Susan Richards Shreve

Twelve-year-old Ellie's boring summer becomes exciting when she develops a crush on her new next-door neighbor, an older boy with a troubled past, whom her parents have forbidden her to see.

Helen Fielding answers an advertisement for a doctor in the small town of Meridian, Ohio, the place where her baby sister disappeared years earlier, and finds the town in the grip of lies, distrust, and the search for another missing child.

When a family tragedy occurs, ten-year-old Alyssa "Blister" Reed changes schools, moves to an apartment with her depressed mother while her father gets his own place, and tries to believe her grandmother, who tells her she is "elastic" and can handle it all.

Two friends, one of whom is deaf, help each other when tryouts are held for a seventh-grade production of "Annie."