"When Ann decides that she is going to lose 45 pounds in time for her aunt's wedding, she discovers that what she looks like is not all that matters"--

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.

"High school junior Sophie has always had the burden of taking care of her mother, who has bipolar disorder, but after her mother's hospitalization she must learn to cope with estranged family and figure out her own life"--

In the near future, seniors Lydia and Billy form an unlikely friendship when their high schools are merged, bonding over their Washington town's weird history and their unusual families. Billy Sloat and Lydia Lemon don't have much in common, unless you count growing up on the same (wrong) side of the tracks, the lack of a mother, and a persistent loneliness that has inspired creative coping mechanisms. When their high schools are consolidated, Lydia's...

From age six through her high school valedictory speech, believing she and her mother are wizards helps young Echo cope with poverty, hunger, her mother's drug abuse, and much more. Echo Brown is a wizard from the East Side of Cleveland, where apartments are small and parents suffer addiction to the white rocks. Yet there is magic everywhere. Every day Echo travels between worlds, attending a rich white school on the West Side. But there are dangers...