When circumstances put Millie Michalchuk and Callie Reyes together over the course of a semester, the girls realize they have more in common than they ever imagined.

Two thirteen-year-old boys share neighborhood adventures, complaints about their older sisters, family secrets, and even guilt that bind them together in a special friendship.

"Adam, a high school senior, rescues Julian, a freshman, from an abusive situation"--

The summer that Hattie turns twelve, she meets the childlike uncle she never knew and becomes friends with a girl who works at the carnival that comes to Hattie's small town. Twelve-year-old Hattie learns that living life fully means facing both the good times and the bad upon the closing of her Uncle Adam's "school"- an institution for the mentally disabled.

In 1923 Chicago, seventeen-year-old Gloria Carmody rebels against her upcoming society wedding by visiting a speakeasy, while her Pennsylvania cousin, Clara, hides similar tastes and her best friend, Lorraine, makes plans of her own.

Eighteen-year-old Barry competes in a non-sanctioned boxing match in hopes of helping his recently-widowed mother, unaware that his best friend and manager, Alby, has his own desperate need for a share of the purse that may put their friendship on the line.

A town boy sent to live on a remote wilderness farm forms a friendship with an elderly, disfigured man who teaches him many things.

Seventeen-year-old Greg has managed to become part of every social group at his Pittsburgh high school without having any friends, but his life changes when his mother forces him to befriend Rachel, a girl he once knew in Hebrew school who has leukemia.