How could two hardworking people do everything right in life, a woman asks, and end up destitute? Willa Knox and her husband followed all the rules as responsible parents and professionals, and have nothing to show for it but debts and an inherited brick house that is falling apart. The magazine where Willa worked has folded; the college where her husband had tenure has closed. Their dubious shelter is also the only option for a disabled father-in-law...

When Auden impulsively goes to stay with her father, stepmother, and new baby sister the summer before she starts college, all the trauma of her parents' divorce is revived, even as she is making new friends and having new experiences such as learning to ride a bike and dating.

The week of her tenth birthday, Alice and her parents go to Sanibel Island, Florida, just as they do every year, but this time some of the people who are always there are missing and some new people have come. This unsettles Alice, who wants things to be exactly the same as they alway have been.

A country house is unhappy when the city, with all its buildings and traffic, grows up around her. Includes CD.

Eleven-year-old Edwina confronts old and new challenges when her longtime best friend Sally faces the inevitable death of the grandmother who raised her.

"Viv's career with the notorious mercenary company Rackam's Ravens isn't going as planned. Wounded during the hunt for a powerful necromancer, she's packed off against her will to recuperate in the sleepy beach town of Murk—so far from the action that she worries she'll never be able to return to it. What's a thwarted soldier of fortune to do? Spending her hours at a beleaguered bookshop in the company of its foul-mouthed proprietor is the last...

"Micah Mortimer is a creature of habit. A self-employed tech expert, superintendent of his Baltimore apartment building, cautious to a fault behind the steering wheel, he seems content leading a steady, circumscribed life. But one day his routines are blown apart when his woman friend (he refuses to call anyone in her late thirties a "girlfriend") tells him she's facing eviction, and a teenager shows up at Micah's door claiming to be his son. These...

A girl in a large family is looking forward to her first "double digit" birthday, but soon discovers that growing up brings some unwanted changes.

Cole Matthews returns to civilization after his year of exile in the Alaskan wilderness and is ready to face high school, but when the school bullies begin to target his friend, Peter, Cole feels his rage once again coming to the surface and worries high school may prove harder to survive than the wilderness.

"As a young girl leads a cast of characters on a musical journey, they learn that they have the power to make changes -- big or small -- in the world, in their communities, and in most importantly, in themselves."--