"Jeremiah just wants a normal summer with his dad, but it's clear that isn't happening. His dad just moved to an apartment near downtown Minneapolis to live with his new boyfriend, Michael. Michael wears shorts too short, serves weird organic foods, and is constantly nagging Jeremiah to watch out for potholes and to stay hydrated. Worst of all Michael rides the Uni-cycle. Okay, it's a bicycle decorated to look like a unicorn! This is going to be a...

Losing his father shortly after birth, Warren Spooner endures a troubled childhood and even more troubled young adulthood that is marked by his dishonorably discharged stepfather, whose inexhaustible patience is tested by the difficult Warren. By the National Book Award-winning author of Paris Trout.

"During a sweltering summer, Dills must come to terms with a horrific crime and the parent he loves who committed it. Dills and his mom have returned to Hamilton, her hometown, hoping to leave the horrors of Wilkson behind. But it's impossible to really run from tragedy, and trouble always follows trouble. When Dills hurts a new classmate, it comes out in court that he was in the Wilkson Collegiate library when the shooter came in. But he won't talk...

"The signs are everywhere, acccording to Jory's stepfather, Caleb. The end is coming, and they must be prepared. School is Jory's only escape from Caleb's tight grasp, and with the help of new friends, he begins to explore a world beyond his family's desert ranch"--

Kit Noonan is an unemployed art historian with twins to help support, a mortgage to pay, and a wife frustrated by his inertia. Raised by a strong-willed, secretive single mother, Kit has never known the identity of his father, a mystery his wife insists he must solve to move forward with his life. Out of desperation, Kit goes to the mountain retreat of his mother's former husband, Jasper, a take-no-prisoners outdoorsman. There, Kit and Jasper confront...

"After heartbreaking betrayal, Carley is sent to live with a foster family and struggles with opening herself up to their love"--

When her stepfather leaves and her family loses their home to fire, twelve-year-old Chinese-American Monica, or Mo, struggles with anxiety, but the chance to hunt an elephant ghost -- and the promise of a new friend -- help convince her to live a little more dangerously.

Since her mother died, twelve-year-old Lily has struggled to care for her severely autistic half-brother, Adam, in their Miami home, but she is frustrated and angry because her oncologist step-father, Don, expects her to devote her time to Adam, and is unwilling to admit that Adam needs professional help--but when Adam bonds with a young dolphin with cancer Lily is confronted with another dilemma: her family or the dolphin's freedom.

Very good friends, her poetry notebooks, and a mysterious "ninja of nice" give seventeen-year-old Rae the strength to face her mother's neglect, her stepfather's increasing abuse, and a new boyfriend's obsessiveness.

In 1910 New York City, four years after her Irish immigrant father dies of tuberculosis, ten-year-old Essie's fear and anxiety continue to grow uncontrollably, so much that when her mother, a brave nurse, remarries and the family moves to North Brother Island, where Essie's new stepfather runs a quarantine hospital for the incurably sick, Essie imagines all manner of horrors, including the ghost of a little girl--which might not be imaginary after...