As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.

Dreaming of life in the city while caring for her alcoholic father and working in a 1960s boys' prison, a disturbed young woman is manipulated into committing a psychologically charged crime during the holiday season.

Twelve-year-old Jonathan Grisby has been sent to the Slabhenge Reformatory School for Troubled Boys, a former lunatic asylum which is currently run by a sadist who enjoys punishing the boys and setting them against each other; but when a lightning strike kills all the adults the boys find themselves suddenly free--and trapped on Scar Island which seems to be sinking into the ocean.

A group of teens at the Hope Juvenile Treatment Center are shocked to discover their guards have abandoned them, but their joy turns to fear when they learn a catastrophic pandemic has occurred outside their walls, turning their new-found freedom into a fight for survival.

When Liam, a fourteen-year-old graffiti artist, can't keep his grades up and is threatened by a local gang in the projects of Minneapolis, his mother sends him to Lake Michigan for the summer.

As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.

Garvie Smith is a sixteen-year-old with a genius level IQ, who can not be bothered with school, smokes cannabis, and hangs out with the bad boys--but when fifteen-year-old Chloe Dow is murdered he comes up against the ambitious Detective Inspector Singh, and both of them are determined to solve the case.

"Robyn's scared of dogs -- like, really scared. But she agrees to spend her summer working at an animal shelter anyway. (It's a long story.) Robyn soon discovers that many juvenile offenders also volunteer at the shelter -- including Nick Di'Angelo, a boy from Robyn's past. A boy she hoped never to see again. Nick has a talent for getting into trouble, but after his latest arrest, Robyn suspects that he just might be innocent. And she sets out to...

After ignoring several warnings to stop dating his teacher, Garrett is sent to Lake Harmony, a boot camp that uses unorthodox and brutal methods to train students to obey their parents.

Having escaped from juvenile detention centers and foster care, two teenaged boys live on their own in an abandoned shack in a New York City park, making their way by stealing, occasionally working, and trying to keep from being arrested.