With insight and a light touch, best-selling, Newbery Honor-winning author Gary D. Schmidt tells two poignant, linked stories: that of a grieving girl and a boy trying to escape his violent past. Following the death of her closest friend in summer 1968, Meryl Lee Kowalski goes off to St. Elene's Preparatory Academy for Girls, where she struggles to navigate the venerable boarding school's traditions and a social structure heavily weighted toward students...

Maverick feels strongly about family ties, making choices he feels necessary to help support his mom while his King father serves time, and leave him literally holding his son in a doctor's waiting room after he gets paternity test results back and his babymomma ghosts. Now the child he's raising is impacting the lives of his family and his girlfriend, and the gang life he led to support them all financially could leave them all bearing his responsibilities...

"In the midst of the largest motorcycle rally in the world, a young biker is run off the road and ends up in critical condition. When Sheriff Walt Longmire and his good friend Henry Standing Bear are called to Hulett, Wyoming -- the nearest town to America's first national monument, Devils Tower -- to investigate, things start getting complicated. As competing biker gangs, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, a military-grade vehicle donated...

After reluctantly taking on the leadership of the Harlem gang, the Scorpions, Jamal finds that his enemies treat him with respect when he acquires a gun--until a tragedy occurs.

"Ever since he escaped his father's biker gang, sheriff's deputy Brady Wyatt has never looked back. Then Cecilia Mills asks Brady to help her hide a child from the delinquent crew. But when threats impact the safety of the makeshift family, will they find a way to protect themselves...or will the Sons of the Badlands take the child back into its dangerous grip?" -- Page [4] cover.

Rosario Gomez gave up gang life after his brother was killed in a street fight. Now all he wants to do is finish night school, be a good father and work hard enough at his job at the supermarket to get promoted. But when an old friend shows up to ask him why he left the gang, Rosario realizes he was fooling himself if he thought his violent past would just go away. When his pregnant girlfriend is hit in a drive-by shooting, Rosario has to make some...

Twelve-year-old Tito, while helping to care for his little sister, struggles to find his way during the aftermath of his brother's death in a gang-related shooting.

Welcome to the City of Sin, where casino families reign, gangs infest the streets...and secrets hide in every shadow Enne Salta was raised as a proper young lady, and no lady would willingly visit New Reynes, the so-called City of Sin. But when her mother goes missing, Enne must leave her finishing school--and her reputation--behind to follow her mother's trail to the city where no one survives uncorrupted. Frightened and alone, Enne has only one...

Junebug hasn't seen his friend Robert since the family moved from their housing project in May. It's Labor Day weekend, reunion time, and Mama, Tasha, Harriet, and Junebug are off to the beach. Robert is there, but so is Trevor, another boy from the project. Trevor is a gang member; Trevor has a gun. With Junebug gone, Trevor has easily befriended Robert. Robert might even join Trevor's gang, the Rex. How can Junebug stop him? At the same time, Junebug...

In 1893 New York, thirteen-year-old Maks, a newsboy, teams up with Willa, a homeless girl, to clear his older sister, Emma, from charges that she stole from the brand new Waldorf Hotel, where she works. Includes historical notes.