Second-grader Hailey's frustration over a school project releases Maybelle, a sprite whose punishment for being a rulemonger will end when she grants Hailey's wish to have fun, but Maybelle's efforts only seem to cause trouble.

At age fourteen, Ted Merritt is eager to replace his imaginary friend, a bacon-loving pirate, with real friends but soon he is led from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, into a world of discarded "abstract companions" who are intent on wreaking vengeance on the human race.

Eighth-grade star quarterback Nate Brodie's family is feeling the stress of the troubled economy, and Nate is frantic because his best friend Abby is going blind, so when he gets a chance to win a million dollars if he can complete a pass during the halftime of a New England Patriot's game, he is nearly overwhelmed by the pressure to succeed.

On Cape Cod seventeen-year-old Rachel desperately wants to get struck by lightning, an act that will reveal her soul mate, as it did for her mother, but complicated relationships with friends and family get in the way.

With her kitten, Moisturizer, missing and having fought with her best friend, Margaret, eight-year-old Clementine finds it hard to concentrate on doing her best as her classmate's Friend of the Week.

Living with her aunt's family in Mansfield, Massachusetts, for a few months before turning eighteen and starting college, Edie is torn between Sebastian, the boy next door, and playboy Henry.-- Mansfield, Massachusetts, is the last place seventeen-year-old Edie Price wants to spend her final summer before college. It's the home of wealthy suburban mothers and prima donnas like Edie's cousins, who are determined to distract her from her mother's death...

As spring arrives on Gardam Street, there are surprises in store for each Penderwick, from neighbor Nick Geiger's expected return from the war to Batty's new dog-walking business, but her plans to use her profits to surprise her family on her eleventh birthday go astray.

Twig, aged twelve, is practically ignored by classmates and other residents of Sidwell, Massachusetts, but gets along fine with just her mother and brother, whose presence must be kept secret, until descendants of the witch who cursed her family move in next door and want to be her friends.

"The Sykes family are hoping to enjoy a normal Cape Cod summer. But there are strong and surprising forces lined up against them and there will be unexpected revelations and the highest price will have to be paid"--

In 1974, the first year of busing in Boston, Massachusetts, seventeen-year-old Ann Ahern's lesbianism, which has isolated her from other white students, draws her to her African French teacher and leads her to insights into Blacks' struggles in the post-Civil Rights era.