Royce (aka Rolly) is having a bad year. Not only has his mother dragged him across the country in order to be close to her aged father Arthur, a celebrated cellist, but he's also recovering from mono. When he convinces his mother to let him finish the school year by correspondence, he's left feeling isolated and lonely, and spends his time watching TV and plotting ways to get back to his friends in Nova Scotia. But before his plans can be implemented, his grandfather has a small stroke. Suddenly Arthur needs more care than Royce's mother can provide and, after a couple of hired care aides quit, Royce is pressed into service.

Harriet (known as Harry) is a donor-conceived child who has never wanted to reach out to her half-siblings or donor—until now. Feeling adrift after a breakup with her long-time boyfriend, Harry tracks down her half-siblings, two of whom are in Seattle, where Harriet lives. The first girl she meets is fifteen–year-old Lucy, an effervescent half-Japanese dancer. Then she meets Meredith, a troubled girl who is always accompanied by her best friend, Alex. Harry and Alex are attracted to each other, much to Meredith's chagrin, and when it becomes clear that Meredith is an accomplished liar, Harry makes it her business to figure out what Meredith is up to. In the course of her investigation, she discovers a lot about Meredith, but the biggest shock is not about Meredith—it's about Alex, who was born female. So now Harry must deal with not only her growing attraction to Alex, but also Meredith's hostility. As decisions are made around whether to contact their donor, the...

March has a perfect life: beauty, popularity, a great job, a loving family and a hot boyfriend. So when she discovers that her boyfriend is cheating on her, she is hurt and enraged. When she lashes out at him, he falls and is badly injured. March panics, flees the scene and then watches her perfect life spiral out of control. In a misguided attempt to atone for her crime, March changes her appearance, quits her job and tries to become invisible until an unlikely friendship and a new job force her to re-engage with life.

Trying to save his best friend from the horrors of plastic surgery, Jack ends up on the front line of a protest about unscrupulous surgeons.

Eight teens are dropped off on a remote west-coast island for a week-long treatment program called INTRO (Into Nature to Renew Ourselves). The story is told by two of them: Alice, whose police-officer mother believes Alice might have a substance-abuse problem, and Caleb, who assaulted his abusive stepfather. They are joined by six other miscreants and three staff: a psychologist, a social worker and an ex-cop. On the first night, one of the girls disappears from her cabin. There is a panicked search of the island, but she is nowhere to be found. The adults seem oddly ineffectual in dealing with the crisis—and then the ex-cop gets sick and dies. The radio has been sabotaged, and there is no way to call for help. When the social worker also becomes ill, the kids decide to take matters into their own hands and track down the killer.

After Emily's aunt dies, Emily learns that everything she has always believed is a lie, and her world crumbles. Forced to face the fact that her mother is not who she thought she was, Emily tries to find the truth about her past and make sense of her future. Turning to graffiti and vandalism as a way to deal with her anger, she comes to realize that there is more to a family than shared DNA.

It will take all of Julia's wit, ingenuity and compassion to save her best friend Ruth from the tragedy of teenage pregnancy.