Stephanie's relationship with her best friend, Rachel, changes during her first year in junior high as she tries to conceal a family problem and meets a new girl from California.

When Angel's self-absorbed mother leaves her and her younger brother with their poor great-grandmother, the eleven-year-old girl worries not only about her mother and brother, her imprisoned father, the frail old woman, but also about a mysterious man who begins sharing with her the wonder of the stars.

Dicey struggles to make a go of a boatbuilding business while facing family concerns, romantic problems, and the uncertainties of a drifter who offers to help her in her work.

Although she feels that the holidays are a season of misery, Jeanette Brioche is pushed into working on the town's annual Christmas festival with the sexy new town manager, Tom McDonald. But with romance in the air, Jeanette and Tom take a fresh look at their painful pasts and a hopeful look into the future.

Nellie O'Malley finally has a home again. She and her little sisters, Bridget and Jenny, are happily settling in with Samantha's family in New York City..."

Abandoned by their mother after the death of their father, three youngsters are determined to keep their situation a secret so that the authorities will not split them up and send them to foster homes.

Two sixteen-year-old girls from different social classes spend the summer together on a resort island and experience a test of their friendship when family loyalties, romance, and drug dependence interfere.

When his parents' quarreling becomes too bitter to bear, fourteen-year-old Hugo decides to run away and pretend he's been kidnapped.

While visiting her younger sister Mollie, Beth confronts painful memories of the sudden death of her parents and the subsequent adoption of the sisters by different families.

Zach, Alice, and Poppy, friends from a Pennsylvania middle school who have long enjoyed acting out imaginary adventures with dolls and action figures, embark on a real-life quest to Ohio to bury a doll made from the ashes of a dead girl.