Serenity Harper is the new girl in school and she seems determined to make everyone hate her. Derek, Kimberley, and the rest of the Prayer Club make it their project to be nice to her no matter how she treats them in order to bring her around to a Christian way of life.

Angry with her mother, twelve-year-old runaway Ren finds an unusual boarding house in a nearby ghost town, Fortune, where she meets some interesting people and learns of a forgotten treasure from when the town was famous for buttons made of Mississippi River shells.

A group of teens in a Seattle-area rehabilitation center form an unlikely friendship as they begin to focus less on their own problems with drugs (including alcohol) by reaching out to help a new member, who seems to have even deeper issues to resolve.

When thirteen-year-old Joan moves to California in 1972, she becomes friends with Sarah, who is timid at school but an imaginative leader when they play in the woods, and after winning a writing contest together they are recruited for an exclusive summer writing class that gives them new insights into themselves and others.

Working at the Renaissance Fair, Jennifer finds her first love and an escape from family problems at home.

As a fourteen-year-old who just moved to a new town, with no friends, an abusive father, and a louse for an older brother, Doug Swieteck has all the stats stacked against him until he finds an ally in Lil Spicer--a fiery young lady. Together, they find a safe haven in the local library, inspiration in learning about the plates of John James Audubon's birds, and a hilarious adventure on a Broadway stage.

When a disruptive and neglected four-year-old moves in with her family, nine-year-old Margie Carson has great difficulty adjusting.

With her mother in prison for killing her father, seventeen-year- old Jane seeks to escape her past and find self-reliance breeding rabbits on their Arkansas homestead.

In 1947, with her jovial stepfather Joe back from the war and family life returning to normal, teenage Evie, smitten by the handsome young ex-GI who seems to have a secret hold on Joe, finds herself caught in a complicated web of lies whose devastating outcome change her life and that of her family forever.

In 1947, after the war, Willa Mae's father returns to the Illinois town where she has lived with her maternal grandparents for the last five of her eleven years, and Willa Mae finds herself struggling to understand old family tensions and secrets.