As her father prepares to marry their new neighbor, Veronica Kreep, Polly tries to convince him that there is something sinister and strange about Veronica and her family.
In the 1880s, thirteen-year-old Thomas moves west from the aristocratic Virginia home of his grandparents to a poor Kansas farm to live with a father he barely remembers and his new stepfamily.
Fourteen-year-old Cassie, feeling like an outsider while on a cruise to Martinique with her father and her new stepfamily, becomes involved in helping Charles, a cute boy her own age, solve a mystery that has been haunting his family for years.
Answers questions children often ask about stepfamilies, discussing what a stepfamily is, how they are formed, how they live, what it feels like to be part of a stepfamily, how family members resolve problems, and related topics.
Thirteen-year-old Evyn's world is turned upside-down when her father, widowed since she was a toddler, suddenly decides to marry a woman with six children, move with Ev and her older brother from Maine to Boston, and enroll her in private school.
Discusses the different types of stepfamilies, including ones with two divorced parents, a widowed parent, and one with gay parents. Also discusses the emotional cycle that teens can go through in learning to accept the new family and how the transition can be made easier.
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.
Teenagers Seattle and Critter, "faux step-siblings" since Seattle's father left her with Critter's mother six-years earlier, spend the summer sorting through their romantic feelings and making decisions about what they want from life.
Indie Kidd gets so caught up in helping her stepbrother Dylan make friends, she forgets to pay attention to her own best friends and finds herself being shut out.
