staten island (new york, n.y.)

Middle school student Sam is comfortable with their nonbinary identity, and their family has accepted it too (as long as they do their homework and chores), so when their history teacher assigns as a project coming up with a proposal for the new statue honoring a historical Staten Islander (there is a contest involved) they and their friend TJ decide to focus on Alice Austen, a lesbian photographer, whose house on Staten Island is a museum--but they have to overcome the presumption on the part of their teacher that only straight males are eligible.

"The Ramirez women of Staten Island orbit around absence. When thirteen year old middle child Ruthy disappeared after track practice without a trace, it left the family scarred and scrambling. One night, twelve years later, oldest sister Jessica spots a woman on her TV screen in Catfight, a raunchy reality show. She rushes to tell her younger sister, Nina: This woman's hair is dyed red, and she calls herself Ruby, but the beauty mark under her left eye is instantly recognizable. Could it be Ruthy, after all this time? The years since Ruthy's disappearance haven't been easy on the Ramirez family. It's 2008, and their mother, Dolores, still struggles with the loss, Jessica juggles a newborn baby with her hospital job, and Nina, after four successful years at college, has returned home to medical school rejections and is forced to work in the mall folding tiny bedazzled thongs at the lingerie store. After seeing maybe Ruthy on their screen, Jessica and Nina hatch a plan to drive to where the show is filmed in search of their long lost sister. When Dolores catches wind of their scheme, she insists on joining, along with her pot-stirring holy roller best friend, Irene. What follows is a family road trip and reckoning that will force the Ramirez women to finally face the past and look toward a future-with or without Ruthy in it. What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez is a vivid family portrait, in all its shattered reality, exploring the familial bonds between women and cycles of generational violence, colonialism, race, and silence, replete with snark, resentment, tenderness, and, of course, love"--.

Middle school student Sam is comfortable with their nonbinary identity, and their family has accepted it too (as long as they do their homework and chores), so when their history teacher assigns as a project coming up with a proposal for the new statue honoring a historical Staten Islander (there is a contest involved) they and their friend TJ decide to focus on Alice Austen, a lesbian photographer, whose house on Staten Island is a museum--but they have to overcome the presumption on the part of their teacher that only straight males are eligible.

When mutant rats threaten to take over Staten Island, which has become a huge landfill, fourteen-year-old Sarah and her younger brother Mike try to figure out how to stop them.

Although she longs to be an all-American girl, Roxanne, a timid, Israeli-born thirteen-year-old who idolizes Wonder Woman, begins to see things differently when the supremely confident Liat, also from Israel, moves into the cursed house next door and they become friends.

Twenty-nine-year-old Maureen Coughlin tries to keep her mother safe while she investigates the murder of her coworker Dennis, who turned up dead the morning after Maureen caught him having a fling with aspiring politician Frank Sebastian.

New York reporter Harry Randall's supposed suicide while in the midst of a series of articles exposing the shady past of firefighter Captain Jimmy McCaffrey, one of the heroes of 9/11, prompts Randall's lover and protegee Laura Stone to mount her own investigation of McCaffrey, his childhood friends, and Randall's death.

An account of Paul Zindel's teenage years on Staten Island, when his life was enriched by finding his own personal pigman, or mentor.

An account of Paul Zindel's teenage years on Staten Island, when his life was enriched by finding his own personal pigman, or mentor.

A year after her artistic mother's death, fifteen-year-old Maggie puts aside her desire to set fires and hopes for more solidity in life, as her down-to-earth father prepares to marry a like-minded woman and sell their home on the Staten Island shore.