Wendelin Van Draanen

When a school bus accident leaves sixteen-year-old Jessica an amputee, she returns to school with a prosthetic limb and her track team finds a wonderful way to help rekindle her dream of running again.

In alternating chapters, two eighth-graders describe how their feelings about themselves, each other, and their families have changed over the years.

In this historical tale of friendship, family, and the power of sisterhood, three very different girls from varying social stratums find common ground as they each make a promise to not just accept things as they are anymore.

Thirteen-year-old Sammy's penchant for speaking her mind gets her in trouble when she involves herself in the investigation of a robbery at the "seedy" hotel across the street from the seniors' building where she is living with her grandmother.

On Halloween night, seventh grader Sammy stumbles onto a mystery involving a twenty-year-old family feud and some heirlooms stolen by a man in a skeleton costume.

Lincoln Jones is always working on the latest story he's got going in his notebook. Those stories are his refuge. A place where the hero always prevails and the bad guy goes to jail. Real life is messy and complicated, so Lincoln sticks to fiction and keeps to himself. Which works fine until a nosy girl at his new school starts prying into his private business. She wants to know what he's writing, where he disappears to after school, and why...

"When youth sleuth Sammy Keyes travels to Las Vegas to stop her mom from marrying her boyfriend's dad, she never expects she'll learn the identity of her absent father in the process"--Provided by publisher.

While celebrating the New Year with a friend, Sammy encounters a mystery involving an elderly neighbor, a pioneer cabin, and a century-old family feud.

When thirteen-year-old Sammy finds herself with an abandoned baby on her hands, she sets out to find the young mother, who may belong to a gang, and accidentally jeopardizes her position on the softball team.

Sammy continues to make life with her grandmother interesting as she tries to discover who is stealing from St. Mary's church, befriends a homeless girl, and plays in a softball tournament against a bitter rival.