single-parent families

After enduring his father's suicide, his own suicide attempt, broken friendships, and more in the Bronx projects, Aaron Soto, sixteen, is already considering the Leteo Institute's memory-alteration procedure when his new friendship with Thomas turns to unrequited love.

Exhausted and rebellious after three years of working for her father and mothering her brother, eighteen-year-old Arcadia "Cadie" Wells joins two cousins who are camping their way through Florida, soon learning that one is a murderer.

"Mia and her friends resurface at the well's end to discover an astounding underground civilization, and immediately find themselves drawn into a terrible civil war"--.

In Japan, teenaged Abe Sora, who is afflicted with "Lou Gehrig's Disease," finds friends online and elicits their help to end his suffering.

Sixteen-year-old Erin's life is fairly normal until she learns that her mother has breast cancer and she, too, may carry a mutated gene, so amid high school dramas including betrayal by her best friend, she must consider preemptive surgery to guarantee she will not be stricken.

Seventeen-year-old Sephora, a surfer and artist who loves fairy tales and mythology, struggles with a secret so horrible she cannot speak it aloud, especially not to her beautiful, single mother, although they have always been unusually close.

Sixteen-year-old Sage Czinski is known as "Princess Post-it" for her habit of leaving encouraging notes on the lockers of classmates having a bad day--she does it to hide a painful past. When she meets new kid Shane, and learns he's living alone, she tries to help him and the two grow close. When both their secrets finally come out in a showdown with a bully, the teens learn that they can survive most anything.

Da'Quan has never quite broken into the popular crowd at school, but when a strange dream-character gives him the ability to channel others' thoughts, Da'Quan is surprised by what he can learn from them.

"Tory and her comrades must track a new pack of rogue Virals who have brought on the attention of a shadowy government organization intent on learning the secret to their powers"--.

Seventeen-year-olds Lizzie, Ella, and Betsey Best are clones, raised as identical triplets by their surrogate mother but taking turns living as her one daughter, Elizabeth, until their separate abilities and a romantic relationship force a change.