When is the

Ama, Jo, and Polly, three close friends from Bethesda, Maryland, are looking forward to high school, but wonder if their relationship will survive the challenges that each girl faces over the summer break.

In October, 1942, seventeen-year-old Helmuth Hubener,

imprisoned for distributing anti-Nazi

leaflets, recalls his past life and how he

came to dedicate himself to bring the

truth about Hitler and the war to the

German people.

Eighteen-year-old Eli discovers a shocking secret about his life and his family while working for a Nobel Prize-winning scientist whose specialty is genetic engineering.

Fifteen-year-old Tristan deals with intensified criticism about his weight when the nutrition-obsessed daughter of his mother's boyfriend, Frank, moves in.

The orphan Bod, short for Nobody, is taken in by the

inhabitants of a graveyard as a

child of eighteen months and raised

lovingly and carefully to the age

of eighteen years by the community

of ghosts and otherworldly

creatures.

Emma, Anna, and Mariah, fourteen-year-old private school students, lie to their parents about their late-night activities and, when they are caught in their lies, concoct a story about a strange man attacking them, leading to problems for an innocent man and the girls' families.

After an accident in gym class puts sixteen-year-old Tessa into a coma, she re-evaluates her life by visiting the mall stores where significant events in her life took place.

Sixteen-year-old Londoner Lucas Swain, left in possession of the ashes of Violet Park, becomes convinced that Violet is communicating with him, initiating a voyage of self-discovery that forces him to finally confront the events surrounding his father's

sudden disappearance.

A tsunami destroys everything leaving Mau, an island boy, Daphne, an aristocratic English girl, and a small group of refugees responsible for rebuilding their village and their lives.

                

Robin Perry, from Harlem, is sent to Iraq in 2003 as a member of the Civilian Affairs Battalion, and his time there profoundly changes him.

Lebanese-Australian Jamilah, known in school as Jamie, hides her heritage from her classmates and tries to pass by dyeing her hair blonde and wearing blue-tinted contact lenses, until her conflicted feelings become too much for her to bear.