problem families

Tenth-grader Sonia Rodriguez reveals secrets about her life and her Hispanic family while she studies hard so that she can be the first member of her family to successfully finish high school.

After the suicide of her troubled teenage sister, eleven-year-old Jenny struggles to understand what actually happened by studying the clues her sister left behind in a cardboard box.

Sandra is attempting to cope with an alcoholic father, finding a job, and getting on with her life; however, others around her continue to pressure her into trying to find her missing mother.

As he is dying, a twenty-year-old man known as Gabriel recounts his troubled childhood and his strange relationship with a dangerous counterpart named Finnigan.

Thirteen-year-old Jason finds an old postcard at his recently-deceased grandmother's house that leads him on an adventure blending figures from an old, unfinished detective story with his family's past.

Ann Fay is concerned about her family after she returns from the polio hospital and discovers that her father is changed after fighting in World War II, but the opportunity to receive treatment in Georgia offers her comfort, until she gets news that her family is getting worse.

Afraid of being taken from his grandmother and placed in a foster home, Harold Davis, a Bluford High freshman, begins to work for the neighborhood drug dealer, Londell James, but Harold's choice leads him to world more dangerous than he could have imagined.

Shannon is shocked by her father's violent suicide. Now she is hurt that her love was not enough to make him want to live. Shannon and her mother try to make sense of his death and renew their commitment to living in the face of their loss.

With her father out of the picture and her mother working long hours, twelve-year-old Cassie unconsciously describes her anger and confusion in a fantasy novel she is writing for school.

The love-hate relationship between high school musician Will and his older brother Jason is fueled by the abuse Will suffers at Jason's hands, but a devastating accident changes everything for the boys and their family.