The Torres sisters dream of escape. Escape from their needy and despotic widowed father, and from their San Antonio neighborhood, full of old San Antonio families and all the traditions and expectations that go along with them. In the summer after her senior year of high school, Ana, the oldest sister, falls to her death from her bedroom window. A year later, her three younger sisters, Jessica, Iridian, and Rosa, are still consumed by grief and haunted...

When her father loses his job, seven-year-old Ramona Quimby thinks of ways to deal with the many problems that develop.

"At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. The story is told by Cyril's son Danny, as he and his older...

A twelve-year-old boy named Moose moves to Alcatraz Island in 1935 when guards' families were housed there, and has to contend with his extraordinary new environment in addition to life with his autistic sister.

Poppy, accompanied by her troublesome son Junior, his skunk friend, and Uncle Ereth the porcupine, responds to a summons to return to her ancestral home, Gray House, to save the mice there from destruction by a bulldozer.

When Naomi's absent mother resurfaces to claim her, Naomi runs away to Mexico with her great-grandmother and younger brother in search of her father.

Marly had been waiting a long time for this special momwnt. She sat alone in the car and stared at the lonely countryside and the small dilapidated house. It had to be the right place. All outdoors. With miracles. Not crowded and people being cross and mean. Daddy not tired all the time. Mothernot worried. She whispered, "Please let there be miracles."

When his best friend, April, disappears from her bedroom in the middle of the night, thirteen year old Theo uses his legal knowledge and investigative skills to chase down the truth and save her. Book #2

When his mother leaves to live with another man, nine-year-old Jeremy faces his own pain and loss, his father's depression and sister's distance, the pity of friends and strangers, and his father's remarriage two years later, finding solace in fishing and his artwork.

A small boy, not allowed to have a dog because times are tight, finds a starving kitten in a trash can on the same day his father loses his job.