Isolated from friends who believe the worst because she has not been truthful with them, sixteen-year-old Annabel finds an ally in classmate Owen, whose honesty and passion for music help her to face and share what really happened at the end-of-the-year party that changed her life.

Stephanie's relationship with her best firend, Rachel, changes during her first year in junior high as she tries to conceal a family problem and meets a new girl from California. Rachel is Stephanie's best friend, and ever since second grade they've shared each other's secrets, good and bad. When Alison moves into the neighborhood, Stephanie hopes they can all be best friends. After all, they have even more to share now, including seventh grade and...

After his estranged soldier son, Danny, is charged with murder while serving in Iraq, Tom Bedford must come to terms with his own past--during which a shocking act of violence ended his parents' idyllic Hollywood union--if he is going to help exonerate Danny.

Christopher Flynn is trying to get it right. After years of trouble and rebellion that enraged his father and nearly cost him his life, he has a steady job in his father's company, he's seriously dating a woman he respects, and, aside from the distrust that lingers in his father's eyes, his mistakes are firmly in the past. One day on the job, Chris and his partner come across a temptation almost too big to resist. Chris does the right thing, but

...

While spending the month of August on the Massachusetts shore with her father, stepmother, and their new baby, almost thirteen-year-old Maggie finds beauty in and draws strength from a great blue heron, even as the family around her unravels.

After her younger brother, Tyler, commits suicide, Lex struggles to work through her grief in the face of a family that has fallen apart, the sudden distance between her and her friends, and memories of Tyler that still feel all too real.

The Dunnes have set off on a ten day boat trip, a trip that hopefully will bring them closer together, despite the fact that the father, Stuart is staying behind on land. But only an hour into the trip they're already falling apart. The teenage daughter plans to drown herself, and the teenage boy is high on drugs. Ten-year-old Ernie is near catatonic. But their mother Anne, with the help of her brother-in-law Jeff, is insistent on pulling everyone...

Written in the form of interviews, reports, and journal entries, the story of three troubled teenagers ends in a tragic school shooting.

While Wyoming sheriff Crane Carlson struggles with a meth-influenced murder, his wife's addictions and his own manifestation of a genetic disease, octogenarian Einar Gilkyson takes stock of his life and reluctantly accepts help from his college dropout granddaughter.

Twins Audrey and Clare grapple with their brother Adam's death as well as with the need to belong.