"Nick just wants to replace the TV his sister accidentally broke before their foster parents find out. To repay the debt, the sixteen-year-old has to steal bikes, break them down and rebuild them to sell. But the debt and the violence keep growing. Even Nick's own beloved fixed-gear bike--the fixie he built with his dad--is up for grabs"--Page 4 of cover.

Amy Denison volunteers at Glory's Place, an after school program where she meets seven-year-old Maddie, a precocious young girl who has spent her childhood in foster care. Unbeknownst to Amy, Maddie is a mini-matchmaker, with her eye on just the right man for Amy at her school, Grandon Elementary. As Christmas nears and the town is blanketed in snow and beautiful decorations, Maddie and the staff at Glory's Place help Amy to see that romance can be...

"Caroline Bragg's life has never been better. She and Brandon Lancaster are taking their relationship to the next level, and she has a new dream job as legal counsel for Praecursoria - a research lab that is making waves with its cutting-edge genetic therapies. The company's leukemia treatments even promise to save desperately sick kids - kids like eleven-year-old Bethany, a critically ill foster child at Brandon's foster home. When Caroline's enthusiastic...

"Rynn was born with a hole in her heart--literally. Although it was fixed long ago, she still feels an emptiness there when she wonders about her birth family. As her relationship with her adoptive mother fractures, Rynn finally decides she needs to know more about the rest of her family. Her search starts with a name, the only thing she has from her birth mother, and she quickly learns that she has a younger sister living in foster care in a nearby...

Left in the cold care of a loveless foster family and alienated at school, Sarah Crane finds a kindred spirit in classmate Nick Dunnigan, a former mental patient still plagued by voices and visions. And in eccentric art instructor Bettina Phillips who is eager to mentor Sarah's artistic talent. But within the walls of Bettina's ancestral home, Sarah finds something altogether different and disturbing--a gateway from the grave into the world of the...

"Tell Sherry April called." That simple phone message shakes Joe Pickett's oldest daughter, Sheridan, and the rest of the family to the core. To Joe, it doesn't seem even remotely possible that April could have survived the massacre, described in Winterkill, six years before. He was there, and he was unable to save her. But Sheridan starts to believe there's a chance that April is still alive, and her suspicions are confirmed when the person sending...

A corporate lawyer and a young man who has suffered in the foster care system must work together to expose the immorality of for-profit foster care.

Simple text and photographs offer an introduction to foster families and describe how family members interact with one another.

"Calla Hammond has always been a loner-a product of the foster system and avoided by others because of a skin condition. When doctors discover her immune system holds the key to curing cancer, she struggles to advance lifesaving research in a world that sees her only as a means to an end. Yet along the way, Calla gains the one thing she has always longed for: a chosen family. When a group of unscrupulous people join forces to sell Calla's blood to...

"They were five kids with five different fathers and an alcoholic mother who left them to fend for themselves for weeks at a time. Yet through it all they had each other. Rosie, the youngest, is fawned over and shielded by her older sister, Regina. Their mother, Cookie, blows in and out of their lives 'like a hurricane, blind and uncaring to everything in her path'. But when Regina discloses the truth about her abusive mother to her social worker,...