Wendelin Van Draanen

In alternating chapters, two eighth-graders describe how their feelings about themselves, each other, and their families have changed over the years.

When her behavior escalates out of control, fourteen-year-old Wren is taken away to a wilderness therapy camp where she is forced to develop new skills, including the courage to ask for help.

Sammy continues to make life with her grandmother interesting as she tries to discover who is stealing from St. Mary's church, befriends a homeless girl, and plays in a softball tournament against a bitter rival.

A Hollywood actress, who had been competing with Sammy's mother for an important role, is murdered, but thirteen-year-old Sammy and her friend Marissa are on the case.

After a dog she is watching disappears from a city parade and the owner receives a ransom note, thirteen-year-old Sammy must use her detective skills to solve the mystery.

Thirteen-year-old Sammy suddenly finds herself responsible for an abandoned baby. Sammy knows nothing about babies and would rather be playing softball. Her search for the missing mother leads her into gang territory and dangerous situations.

In 1936, at seven, Ginny Rose and Peggy were best friends, picking peaches on hot summer days. Peggy's family owned the farm, and Ginny Rose's were pickers, escaping the Oklahoma dust storms. Ten years, hard miles, and a world war later, Ginny Rose's family is back in town and their differences feel somehow starker. Especially since Peggy's new best friend, Lisette, is a wealthy banker's daughter. What they have in common: families with great fissures...

Gravity becomes a very personal problem for Leda as she stumbles and tumbles through a long day.

While investigating why someone is trying to force people from their homes to expand a recreation center, Sammy is distracted by the lies she must tell to cover an accident she caused, but which was blamed on her nemesis, Heather.

"When youth sleuth Sammy Keyes travels to Las Vegas to stop her mom from marrying her boyfriend's dad, she never expects she'll learn the identity of her absent father in the process" --Provided by publisher.