"The second-quarter journal entries of five freshmen at ultra-competitive Noble High detail the students' ongoing quest to become the Phoenix Five--the most outstanding first-year students in the school"--

While visiting her grandparents in Port Harbor, New Jersey, thirteen-year-old Theodora lists one hundred truths that she discovers while babysitting her younger cousins.

Although twelve-year-old Cassidy Bean keeps a book of bad things, she did not expect her summer with the Tremont family in rural New Jersey to be one of them--but this year Ursula, a local hoarder, has died under mysterious circumstances, and Cassidy finds that there a great many bad and dangerous things hidden in her house, including, perhaps, her vengeful ghost.

"Anna Kellogg has always felt different. Growing up in Hartwood, New Jersey--where frequent disappearances are attributed to an urban-legend-like beast that dwells in the walled-in swamp at the center of town--can have that effect on people. But for Anna, it's more than that. Since she was a child, she's been plagued by episodes where she sees things others can't see. Feeling different is one thing, but actually being different is another. If it weren't...

After high school graduation, best friends Matt and Cole strive to put behind them the school shooting they survived in first grade and really begin to live. Told in two voices.

Although Jeff and Tad, encouraged by a new friend, Lindsey, make a deal to help one another overcome aftereffects of their cancer treatments in preparation for eighth-grade graduation, Jeff still craves advice from his older brother Stephen, who is studying drums in Africa.

"There's a new rule at Jack Logan's sports-crazy high school: all students must play on a team. So Jack and a group of anti-athletic friends decide to go rebel. They create a third-string soccer team whose mission is to avoid victory at any cost. But as the team's losing formula becomes increasingly successful at attracting fans and attention, Jack and his teammates are winning in ways they never expected--and don't know how to handle." -- Dust jacket....

After the death of his estranged father in the World Trade Center on 9/11, thirteen-year-old Bart, still struggling with his feelings of guilt, sorrow and loss, wins a scholarship to the local preparatory school and there encounters a vicious bully whose cruelty compounds the aftermath of the tragedy.

"While helping out at his Jewish family's struggling Atlantic City hotel in 1975, thirteen-year-old Joey Goodman gets a summer job working for a mobster and faces a life-or-death decision"-- Joey Goodman is spending the summer at his grandparents struggling hotel in Atlantic City, a tourist destination on the decline. Nobody in Joeys big Jewish family takes him seriously, so when Joeys Skee-Ball skills land him an unusual job offer from a local mobster,...

In July, 1916, Chet Roscow is fascinated by news accounts of the great white shark said to be attacking people along the New Jersey shore not far from his home, but when he goes swimming in Matawan Creek he discovers the truth of the stories.