dysfunctional families

Twelve-year-old Lafayette's close relationship with his older brother Charlie changes after Charlie is released from a detention home and blames Lafayette for the death of their mother.

While Hollywood teenager Divine Matthews-Hardison is staying in Georgia with her devoutly Christian uncle and his family, she faces difficult choices about keeping secrets that might be harmful to others, and how--or whether--to accept her mother's boyfriend into her life.

Seventeen-year-old Mannie Clarkeson, a girl living in small-town Australia, leaves home in the middle of the night adorned in her mother's red silk evening gown and on a bicycle aimed toward Melbourne, but while she is looking to start a new life there are questions that need to be answered.

Everything changes for Isabelle, not quite fifteen, when she is diagnosed with lymphoma--but eventually she survives and even thrives.

When their friend Scooter dies of a rare disease, teenagers Nick Gardner and Jaycee Amato set out on a secret journey to find the father who abandoned "The Scoot" when he was an infant, and give him a signed first edition of "Of Mice and Men.".

After spending over four years in a mental institution for murdering a friend in Alaska, fourteen-year-old Kip begins a completely new life in Indiana with his father and stepmother under a different name, but has trouble fitting in and finds there are still problems to deal with from his childhood.

Seventeen-year-old Elizabeth Caldwell sees, rather than feels, emotions; they're beings who walk among us. The only emotion who engages with her now is Fear, and he's as desperate as Elizabeth is to figure out how she became this way.

Four teenagers from two families--sisters Katie and Julie and brothers Alex and Kyle--meet every summer at a lakeside community in upstate New York, where they escape their everyday lives and hide disturbing secrets.

At nine years of age, Monica Holloway developed a fascination with the local funeral home. Her father's bouts of violence, her mother's selfishness, and her siblings' betrayals drove her to find safety elsewhere. She becomes fast friends with Julie, whose father is the town mortician. As they grow older, Monica and Julie drive the hearse to the airport to pick up bodies. Although she has to continue to cope with her dysfunctional family, Monica never gives up and her book reflects this.