Seventh-grader Lauren begins stealing to help children who, like her brother, are on the autism spectrum, and Sierra, in foster care in Lauren's neighborhood, fears she will enable Lauren's lawbreaking. Told half in prose, half in verse.

In Auburn, Pennsylvania, a farming community overrun with crows, high school senior Leighton struggles to keep herself and her sisters safe from their abusive father even as she starts a relationship.

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....

Eleven-year-old Whit's zookeeper parents have rarely allowed him to go outside of the Alabama zoo they run, but he stops seeing it as such a cage when he meets "Bird Girl, for whom the place is a refuge from problems at home.

Twelve-year-old Lafayette's close relationship with his older brother Charlie changes after Charlie is released from a detention home and blames Lafayette for the death of their mother.

Arrested for dealing drugs and playing a part in her brother's death, CeCe reflects on the injury that led to her brother's drug addiction and her fateful decision to steal and sell his drugs to protect him and save money.

Opin, his brother Emjay, and their mother live in a car and are trying to get to Los Angeles where they hope an uncle and a new life are waiting, but even after finding a stray dog, Opin's longing for a stable home intensifies as his brother's reckless ways hit a new high.

Eleven-year-old Makeda dreams of meeting her African American mother, while coping with serious problems in her white adopted family, a cross-country move, and being homeschooled.

In this novel in verse, a mixed-heritage dancer's coming of age within the African diaspora is shaped by abuse at the hands of a cousin, her mother's descent into addiction, and her father's efforts to create a Nigerian-inspired home in America.

"Sunny is the best runner on the Defenders, but he hates running. What he really loves is dancing. Can he find a way to fulfill his passion without letting down the team?"-- "Sunny tries to shine despite his troubled past in this third novel in the critically acclaimed Track series from National Book Award finalist Jason Reynolds. Ghost. Patina. Sunny. Lu. Four kids from wildly different backgrounds, with personalities that are explosive when they...