Miki just wants an ordinary family, but her life is turned upside-down when her parents meet the Matsuuras, and she winds up living in a house with four parents and a stepbrother she can't stand.
Seventeen-year-old Leigh changes high schools his senior year to help his stepsister and finds himself falling in love with her emotionally disturbed friend, even though he is still attached to a girl back home.
Buzz, Vanessa, Carter, and Jane must find a way to survive when they are stranded without adults or supplies on a deserted island in the middle of the South Pacific.
Over Christmas vacation, Annabel goes from her home in Manhattan to visit her father, his new wife, and her half- and step-siblings in Sydney, Australia.
Julian Drew, attempting to cope with the recent death of his mother and an abusive step-mother, writes in a code in three notebooks in which he documents his changing life in code.
Jane, Buzz, Carter, and Vanessa, aged nine to thirteen, are on a sailing trip in the South Pacific intended to help them bond in their newly-blended family when a massive storm strands them on a deserted island.
Sent to live with her chef father and his wife in Oregon after having stayed with her inventor uncle and scientist mother in Cincinnati, ten-year-old misfit Megan is lonely until she starts working with some computer-savvy mice to try to save Mouse Nation--and the planet.
When her mother goes on a NASA mission, Cat is sent to live with her father, stepsister Olivia, and younger brother Geoffrey, but an inept fairy godmother causes toads to appear when Cat speaks and gems to fall from Olivia's mouth.
Eleven-year-old Georgie is still adjusting to leaving Atlanta for a small town, having a stepfather, and being unable to get close to her stepsister when her six-year-old sister, Peaches, suddenly becomes very ill.
