"Centered around a family's weekend in their summer cottage on the Northeast cape that explores four lives in crisis and reflects back at us what the American family is becoming"--

Seventeen-year-old Bianca Piper starts sleeping with Wesley Rush, a notorious womanizer who disgusts her, in order to distract her from her personal problems, and to her surprise, the two of them find they have a lot in common and are able to help each other find more productive ways to deal with their difficulties.

"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"--

Their fortune threatened by shifting powers in Sudan and their heir's debilitating accident, a powerful family under the leadership of Mahmoud Bey is torn between the traditional and modern values of Mahmoud's two wives and his son's efforts to break with cultural limits.

Since her mother's suicide, high school junior Marin has been able to see others' pain as colors and shapes, but what she sees in the head of classmate Cassie, who forced her to participate in a weird conjoining rite, is much more frightening and deadly.

Alys, a Plaineville, Wisconsin, junior who dreams of studying violin at Julliard, must deal with the aftermath of a tragic high school shooting in which her older brother, Luke, was the shooter.

"Going through a family breakup is a devastating, life-changing experience that happens to thousands of young people every year. Discover what it is like when your family is split apart through the heartfelt stories of survivors. Learn how it "happened to them," read their journeys to a new family life, and find out more about why families break up and restructure afterward in this open, sensitive, and informative exploration."--Amazon.com.

After an evening of massive losses playing slot machines, Ethan Caustin wonders how he's going to explain things to his wife and kids. As he's leaving the casino, he is approached by a stranger who offers a solution, which is a simple game with a 99% chance for him to win ten thousand dollars. If he loses, however, he'll be strapped into a device that shatters his left arm. As the game goes on, the prizes and penalties keep changing, along with his...

"A massive storm was coming straight for Mama's little plot of land in the Mississippi Delta and there was no way any of them could outrun the weather. For three years Melody Mahaffey has been on the road, touring as a keyboardist with a terrible Christian pop band she can hardly stand. So when her mother calls, full of her usual dire news and dramatic pronouncements, Melody is relieved to pack her bags and call it quits. But at the sprawling, defunct...

"Yesterday 16-year-old Emily's mother was a high-powered attorney. Today she is a mermaid. While the car accident they were in left Emily relatively unscathed, her mother is just not the same. She doesn't care about court cases and keeps talking about her missing tail. But life doesn't stop when you're in the midst of a family crisis. Emily continues with school and falling in love for the first time, all while taking care of her little sister, who...