Everything round Jake feels confusing. It all makes Jake want to disappear. And the Voice in his mind seems to have all the answers. It makes Jake feel in control. Sometimes Jake tries to drown out the Voice, but it seems impossible. It's louder than the voices of the people he loves -- and even louder than the sounds of his empty stomach.

Blaming herself for the car accident on the Tappan Zee Bridge that killed her mother, fifteen-year-old Jenna undergoes a difficult physical and emotional recovery.

"'Speak up for yourself--we want to know what you have to say.' From the first moment of her freshman year at Merryweather High, Melinda knows this is a big fat lie, part of the nonsense of high school. She is friendless, outcast, because she busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so now nobody will talk to her, let alone listen to her. As time passes, she becomes increasingly isolated and practically stops talking altogether. Only her...

Ricky Desmond has been through all this before. If he could just get through to his mother, he could convince her that he doesn't belong at Brookline. From the man who thinks he can fly to the woman who killed her husband, the other patients are nothing like him; all he did was lose his temper just a little bit, just the once. But when Ricky is selected by the sinister Warden Crawford for a very special program--a program that the warden claims will...

While confined to a mental hospital, thirteen-year-old Callie slowly comes to understand some of the reasons behind her self-mutilation, and gradually starts to get better.

Whimsy is back in the hospital for treatment of clinical depression. When she meets a boy named Faerry, she recognizes they both have magic in the marrow of their bones. And when Faerry and his family move to the same street, the two start to realize that their lifelines may have twined and untwined many times before. They are both terrified of the forest at the end of Marsh Creek Lane. The Forest whispers to Whimsy. The Forest might hold the answers...

There is a lot going on in his life that thirteen-year-old Tony Miglione does not really understand--like why his parents suddenly have money enough to buy a house on Long Island, why his mother has changed, why his rich friend Joel shoplifts, why he is obsessed with Joel's sixteen-year-old sister, and why he is having terrible stomach pains.

Sixteen-year-old Victoria "Tori" Spring is the personification of angst, slowly slipping, day by day, into the depths of despair. On a good day, she can convince herself she feels nothing. Her best friend has become preoccupied with boys; her brother, Charlie, is recovering from an episode of mental illness and attempted suicide; a former childhood friend has suddenly resurfaced with expectations that she can't fulfill; and her mother cannot tear...

"Violet Shrink doesn't like parties. Or bashes, or gatherings. Lots of people and lots of noise make Violet's tummy ache and her hands sweat. She would much rather spend time on her own, watching the birds in her backyard, reading comics or listening to music through her purple headphones. The problem is that the whole Shrink family loves parties with loud music and games and dancing. At cousin Char's birthday party, Violet hides under a table and...

Seventeen-year-old Christian Cage lives with his uncle in Winter, Wisconsin, where his nightmares, visions, and strange paintings draw him into a mystery involving German prisoners of war, a mysterious corpse, and Winter's last surviving Jew.