When mean and angry Judd, who has never known kindness, takes to drinking and mistreats his dogs, Marty discovers how deep a hurt can go and how long it takes to heal.

Alice experiences the joys and embarrassments of seventh grade while advising her father and older brother on their love lives.

Alice is in the eighth grade, and while she wants her life to be exciting and outrageous, she also wants to feel protected and safe.

Alice's first year in high school gets off to a difficult start when she and her boyfriend Patrick break up, but with the help of her father, older brother, and best friends, she gains a better sense of her own self-worth.

Many residents of Middleburg, Indiana, ate already going crazy from the ever-ringing church bells and now, after a bat is spotted in the hotel run by Bernie's family, they worry that the dangerous Indiana Aztec bat has finally arrived.

Seventh grader Alice decides that the only way to stave off personal and social disasters is to be part of the crowd, especially the "in" crowd, no matter how boring and, potentially, difficult.

After she, her older brother, and their father move from Chicago to Maryland, Alice has trouble fitting into her new third grade class, but with the help of some new friends and her own unique outlook, she survives.

While traveling to her aunt's home in Redbud by train and stagecoach, quiet young Emily and her turtle, Rufus, team up with Jackson, fellow orphan and troublemaker extraordinaire, to outsmart mean Uncle Victor, who is after Emily's inheritance.

Fifty-six-year-old Harry Gill's first year as a widower finds him coping with the problems of everyday life, as well as the emotions surrounding the death of his wife.

"Marty and his best friend, Shiloh are on another adventure. Marty learns when a secret is too dangerous to keep, and that hate can spread like fire"--