Zach, Alice, and Poppy, friends from a Pennsylvania middle school who have long enjoyed acting out imaginary adventures with dolls and action figures, embark on a real-life quest to Ohio to bury a doll made from the ashes of a dead girl.

Publisher Annotation: Robin Benway?s beautiful interweaving story of three very different teenagers connected by blood explores the meaning of family in all its forms?how to find it, how to keep it, and how to love it.

It takes a tragedy to mend the fraying family bonds between Ma Charles and her half sister, Miss Trotter. They have not spoken in years. Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern head to Alabama to visit their grandmother, Big Ma, and their great-grandmother, Ma Charles.

"When six students are chosen to participate in a weekly talk with no adults allowed, they discover that when they're together, it's safe to share the hopes and fears they have to hide from the rest of the world"--

Twelve-year-old Fern feels invisible in her family, where grumpy eighteen-year-old Sarah is working at the family restaurant, fourteen-year-old Holden is struggling with school bullies and his emerging homosexuality, and adorable, three-year-old Charlie is always the center of attention, and when tragedy strikes, the fragile bond holding the family together is stretched almost to the breaking point.

From failed football tryouts to helping the new Syrian refugee student, seventh-grader Kareem attempts to navigate the social complexities of seventh grade, which are further complicated when his mother is unable to return home from Syria due to an executive order.

Incarcerated teen Quan Banks writes letters to Justyce McCallister, with whom he bonded years before over family issues, about his experiences in the American juvenile justice system.

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....

Seventeen-year-old Lucille is struggling to get through each day, paying bills and looking after her little sister, Wren, while her father is institutionalized after a breakdown and her mother is "on vacation," but nothing else seems to matter when she is with Digby Jones, her best friend's twin brother.

Connor Sullivan, All-Star third baseman on his Babe Ruth League team, has a terrible temper and problems at home, but when the sports editor of the school paper threatens to publish an embarrassing story about his tantrus, Connor must make a change.