coming of age

In the 1960s, Rico Fuentes, a pale-skinned Cuban American teenager, abandons drug-infested New York City for the picket fence and apple pie world of Wisconsin, only to discover that he still feels like an outsider and that violent and judgmental people can be found even in the wholesome Midwest.

After the United States wins the war with Mexico in 1848, life on her Mexican family's ranch in California is greatly changed for thirteen-year-old Cesa.

Orphan Nicolo Zen is all alone in 1700's Venice, save for his clarinet, which has been enchanted by a mysterious magician to allow its first player to perform expertly. Soon Nicolo is a famous virtuoso, wealthy beyond his dreams, but he can't stop wondering if he earned the success--or if the girl he met in Venice is safe from harm.

Ernesto and the other students at Chavez High are looking forward to graduation and starting out in the real world, but many of them, including Ernesto, fear they will wind up stuck in dead-end jobs, trapped in their poor city with no hope for a better life.

Ninth-grader Maisie's concepts of friendship, loyalty, self-acceptance, and truth are tested to their limit after a school bus incident with the three boys who have been her best friends since early childhood.

High school sophomore Lucy Norton's life is turned upside down when her father remarries and moves Lucy to Long Island, where she finds herself trapped in a Cinderella story with a wicked stepmother, two evil stepsisters, and a dashing prince who could make all Lucy's dreams come true.

Teenaged Jack, later to be known as Repairman Jack, begins to uncover some unsuspected talents in himself after he and his friends, the clever, imaginative Weezy and her brother Eddie, discover a corpse deep in the mysterious Pine Barrens near their New Jersey town.

Cassie, growing up in the 1960s a home her mother calls their Lucky Place, tries to reconcile her feelings for her charming, drunk of a father, and her stepfather Ellis, who she adores.

In Dover, England in 1940, fourteen-year-old Alec Curtis wants nothing more than to go to sea, to absolve himself of the guilt he feels over the earlier drowning of his cousin and to help the war effort, but when he sneaks aboard a small boat going across the English Channel to Dunkirk, his experience changes him forever.

In 1100, eighteen-year-old Simon struggles to find himself a place in divided England, and when he is offered the chance to accompany the king on a royal hunt, Simon hopes the journey will unlock doors for an exciting future, but when the hunt takes a fatal turn, Simon is forced to flee for his life.