single-parent families

Author Maureen Stanton describes her difficult childhood watching her parents divorce and her now-single mother turn to shoplifting and grand larceny. Stanton herself begins a life of crime that includes vandalism, breaking and entering, and drugs before finally finding a path away from self-destruction.

Fifteen-year-old Dylan has horrific visions of the last moments of a child's life -- a child who has been abducted, kidnapped, or worse. Dylan gives the police valuable clues that help them to find children's bodies, but she keeps the most personal information about these young victims to herself. Dylan has become used to withholding her sight abilities -- even from her best friend, Pilar -- but the weight of that secret is becoming almost more than she can bear.Then Cate moves into Dylan's mountain town. Enthusiastic and friendly, Cate seems genuinely interested in Dylan, who begins to reveal a bit about herself. But is Cate all that she seems to be? It's not entirely clear...and it takes the disappearance of Pilar's little sister to finally open Dylan's eyes. In a race against time to save a life, and desperate to focus her abilities so that she herself can survive, Dylan is forced to see more clearly than she ever has before.Sight is a powerful and haunting story from the author of the highly acclaimed debut novel Skin. It will open the eyes of readers everywhere.

With his mother working long hours and in pain from a romantic break-up, eighteen-year-old Logan feels alone and unloved until a zany new student--who is hiding a big secret--arrives at his small-town Missouri high school.

Ernie, an overweight high school student and long-time target of bullies, relies on his best friend Will to watch his back until Will, overwhelmed by problems at home and guilt over his brother's death, seeks a final solution.

Seventeen-year-old Kate, feeling alone in the wake of her mother's death and her father's preoccupation with his new girlfriend, prepares, with the help of her younger sister, to give birth to her baby in secret.

In 1968, with the Vietnam War raging, thirteen-year-old Lyza inherits a project from her deceased grandfather, who had been using his knowledge of maps and the geography of Lyza's New Jersey hometown to locate the lost treasure of Captain Kidd.

Ten-year-old Jake forms an unexpected bond with his estranged grandfather after his mother's injury puts the pair together in time for the Christmas holiday.

Music entwines Kira, a thirteen-year-old singer who hates that her father makes her perform for money on New York City subway platforms; Eugene, the class clown; and Jake, who longs to sing and to approach Kira, but feels held back by his stuttering.

Rory, a girl in witness protection, thinks the serial killer she turned in has found her and is killing people around her, but as she investigates, she discovers a dark, disturbing truth about her new hometown.

Eighteen-year-old Robert tries to help his half-brother Xan, a seventeen-year-old misfit, to make better choices as he becomes increasingly attracted to a variety of protesters, anarchists, and the like.