Maverick Falconer is just starting middle school and he wishes he were a hero like his father because maybe then he could deal with his mother's drinking and series of abusive boyfriends, not to mention the kids who bully him in middle school (pretty much the same ones who bullied him in elementary school)--but as the year passes he begins to realize that other kids have problems too, and maybe if they can all survive sixth-grade things will get better....

A young girl befriends a squash.

"Friends and pranking partners Miles and Niles face a tough challenge when their favorite goat and nemesis, Principal Barkin, is replaced by his stern, no-nonsense father, Former Principal Barkin, who turns the school into boot camp"--

Seventh-grader Ben, always an outsider, is led into a deep friendship with Halley, who is being treated for cancer, by the special dog he and his adoptive mother take in.

Sixth grader Abigail, assigned a different homeroom than her two best friends and made only the alternate on the pom-pom squad, learns a lot about popularity and true friendship when paired with unpopular Gabby for a year-long "Friendly Letter Assignment."

The lives and fortunes of two New Hampshire families, the Planks and the Dickersons, are entwined through the youngest daughters of each family, who were born on the same day in the same hospital.

"In the 1970s, Larry Ott and Silas '32' Jones were boyhood pals in a small town in rural Mississippi. Their worlds were as different as night and day... But then Larry took a girl to a drive-in movie, and she was never seen or heard from again. He never confessed... and was never charged. More than twenty years have passed. Larry lives a solitary existence, never able to rise above the whispers of suspicion. Silas has become the town constable. And...

"It has been a few months since the nationwide New Candy Contest, and Logan, Miles, Philip, and Daisy have returned to their regular lives. But when the winning candy bar comes down the conveyor belt at the Life Is Sweet candy factory, Logan realizes something's very wrong. When the Candymaker announces that they will be going on tour to introduce the new candy bar, the four friends see this as an opportunity to make things right. But with a fifty-year-old...

Follows a middle-aged man as he reflects on a past he thought was behind him, until he is presented with a legacy that forces him to reconsider different decisions, and to revise his place in the world.

Relieved to be settled back in the United States after an enforced exile, the ladies of the Sisterhood must decide if they are prepared to take on a dangerous task, a job which could reward them beyond their wildest dreams or cause them to lose everything.