Nine-year-old Thomas receives encouragement from many sources, including candid talks with Jesus, to help him tolerate the strict family life dictated by his deeply-religious father.
A collection of eleven short stories by various authors dealing with situations which a family or family member tries to keep secret because of an underlying problem.
Having reluctantly accompanied his academic mother and pesky younger sister to Oxford, twelve-year-old Blake Winters is at loose ends until he stumbles across an ancient and magical book, secretly brought to England in 1453 by Gutenberg's mute apprentice to save it from evil forces, and which now draws Blake into a dangerous and life-threatening quest.
Unable to cope with her father's alcoholism, thirteen-year-old Sam corresponds with an older student, sharing her family problems and asking for advice.
After spending over four years in a mental institution for murdering a friend in Alaska, fourteen-year-old Kip begins a completely new life in Indiana with his father and stepmother under a different name, but has trouble fitting in and finds there are still problems to deal with from his childhood.
The author recalls her life growing up in a dysfunctional family with an alcohol father and distant mother and describes how she and her siblings had to fend for themselves until they finally found the resources and will to leave home.
When her father leaves for a job out of town, Mazzy is left at home to try to cope with her mother, who has been severely depressed since the death of Mazzy's baby sister.
Tells, in their separate voices and at a space of fourteen years, of Emmy, whose baby has been stolen, and Sophie, a teenager who defies her nomadic, controlling mother by making friends with a neighbor boy and his elderly aunts.
After moving to Laguna Beach, California, seventeen-year-old Anne decides to learn to surf in order to fit in, but, her competition, Ellie, still won't seem to give her a break.
