single-parent families

Despite her poor background and ferocious competition from more privileged girls, fourteen-year-old Sid pursues her dream of becoming a catch rider -- a show rider who can ride anything -- with help from her Uncle Wayne.

When a third person in three years goes missing, presumed dead, July Fourth weekend in Winston, California, sixteen-year-old budding fashion designer Clare Knight uses her gift of seeing visions of people's pasts while touching their clothing to seek the truth, at risk of her own life.

Adrian longs for his own television cooking show and the affections of his estranged wife, but he learns that no one ever gets everything they want.

When Mama's pregnancy draws attention away from Gia, she worries that the special bond they share will disappear forever once the baby is born.

Having finally developed the psychic ability her father has used to provide for them, twelve-year-old Spirit Holden, aided by the ghost of her beloved dog Sky, investigates the mystery of why wild dogs are dying on their remote island.

From age three, McCutcheon Daniels, now sixteen, has been trained in Mixed Martial Arts and must keep winning to feed his five-year-old sister and father, but chance presents an opportunity to get out of the Detroit slums using his brain instead of his fighting skills.

The summer before she enters the seventh grade becomes the summer of Alice's first boyfriend, and she discovers that love is about the most mixed-up thing that can possibly happen to you, especially since she has no mother to go to for advice.

Fifth-grader Cally Louise Fisher stops talking, partly because her father and brother never speak of her mother who died a year earlier, but visions of her mother, friendships, and a huge dog ensure that she still communicates.

When Rory Miller learns that her love, Tristan Parrish, has been seeking a second chance at life on Earth by sending good souls to the Shadowlands, including her friend Aaron, her father, and her sister Darcy, she will do anything to save them, even if that means going to hell and back.

"After Claire Can survives a brutal attack in Chicago, she and her father move to Peculiar, Missouri, where she discovers the body of a high-school girl and realizes that she cannot escape her past"--.