When Rafe Kane enters middle school, he teams up with his best friend, "Leo the Silent," to create a game to make school more fun by trying to break every rule in the school's code of conduct.

Thirteen-year-old Donnie is so upset over her parents' divorce that she gets into increasingly serious trouble at school and does not recognize how much her older sister is hurting as well.

In the small town of Jumbo, Texas, thirteen-year-old Merilee, who has Asperger's Syndrome, tries to live a "Very Ordered Existence," but disruptions begin when a boy and his father arrive in town and the youngster makes himself a part of the family.

"In 1910 New York City, four years after her Irish immigrant father dies of tuberculosis, ten-year-old Essie's fear and anxiety continue to grow uncontrollably, so much that when her mother, a brave nurse, remarries and the family moves to North Brother Island, where Essie's new stepfather runs a quarantine hospital for the incurably sick, Essie imagines all manner of horrors, including the ghost of a little girl--which might not be imaginary after...