Travis Tacey doesn't have it easy: his mom's in the hospital suffering from brain trauma after a terrible car accident, and his father has lost his good sense in the aftermath and kicked him out. Homeless, penniless, and only fourteen years old, Travis tries to make money off of his singing and guitar playing skills. But when his beloved guitar--a family heirloom--is stolen, Travis grows desperate. By a stroke of luck, he gets a job helping a guitar maker. Through Travis's love of music, his devotion to his family, and the kindness of strangers, he begins to find his way in the world. But...

Twelve year-old Basil knows he's special he's been associating numbers with colors since he was a kid. His gift (or curse) has turned him into somewhat of a loner, but his world begins to change when he meets Tenzie, the new girl in school who has similar freakisms. She, too, has synesthesia (a condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another). At first, Basil is somewhat annoyed with Tenzie's pushiness, but after Basil's estranged mother returns, his life is turned upside down . . . and Tenzie may be the only person to help him put it back together again.
Once...

When Rose Nolan arrives on Ellis Island as a seventeen-year-old Irish immigrant, she is looking for a land of opportunities; what she finds is far from all she'd dreamed. Stubborn and tenacious, she refuses to give up. Left alone to fend for herself and her younger sister, Rose is thrust into a hard-knock life of tenements and factory work.

But even as she struggles, Rose finds small bright points in her new life--at the movies with her working friends and in the honest goals of her mentor, Gussie. Still, after her exhausting days as a working girl, Rose must face the confusion of...