parent and child

Through letters and essays, emotionally disturbed sixteen-year-old Abby chronicles her growing desperation in a family consisting of parents who seem devoid of love, one older sister bent on self-destruction, and another older sister who has always seemed perfect.

The Green sisters seem to lead a perfect life, but when one sister uncovers their mother's affair, they are devastated by the betrayal and move to New York, where they try to rebuild their trust and start a new life.

Matthew's search for answers about his childhood and his family lead him to kidnap his own sister and demand she reveal what she knows, no matter what the cost is.

When Sylvie Mason's parents venture out to an old church as part of their efforts to help "haunted souls," they each vanish behind the church's doors, leaving Sylvie to wonder what happened. In the months that follow, Sylvie unearths the mysteries behind her parents' work and uncovers secrets that have followed her own family for years.

Discusses how to explain the facts of death to children from two-year-olds to teenagers.

Examines the growing trend in peer orientation that undermines and interferes with parental influence and control in the lives of children, and describes the correlation between that and teenage gangs, bullying, and school violence.

After the German occupation of the Netherlands, Benjamin leaves the Christian family with whom he had been living and reunites with his real parents who returned from hiding.

Eleven-year-old Primrose, who lives in a small fishing village in British Columbia, recounts her experiences and all that she learns about human nature and the unpredictability of life in the months after her parents are lost at sea.

Feeling neglected by her father in Brazil and her mother in Washington, D.C., Georgia Hughes tries to cope with life at a boarding school in Connecticut by imagining relationships with John Kennedy and Miss Beard, the ghost of the former headmistress of the school.