Told in alternating voices, years after it began, seventeen-year-old Ivy and her mom Dana's shared story comes down to a reckoning among a daughter, a mother, and the dark forces they never should have messed with.

"Twelve-year-old Willa, grieving the loss of her mother, a renowned marine biologist, discovers she can talk to whales"--

Twelve-year-old Natalia Rose Baleine Gallagher dreams of seeing whales on the beach near her new home, and is consumed with the prospect that her mother who abandoned her as a child loves and misses her, and wants Nat to find her.

Twelve-year-old Candice Miller is spending the summer in Lambert, South Carolina, in the old house that belonged to her grandmother, who died after being dismissed as city manager for having the city tennis courts dug up looking for buried treasure--but when she finds the letter that sent her grandmother on the treasure hunt, she finds herself caught up in the mystery and, with the help of her new friend and fellow book-worm, Brandon, she sets out...

When all of their special Saturday plans go awry, Ava and her mother still find a way to appreciate one another and their time together.

For a little girl on a rainy day, the best place to be is with Mama.

The making of "Show ways," or quilts which once served as secret maps for freedom-seeking slaves, is a tradition passed from mother to daughter in the author's family.

A young girl eagerly awaits a coming rainstorm to bring relief from the oppressive summer heat.

In Vienna in 1938, in the shadow of an increasingly dangerous Nazi Germany, twelve-year-old Greta pursues her dream of becoming a concert pianist like her dead brother Kurt, despite a lack of support from her widowed mother.

Despite the doubts of some classmates and her native-born Japanese mother's inability to read English, Yoko finds the key to reading and catches up with the other students in putting new leaves on the classroom's book tree.