A touching story of eight very different people who are at a crossroads in life and must make decisions that will forever change who they are. Jack must decide to spend the rest of his life with his girlfriend Terri. Marina must reconnect with her aging father. Laurel must embrace her new pregnancy and come to terms with her father's early Alzheimer's. And Dave must learn why life is worth living.

"Twelve-year-old Mysti Murphy of Texas wishes she were a character in a book. If her life were fiction, she'd know how to solve her problems at school, take care of her family when her dad has to spend time in the hospital, and deal with her family's secret: that her mother is agoraphobic and never leaves the house"--

"When Ann decides that she is going to lose 45 pounds in time for her aunt's wedding, she discovers that what she looks like is not all that matters"--

"Kyle McAdams races to find out what's killing kids conceived at the Genesis Innovations Laboratory, before he becomes yet another perfect, blue-eyed corpse"-- Genetically engineered identical twins Kyle and Connor McAdams were born two years apart. Connor was born first, and he was the best at everything-- valedictorian, star quarterback... everything. Kyle never thought he'd be able to live up, so he didn't even try. But when Connor suddenly drops...

"Centered around a family's weekend in their summer cottage on the Northeast cape that explores four lives in crisis and reflects back at us what the American family is becoming"--

When their parents fight, sisters Eleanor and Mike hide, whispering stories and hoping house magic will protect them, until the night a river carries them to a place of dreams and nightmares.

The oldest Marriss brother, fourteen-year-old Dewey, attempts to be the "embodiment of responsibility" as he juggles the management of the family's bicycle repair business while sharing the household and farm duties with his siblings after a sudden energy crisis strands their parents far from home.

"A massive storm was coming straight for Mama's little plot of land in the Mississippi Delta and there was no way any of them could outrun the weather. For three years Melody Mahaffey has been on the road, touring as a keyboardist with a terrible Christian pop band she can hardly stand. So when her mother calls, full of her usual dire news and dramatic pronouncements, Melody is relieved to pack her bags and call it quits. But at the sprawling, defunct...

Fourteen-year-old Alix is faced with a huge moral dilemma when she helps pull an illegal Iraqi immigrant from the incoming tide on the coastal English island where she lives. Hayling Island off the coast of England seems insulated from problems such as war, terrorism and refugees. But when Alix and her friend Samir go to the beach and pull a drowning man out of the incoming tide, her world changes. Mohammed, an illegal immigrant and student, has...

From age six through her high school valedictory speech, believing she and her mother are wizards helps young Echo cope with poverty, hunger, her mother's drug abuse, and much more. Echo Brown is a wizard from the East Side of Cleveland, where apartments are small and parents suffer addiction to the white rocks. Yet there is magic everywhere. Every day Echo travels between worlds, attending a rich white school on the West Side. But there are dangers...