When a plant blooms out of fifteen-year-old Laurel's back, it leads her to discover the fact that she is a faerie and that she has a crucial role to play in keeping the world safe from the encroaching enemy trolls.

The explosion of racial hate and violence in a small Alabama town is viewed by a little girl whose father defends a black man accused of rape.

One long-ago Christmas, Earl Gibson lost the two things most precious to him: his wife and daughter. Angry and heartbroken, he ended up living on the streets and abandoned any belief he'd once had in God. Ten years later Big Earl meets Gideon, a seven-year-old leukemia patient who believes with all her heart that "Christmas means never having to ask God how much he loves us." Gideon is determined to reach this lonely and hurting man who hates Christmas--and...

This is the story of the Peppers family of Counterpoint, Georgia. Henry and Florida Peppers are pertinacious Baptist parents whose dearest wishes are to keep their asthmatic son Roderick alive and their smart-ass daughter Louise from going to hell. Louise, the little hellion, tells the story. And what a story it is, about how ponderous Henry, hysterical Florida, and hell-bent-for-rebellion Louise, awash in grief after Roderick's death at fifteen,...

Mathilda investigates her older sister's shattering death and learns perplexing truths when she accesses her sister's computer journals and reads about a secret underworld life.

Talkative, ten-year-old Rebecca goes to live with her spinster aunts, one harsh and demanding, the other soft and sentimental, with whom she spends seven difficult but rewarding years growing up.

Here is the dramatic story of two young girls, Megan and Jen, who meet in first grade and quickly become inseparable friends. Inseparable, that is, until one of them is snatched away by kidnappers as the other young girl watches helplessly.   The remaining child grows up with the haunting memory of her friend's abduction...and absence from her life.  Then, sixteen years later, the stunning truth of the disappearance is revealed. And once again,...

"One of the finest novels I've read . . . .a fiercely intelligent look at childhood, marriage, families, the 1960s, the Cold War and the fear and isolation that are part of the human condition…. it is not only beautifully written…. it is equally beautiful in its conception, its compassion, its wisdom, even in its anger and pain. Don't miss it."  - Patrick Anderson, Washington Post Book World The optimism of the early sixties, infused with the...