Johanna Knowles

After moving in with his karate-loving uncle in a different town, Josh struggles with regrets while practicing karate with upstairs neighbor Stella, whom Josh fears will reject him because of her jealous boyfriend and his own checkered past.

Twelve-year-old Fern feels invisible in her family, where grumpy eighteen-year-old Sarah is working at the family restaurant, fourteen-year-old Holden is struggling with school bullies and his emerging homosexuality, and adorable, three-year-old Charlie is always the center of attention, and when tragedy strikes, the fragile bond holding the family together is stretched almost to the breaking point.

After fifteen-year-old Bean's beloved grandfather Gus dies, she discovers uncomfortable secrets about him, her mother, and the father she has never known.

Thanks to a bully in gym class, unpopular Nate suffers a broken finger--the middle one, splinted to flip off the world. It won't be the last time a middle finger is raised on this day. Dreamer Claire envisions herself sitting in an artsy café, filling a journal, but fate has other plans. One cheerleader dates a closeted basketball star; another questions just how, as a "big girl," she fits in. A group of boys scam drivers for beer money without remorse--or...