Unhappy in a home seemingly devoid of love, a fourteen-year-old albino boy who thinks of himself as Harold the Ghost runs away to join the circus, where he works with the elephants and searches for a sense of who he is.

Thirteen-year-old Stark "Stick" McClellan's brother has always defended him against those who tease him for his thinness and facial deformity, so when Bosten, having admitted he is gay, must leave home and their abusive parents, Stick sets out to find him.

A year after running away with a traveling carnival to escape his unbearable home life, sixteen-year-old Michael returns to Miami, Florida, to find that his mother is going on trial for the murder of his abusive stepfather.

In 1904, twelve-year-old Orphelia follows her dream by running away from home to join an all-black minstrel show headed for the Saint Louis World's Fair, and learns about her family's troubled past in the process.

After being sold as a bride to a wealthy family that treats her poorly, eleven-year-old Jing, with the help of her animal friends, runs away.

While working with her family at Cosset Island Village, an historical replica for tourists of an early nineteenth-century village in New England, Clare helps two young runaways and learns about a mystery from the past.

Hospitalized in Brooklyn, New York, fourteen-year-old Michelle recalls being raised in Philadelphia by a loving grandfather and drug-addicted mother before running away and getting lured into prostitution.

A totally wild, crazy jump from a restrictive life with her family into a life of total adventure--rock-climbing out west with a guy she barely knows. At first, everything's amazing. Not only are they climbing in awesomely beautiful national parks like Yosemite but they seem awesomely made for one another. P.K. is in heaven. And then the cops show up with an arrest warrant. And P.K. has to decide who to believe: this amazing guy whom she trusts with...

When sixteen-year-old Dulcie's father dies, her mother makes a decision to move them to California, where Dulcie makes an equally radical decision to steal her dad's old truck and head back home.

Little Angus wakes up angry, and decides to run away from home when his mother scolds him for being rude--but he is very soon lost, hungry, and more than a little frightened.