"Five high school freshmen--the Phoenix Five--reveal their friendships, crushes, school and family dramas, and big secrets, as told in their unique voices through journal entries"--

Seventh-grader Donald, living with his parents in New Jersey, is determined to master wrestling but discovers that to win at the sport he must learn to control his temper.

"While helping out at his Jewish family's struggling Atlantic City hotel in 1975, thirteen-year-old Joey Goodman gets a summer job working for a mobster and faces a life-or-death decision"--

Although twelve-year-old Cassidy Bean keeps a book of bad things, she did not expect her summer with the Tremont family in rural New Jersey to be one of them--but this year Ursula, a local hoarder, has died under mysterious circumstances, and Cassidy finds that there a great many bad and dangerous things hidden in her house, including, perhaps, her vengeful ghost.

When twelve-year-old Ty's brother Thane is recruited out of college to play for the New York Jets, their Uncle Gus uses Ty to get insider information for his gambling ring, landing Ty and Thane in trouble with the Mafia.

"Jacky Hart has found a hidden talent in the performing arts, and she's a triple threat onstage! She wants nothing more than to act and sing all summer--but her parents have other plans for her"--

A year after Superstorm Sandy, Lucy's life is returning to normal at the New Jersey shore, where she has grown up surfing with her twin brother, crabbing and long-boarding with friends, and working at Surf Taco, but the torch she holds for summer resident Connor, the center of The Big Mistake, still burns. For Lucy the Jersey Shore is home, and she knows not to get attached to the tourists. But when charming Connor Malloy and his family spend every...

Fourth-grader Amber Brown must make some important decisions when her mother and Max move their wedding date up and prepare to buy a house together, while her father makes some bad choices of his own.

Told in two voices, Allie and Jake continue to be bombarded by family issues and pressures from the "Cresties" and their poorer counterparts as they spend a summer dealing with the fallout of their breakup.

New Jersey sisters Rosie, aged fifteen, and Skate, aged sixteen, cope differently with their father's alcoholism and incarceration, but manage to stay close to one another as they strive to lead normal lives and find hope for the future.