A young girl from a dysfunctional family creates for herself an alternative world which nearly results in her death but which ultimately leads her to reality.

A twelve-year-old boy named Moose moves to Alcatraz Island in 1935 when guards' families were housed there, and has to contend with his extraordinary new environment in addition to life with his autistic sister.

The family routine is upset during Ramona's year in second grade when her father unexpectedly loses his job. Ramona Quimby is a character intimately known by Beverly Cleary readers. In this story of Ramona's year in second grade they will come to know Mr. Quimby equally well. As it opens he loses his job without warning, and Ramona's seven-year-old view of this all-too-frequently family crisis rings every change of mood from tears to laughter. Not...

Sixteen-year-old Nina Faye navigates the difficult world of teenage relationships and dysfunctional family dynamics.

Five white teenage cousins who are struggling with the failures and racial ignorance of their dysfunctional parents and their wealthy grandparents, reunite for Easter.

"Slow Way Home is a warm, witty, fresh, and innovative novel." - --Homer Hickam, author of October Sky "Slow Way Home is a gem -- both gritty and heartwarming at once. A wonderful, emotional read." - --Lee Smith, author of The Last Girls "Slow Way Home is a novel for the heart. It is pitch perfect and the character Brandon is going to linger in a lot of minds. The opening chapter is one of the most poignant and poweful I have ever read. This is...

Traveling from California to Chicago after her mother dies of a drug overdose and her grandmother of lung cancer, thirteen-year-old Rydr meets other passengers on the train and attempts to accept her own situation.

When Angel's self-absorbed mother leaves her and her younger brother with their poor great-grandmother, the eleven-year-old girl worries not only about her mother and brother, her imprisoned father, the frail old woman, but also about a mysterious man who begins sharing with her the wonder of the stars.

By weaving through her memories and watching the family and friends she left behind, eighteen-year-old Liz Valchar solves the mystery of how her life ended in the Long Island Sound.

"Hayley Kincaid and her father move back to their hometown to try a "normal" life, but the horrors he saw in the war threaten to destroy their lives"--