Having been abducted at age seven, abandoned, a foster child, and homeless, Ethan, now sixteen, is happy to be home until his brother's suspicion and his own inability to remember something unspeakable from his early childhood begin to tear the family apart.
Fourteen-year-old Al Capsella, desperately trying to be normal and blend in with the rest of the crowd, is constantly embarrassed by his highly unconventional parents.
Although each of Owliver's parents has ideas for what he should do when he grows up and they expose him to lessons and experiences of various kinds, Owliver makes his own decision about what he is going to be.
Twelve-year-old Happenstance wakes up in a cave with no idea how he got there, or who he is, but merchant and royal advisor Lord Umber helps Hap and his two friends escape from the caverns.
Twelve-year-old Gabe would prefer to spend his time underwater swimming with the fish and avoiding his family's problems, until he begins working at the local aquarium store and swimming with the school swim team and realizes that life on the surface can be fun too.
After spending her life with her mentally retarded mother and agoraphobic neighbor, twelve-year-old Heidi sets out from Reno, Nevada, to New York to find out who she is.
It is obvious Claudia is very different from her sister Janine. But when she can hardly find any baby pictures of herself and no birth certificate, she begins to wonder if she might have been adopted.
Grady, a transgendered high school student, yearns for acceptance by his classmates and family as he struggles to adjust to his new identity as a male.
When Amber, a smart, middle-class, high school student, is hit by a truck, she meets her deceased grandmother in a dreamlike place, then takes a wrong turn and awakens in the body of a wealthy, beautiful, popular classmate with serious problems.
