Fifteen-year-old Cassie Streng is determined to expose her stepfather after learning that he is giving a dangerous experimental drug to his teenaged psychiatric patients, but he sends her to a brutal boot camp for troubled teens in Mexico in order to keep her quiet.

In 1910 New York City, four years after her Irish immigrant father dies of tuberculosis, ten-year-old Essie's fear and anxiety continue to grow uncontrollably, so much that when her mother, a brave nurse, remarries and the family moves to North Brother Island, where Essie's new stepfather runs a quarantine hospital for the incurably sick, Essie imagines all manner of horrors, including the ghost of a little girl--which might not be imaginary after...

After his mother divorces his father and remarries, Asa's sharp intellect and capacity for forgiveness help him deal with the instabilities of his new world.

"Magic is illegal in Newworld, so Maggie struggles to explain the strange shadows--that only she can see--that seem to accompany her new stepfather everywhere"--

Charley is sure that the first Halloween in his new house will be awful, until his stepfather takes him out trick-or-treating.

Fourteen-year-old Danny Lopez reviews the path that led him from Las Vegas, Nevada, to an experimental school near Colorado Springs and then to his imminent death at the hands of a cat-killer ready for bigger prey.

In western Massachusetts in 1976, still grieving and guilt-ridden over her father's drowning, twelve-year-old Blue is dealt another blow when her older sister, Star, runs away to escape their stepfather's violence against their mother.

In order to play tennis with his local rec team, Deion agrees to play doubles, even though it feels like a different game to him--but he has the nagging feeling that he is holding his partner, Cole, back until they both accept help from Deion's stepfather who turns out to have wicked aim.

Twelve-year-old Addie tries to cope with her mother's erratic behavior and being separated from her beloved stepfather and half-sisters when she and her mother go to live in a small trailer by the railroad tracks on the outskirts of Schenectady, New York.

When his mother's new marriage takes them into the household of a miniature golf course owner, ten-year-old Wedge struggles with feelings of resentment and dislike for his stepfather.