After spending her life with her mentally retarded mother and agoraphobic neighbor, twelve-year-old Heidi sets out from Reno, Nevada, to New York to find out who she is. Living with her mentally disabled mother who only knows just over twenty words, young Heidi has learned to live in her special world until a new word is suddenly used and repeated by her mother; causing Heidi to think it might be a key to a secret past about which she knows so little...

Sixth-grader Sugar and her mother lose their beloved house and experience the harsh world of homelessness.

In 1145 A.D., as foretold by Merlin, fourteen-year-old Rosalind, who will be the twenty-first Pendragon Queen of Wilde Island, has much to accomplish to fulfill her destiny, while hiding from her people the dragon's claw she was born with that reflects only one of her mother's dark secrets

Five-year-old Birdie loves her mother's shoes, but when she is finally granted permission to wear some for a little while, she discovers that her "barefoot shoes" are best of all.

Zoe, traveling back to the time when her mother was a child, intervenes in the past in order to save the future.

Raised by a mother who's had five husbands, eighteen-year-old Remy believes in short-term, no-commitment relationships until she meets Dexter, a rock band musician.

Through e-mails, letters, blog entries, and movie scripts, twelve-year-old Ruth, an American girl, and Ruby, an English one, discover that they are long-lost twins

The Pickles are new to Midnight Gulch, Tennessee, a town which legend says was once magic--but Felicity is convinced the magic is still there, and with the help of her new friend Jonah the Beedle she hopes to bring the magic back

A young girl eagerly awaits a coming rainstorm to bring relief from the oppressive summer heat