Fourteen-year-old Luli and her family face tragedy after failing to tell their slaves that President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation made them free.

After moving from Chicago to Dallas in the spring of her sophomore year, fifteen-year-old Ella finds that joining the softball team at her private school not only helps her make friends, it also provides unexpected opportunities to learn and grow.

"Carli and Rex have an immediate connection, an understanding that must mean first love, but family secrets, disappointments--and basketball, which holds center stage in both their lives--all create complications"--

Danny Owens is dedicating his seventh-grade football season to his recently-deceased father, an NFL legend, but the pressure to succeed is magnified by his inability to read.

Twelve-year-old Quijana is a biracial girl, desperately trying to understand the changes that are going on in her life; her mother rarely gets home before bedtime, her father suddenly seems to be trying to get in touch with his Guatemalan roots (even though he never bothered to teach Quijana Spanish), she is about to start seventh grade in the Texas town where they live and she is worried about fitting in--and Quijana suspects that her parents are...

Max seems like any other kid until he is asked to join the Lucha Libre Club, but because of strict secrecy he cannot tell anyone of his royal wrestling blood, his uncle the king of lucha libre, The Guardian Angel.

Sadie Scofield is entered in the Texas River Odyssey, 260 miles of brutal canoeing. For Sadie it is a chance to finally make up for ruining her father's chance of winning the previous year. When her brother Tanner suddenly opts to paddle for a different team, Sadie is left with Cully, a young man who was her best friend years ago. Now she has to spend 265 miles in the same boat with him. It's a chance to sort out her relationship with the boy she...

Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common. But as the loners start spending time together, they discover that they share a special friendship -- the kind that changes lives and lasts a lifetime. And it is through this friendship that Ari and Dante will learn the most important truths about themselves...