Leading a double life as Sabrina, a funny-girl alter-ego that frees her to explore who she really is and what she really wants, teen stand-up comic Gretchen is torn between two boys as she learns to be her truest self

Seventeen-year-old Vivian Apple never believed in the evangelical Church of America, unlike her recently devout parents. But when Vivian returns home the night after the supposed "Rapture," all that's left of her parents are two holes in the roof. Suddenly, she doesn't know who or what to believe. With her best friend Harp and a mysterious ally, Peter, Vivian embarks on a desperate cross-country roadtrip through a paranoid and panic-stricken America

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Boarding a 1950s ship and sequestered to an out-of-sight dining table with other marginalized children, an eleven-year-old boy shares rollicking adventures while traveling to various world regions, learning about jazz, women, and a shackled prisoner along the way.

Meet Avery Broussard, the last in a line of once-substantial land owners whose weakness for alcohol lands him in prison; J.P. Winfield, a dirt-poor singer who makes it to the top of hillbilly music only to be destroyed by a drug addiction; and Toussaint Boudreaux, a black longshoreman who is set up for a crime he did not commit. What brings them together, and how they must struggle to escape the bondage that links them makes for a tale of atmosphere...

Discovering in childhood a supernatural ability to taste the emotions of others in their cooking, Rose Edelstein grows up to regard food as a curse when it reveals everyone's secret realities

An eleven-year-old black girl prays for her eyes to turn blue so people will consider her beautiful

When her mother disappears without a trace during a weekend trip, Florine's childhood is turned upside down. Her days in the small coastal Maine town were spent watching for her father's lobster boat, and making bread with her grandmother. As she finds her way to adulthood, Florine clings to the hope that her mother will return.

In the Midwest just after the September 11 attacks, a twenty-year-old woman comes of age amid such challenges as racism, the War on Terror, and cruelty in the name of love, as she leaves her family's farm to attend college and takes a part-time job as a nanny

Cheated out of the only dream worth having, a Texas rancher withdraws to dangerous living in Mexico

After being sold as a bride to a wealthy family that treats her poorly, eleven-year-old Jing, with the help of her animal friends, runs away.