"Adam,a high school senior, rescues Julian, a freshman, from an abusive situation"-- When Adam Blake lands the best elective ever in his senior year, serving as an aide to the school psychologist, he thinks he's got it made. Sure, it means a lot of sitting around, which isn't easy for a guy with ADHD, but he can't complain, since he gets to spend the period texting all his friends. Then the doctor asks him to track down the troubled freshman who...

"The morning after Hurricane Leo rips trough town, friends Evan, Jason, Mitchell, and CJ meet to explore the devastation. The group is dismayed to find that Evan has brought along Ricky, who is new to their town and school, and doesn't have any friends yet. Ricky is the one to find an old bomb shelter, unearthed by the hurricane. Inside, the boys find an undergroud lair, complete with electricity and food. What started out as a fun place to escape...

"Sisters Cheta and Zam's paths to break free of their oppressive home diverge wildly--one moves into an aunt's luxurious home and the other struggles to survive on her wits alone--and when they finally reunite, Zam realizes how far Cheta has fallen, leaving Cheta's fate in Zam's hands."--

Marcos Rivas is desperate to escape the projects, his neglectful mother, and her abusive boyfriend, but when he is picked for a class at his high school targeting smart students who are underperforming, he initially resists.

Alvie Fitz has spent years swallowing meds and bad advice from doctors and social workers. Adjust, adapt. Pretend to be normal. It sounds so easy. If she can make it to her eighteenth birthday without any major mishaps, she'll be legally emancipated. Her only friend is Chance, the one-winged hawk at the zoo where she works. Then she meets Stanley, who walks with a cane, whose body seems as fragile as glass. Without meaning to, they start getting close....

"When it comes to family, Annie is in the losers bracket. While her foster parents are great (mostly), her birth family would not have been her first pick. And no matter how many times Annie tries to write them out of her life, she always gets sucked back into their drama. Love is like that. But when a family argument breaks out at Annie's swim meet and her nephew goes missing, Annie might be the only one who can get him back. With help from her friends,...

With both joy and fear, seventeen-year-old Ariel begins to explore her sexuality, while living with her controlling, abusive father who has told Ariel that her mother deserted her years ago.

Flora and her brother, Julian, don't believe they were born. They've lived in so many foster homes, they can't remember where they came from. And even now that they've been adopted, Flora still struggles to believe in forever. So along with their new mother, Flora and Julian begin a journey to go back and discover their past -- for only then can they really begin to build their future.

While training for a triathlon, seventeen-year-old Bo attends an anger management group at school which leads him to examine his relationship with his father.

Eleven-year-old Whit's zookeeper parents have rarely allowed him to go outside of the Alabama zoo they run, but he stops seeing it as such a cage when he meets "Bird Girl, for whom the place is a refuge from problems at home.