What begins as an ordinary day for lunch mom volunteer Rose McKenna quickly morphs into a harrowing event that will spiral her life out of control. When a tragedy occurs at her daughter's elementary school, Rose transforms from heroine to villain in a matter of hours after she is forced to make a life-changing moral decision. As the media seeks to vilify her and her community shuns her, Rose continues on an intense weeklong search for the truth. Suspecting...

The town of Yorktide, close to Maine's beautiful beaches and the city of Portland, seems like the perfect place to raise a family. For Jane Patterson, there's another advantage: her best friend, Frannie Giroux, lives next door, and their teenaged daughters, Rosie and Meg, are inseparable. But in the girls freshman year of high school, everything changes. Rosie quiet, shy, and also very pretty attracts the sneers and slights of a clique of older girls....

"Beth Kramer is a "townie" who returns to her sophomore year after having endured a year of tension with her roommate, Sarah. But Sarah Brunson knows there's more to that story. Amanda Priya "Spence" Spencer is the privileged daughter of NYC elites, who is reeling from the realization that her family name shielded her from the same fate as Sarah. Ramin Golafshar arrives at Chandler as a transfer student to escape the dangers of being gay in Iran,...

Third-grader Emma becomes a reluctant heroine when she defends a friend from the class bully.

Underprivileged and keenly self-aware, SoCal fourteen-year-old Layla Bailey isn't used to being noticed. Except by mean girls who tweet about her ragged appearance. All she wants to do is indulge in her love of science, protect her vulnerable younger brother, and steer clear of her unstable mother. Then a school competition calls for a biome. Layla chooses her own home, a hostile ecosystem of indoor fungi and secret shame. With a borrowed video camera,...

"The Impossible Fairy Tale is the story of two unexceptional grade-school girls. Mia is "lucky"--She is spoiled by her mother and, as she explains, her two fathers. She gloats over her exotic imported color pencils and won't be denied a coveted sweater. Then there is the Child who, by contrast, is neither lucky nor unlucky. She makes so little impression that she seems not even to merit a name. At school, their fellow students, whether lucky or luckless...