southern california

When their parents go home briefly and the gateway suddenly stops working, Jeremy and Amanda Solters, teenage siblings in a family of professional travelers to parallel timelines, are left to fend for themselves in a still-thriving Rome, which gets even more complicated when the Empire comes under attack.

Four diverse seventh and eighth graders at southern California's San Paulo Junior High tell, from their unique perspectives, of a tumultuous year of changing friendships and romantic interests as they are learning to be themselves.

Ali Warner stumbles on a plot by a neighboring dimension to invade and destroy the earth and finds out that she has been chosen to intervene and save the human race.

Sinclair portrays the oil industry of the 1920s through the eyes of Bunny, the son of a genial independent oil developer.

Contains two novels, including "Laguna Cove, " in which Anne, a newcomer to Laguna Beach, California, decides to learn to surf to fit in, but her competition, Ellie, still will not give her a break; and "Cruel Summer, "in which Colby Cavendish, having shed her dorky image, is looking forward to an exciting summer with the "in crowd, " including handsome Levi Bonham, but she gains a new perspective on her life and priorities when she is shipped off to Greece instead to spend the season with her eccentric Aunt Tally.

Fifteen-year-old Angela, distraught over her mother and stepfather's separation, confides in a statue of St. Felix that suddenly seems to come alive, after which she befriends Jesse, a nineteen-year-old disabled veteran, although Felix, her family, and friends warn her to be wary of him.

Tommy Phan, a thirty-year-old Vietnamese American detective novelist, is forced to run for his life when the odd rag doll he found lying on his doorstep turns into an indestructible reptilian creature with evil intent.

Fifteen-year-old Michelle Pena, born into a powerful Mexican American gang family, tries to reconcile her gangster legacy with the girl she has become--a nationally ranked runner and academic superstar.

Tina Malhotra, a sophomore at the Yarborough Academy in Southern California, creates an existential diary for an honors English assignment in which she tries to determine who she is and where she fits in.

Thirteen-year-old, Southern California surfer Yumi Ruiz-Hirsch is a unique mix of Jewish, Japanese, and Cuban heritage; and when her grandfather, Saul, is diagnosed with terminal cancer, she asks him to tell her his life story in order to better understand her own history.