Four teenagers from two families--sisters Katie and Julie and brothers Alex and Kyle--meet every summer at a lakeside community in upstate New York, where they escape their everyday lives and hide disturbing secrets.

Sixteen-year-old Johanna, one of the best students in her class, develops a passionate attachment for troubled seventeen-year-old Paul and finds her plans for the future changing in unexpected ways.

"When Aaron willingly signs on to be the pretend father of Hannah's unborn baby, he is looking for redemption from a past that has a stranglehold on him. Hannah, more simply, needs support in the absence of the real father, but she'll discover so much more"--

The lives of three troubled people--middle-aged schizophrenic Carrie, orphaned eighteen-year-old Will, and fourteen-year-old Kurt--intersect unexpectedly in this story told in alternating viewpoints.

"A seventeen year old barely escapes her abusive parents and creates a new identity that is quickly compromised when her attempt to save a young girl attracts a deadly stalker"--

Four suicidal teenagers go on a "celebrity suicide road trip, " visiting the graves of famous people who have killed themselves, with the intention of ending their lives in Death Valley, California.

"This isn't how Josh expected to spend senior year. He thought he'd be hanging out with his best friends, Dave and Caleb, driving around, partying, just like always. But here he is, miles from home--going to a new school, living with his Jackie Chan-obsessed uncle, Larry. Trying to forget. But Josh can't forget. So many things bring back memories of last year and the night that changed everything. He thinks about it every day. The pain, the shame,...

Abandoned by his mentally ill mother, thirteen-year-old Heck tries to survive on his own as his mind bounces between the superhero character he imagines himself to be and the harsh reality of his life.

After sixteen-year-old Jules loses her boyfriend she experiences complications from the pregnancy that drove him away and suddenly, some of the people closest to her are behaving as if her baby is not real.

When his single mother dies of a heroin overdose, fourteen-year-old Nick is sent into England's institutional care system, where he endures harsh punishment, sexual abuse, and witnesses horrors on a daily basis before emerging, emotionally scarred but still alive. Loosely based on "Oliver Twist."