take in a trumpet-playing foster child, to increase the school's population.

On the last night of summer, Emma and her Maine game warden father rescue a small domestic rabbit stuck in a fence; the very next day Emma starts fifth grade after years of being home schooled, excited and apprehensive about making new friends, but she is paired with Jack, a hyperactive boy, who does not seem to fit in with anyone--except that they share a love of animals, which draws them together, because of the rabbit.

With insight and a light touch, best-selling, Newbery Honor-winning author Gary D. Schmidt tells two poignant, linked stories: that of a grieving girl and a boy trying to escape his violent past. Following the death of her closest friend in summer 1968, Meryl Lee Kowalski goes off to St. Elene's Preparatory Academy for Girls, where she struggles to navigate the venerable boarding school's traditions and a social structure heavily weighted toward students...

At the end of World War II, Jack Baker, a landlocked Kansas boy, is suddenly uprooted after his mother's death and placed in a boys' boarding school in Maine. There, Jack encounters Early Auden, the strangest of boys, who reads the number pi as a story and collects clippings about the sightings of a great black bear in the nearby mountains.

Young sleuths Abbi, Lydia, and Daniel are excited to search for clues of a cougar near Abbi's home, but they soon discover something more might be going on.

When fourteen-year-old Gabe checks for survivors after a global pandemic he finds Relle, a strange hopeful girl for whom Gabe eventually develops a crush, but after they return to the mainland tragedy strikes, forcing Gabe to set out on a dangerous journey to find other survivors where the world might be normal--like Before.

Thirteen-year-old Siena's visions of the past intensify when her family moves to the Maine coast hoping her little brother will begin speaking, and she connects with residents of the house from many years earlier who faced a similar problem.

"Lolly Salt's three sisters are sirens--young women who lure ships to their doom--and as Lolly's 13th birthday approaches she's about to become one too. But when it becomes clear that someone in town knows the Salt girls secret, Lolly sets out to learn how this happened to her family and if she can prevent it"--

Cassie Cyan Knight -- former Texas girl, forever fashion plate -- has finally started to adjust to life in Maine. Then Cassie learns that the sixth grade is going on a field trip to a nature preserve. Cassie will have to go hiking, camping, and -- white-water rafting without cell phone reception or hair products.

"For two years, twelve-year-old Hazel has coped with her Mum's accidental death by overprotecting her sister and Mama, but when Mama reconnects with her first love, roles begin to shift"--Title verso page.