When sixteen-year-old Hope and the aunt who has raised her move from Brooklyn to Mulhoney, Wisconsin, to work as waitress and cook in the Welcome Stairways diner, they become involved with the diner owner's political campaign to oust the town's corrupt mayor.

Seventh-grader Ben, always an outsider, is led into a deep friendship with Halley, who is being treated for cancer, by the special dog he and his adoptive mother take in.

Sixteen-year-old Hazel, a stage IV thyroid cancer patient, has accepted her terminal diagnosis until a chance meeting with a boy at cancer support group forces her to reexamine her perspective on love, loss, and life.

Seeing Jane's dog, Yum-Yum, help cheer up children in a cancer ward makes Zoe think about having her puppy, Sneakers, trained to do therapy, too, especially when Yum-Yum becomes very ill.

Raised in Japan, American-born tenth-grader Emma is disconcerted by a move to Massachusetts for her mother's breast cancer treatment, because half of Emma's heart remains with her friends recovering from the tsunami.

"The last person Zac expects in the room next door is a girl like Mia, angry and feisty with questionable taste in music. In the real world, he wouldn't--couldn't--be friends with her. In hospital different rules apply, and what begins as a knock on the wall leads to a note--then a friendship neither of them sees coming"--

Thirteen-year-old Conor awakens one night to find a monster outside his bedroom window, but not the one from the recurring nightmare that began when his mother became ill--an ancient, wild creature that wants him to face truth and loss.

When his mother dies three weeks before his high school graduation, Danny goes to Tokyo, where his mother had been going for cancer treatments, to learn about the city his mother loved and, with the help of his friends, come to terms with her death.

Fifth grader Benny wants to focus on not flunking out of fifth grade, but he must also cope with his complicated home life with newly divorced parents, a mother who moves away, and a father with terminal lung cancer.

"A strange house appears on Jac's street on the five-year anniversary of her cancer diagnosis, and when she gets trapped inside she will have to confront horrors from her past to find a way out"--Provided by publisher.