problem families

Seventeen-year-old Christy, sad since her father's death, ignored by her mother, and abused by her drug-dealing half-brother, finds friends who help her learn to stand up for herself and move past the old hurts and fears that are keeping her down.

Sixteen-year-old Anooshka Stargirl, whose homelife is less than rosy, meets a rock singer named Orpheus and finds her obsession with him drawing her into his world.

Seventeen-year-old Pattyn, the eldest daughter in a large Mormon family, is sent to her aunt's Nevada ranch for the summer where she temporarily escapes her alcoholic, abusive father and finds love and acceptance, only to lose everything when she returns home.

Tenth-grader Sonia Rodriguez reveals secrets about her life and her Hispanic family while she studies hard so that she can be the first member of her family to successfully finish high school.

After the suicide of her troubled teenage sister, eleven-year-old Jenny struggles to understand what actually happened by studying the clues her sister left behind in a cardboard box.

Sandra is attempting to cope with an alcoholic father, finding a job, and getting on with her life; however, others around her continue to pressure her into trying to find her missing mother.

As he is dying, a twenty-year-old man known as Gabriel recounts his troubled childhood and his strange relationship with a dangerous counterpart named Finnigan.

Thirteen-year-old Jason finds an old postcard at his recently-deceased grandmother's house that leads him on an adventure blending figures from an old, unfinished detective story with his family's past.

Ann Fay is concerned about her family after she returns from the polio hospital and discovers that her father is changed after fighting in World War II, but the opportunity to receive treatment in Georgia offers her comfort, until she gets news that her family is getting worse.

Afraid of being taken from his grandmother and placed in a foster home, Harold Davis, a Bluford High freshman, begins to work for the neighborhood drug dealer, Londell James, but Harold's choice leads him to world more dangerous than he could have imagined.