When star athlete Josh Daniels moves in across the street, Ryan Ward doesn't realize how much his life will change during his senior year at Seattle's Crown Hill High.
At the end of the summer, 14-year-old Owen refuses to leave the beach house which has been his family's summer home for 10 years and which is scheduled for demolition.
Although they share a love of poetry and problems with their parents, a shy high school senior's attraction to a popular classmate is tempered by her fear of his moody, self-destructive side.
Thirteen-year-old Kelly tries to befriend Mr. Weems, a disturbed homeless Vietnam War veteran who spends his days in her suburban library, though the man makes it clear he wants to be left alone.
In Providence, R.I., in 1848, Edgar Allan Poe reluctantly investigates the problems of eleven-year-old Edmund, whose family has mysteriously disappeared and whose story suggests a new Poe tale with a ghastly final twist.
Her mother, her foster guardian, and fourteen-year-old Rainbow comment on the state of things as she prepares to return to a foster home for yet another stay.
