Melinda's life is a ninth-grade nightmare. As she says herself: "I have entered high school with the wrong hair, the wrong clothes, the wrong attitude. And I don't have anyone to sit with." She is being optimistic. Melinda is in fact a pariah, shut out by the friends she has known all her life, all because she called the cops on an end-of-the-summer party. But there are worse things than social suicide. Something ugly is hiding behind Melinda's silence. Sooner or later, she will have to speak. A darkly funny book for everyone who ever hated high school.

Gemma is invisible, nonexistent. Others at school and even her own family exclude her from their lives. But Gemma knows something that is going to change all that. The new kid in class has a secret: and suddenly Gemma has power that cannot be ignored.

A silly prank gone wrong - and one teen is dead, another missing. The lies begin. Brodie becomes a hero but guilt is eating him alive. And then the first note arrives with its chilling message: TELL. Someone else knows the truth about what happened on the Blackwater River.

New Canaan is an island of strangeness, a small and insular community run by an all-seeing, all-knowing dictator, "the Father". An uneasy peace exists in the settlement until Sam Shadows, an anthropologist in search of his roots, rides in on his motorcycle. Who knows what he may dig up?

An unexpected friendship with a mental patient, a positive pregnancy test found in the family garbage, the arrival of long-lost Uncle George who is about to become Aunt Gladys – these are just a few of the incidents that set bones a-rattling in the closet. Every family has its secrets. Some are funny, some are sad, and some are terrible. This collection of tales by well-known authors including Bruce Coville, M.E. Kerr and Chris Crutcher revels in bringing a number of intriguing skeletons out into the light.

Mickey is finally free. His mother has sent him to live with his Uncle Ronald, far away from his cruel drunkard of a father. But freedom will last only as long as his whereabouts remains a secret. Despite the very grave situation, Doyle paints an affectionate (and wildly funny) portrait of a motley crew of characters. Be sure to check out his other tales of the Gatineau Hills, all collected in The Low Life: five great tales from up and down the river.

Anna's extreme shyness causes her to "fade into the woodwork," literally. She constructs a network of secret rooms within the walls of her family home and retreats from public life. Will her family notice her absence? Will she ever be able to rejoin the outside world?

Amongst her talented and articulate family, Hero is exceptional for her silence. For reasons of her own, she chooses not to speak. But she does listen, and watch. Hero discovers a number of hidden truths, about her family, and her neighbours.

"One day when I was almost fifteen I saw my face on a post office wall…it was on a poster for missing children." So begins Eddie Leonard's tale of his search for identity. His "grandmother" has told him various stories about his origins but Eddie is now determined to find the truth. Whatever he finds, whoever his parents may be, will he be any closer to discovering who he really is?

At first, Adri is merely puzzled and upset when her three-year-old sister Becky shows fear of her preschool. Gradually, however, dark memories of her own time at Treehouse preschool begin to surface. Adri is convinced that her sister is being abused. How far will the staff of the preschool go to keep its secrets?

Josh is lost. Really lost. The accident that killed his mother has robbed him of a bright and secure future. Trying to sort out the tatters of his life, Josh is hitchhiking from Boston to Dallas…when he takes an unplanned detour. Suddenly Josh finds himself cut off in a strange rural society that follows a lifestyle belonging to an earlier time. To some this might seem a miraculous refuge, as though Brigadoon had appeared out of the dark and the rain, but for Josh it is a cage. He looks for a way out, but the road seems to have vanished...

Beneath the streets of New York is the Downside, a place of mystery and a mad sort of glamour. Here an unknown people inhabits a network of disused subway tunnels and sunken buildings, avoiding Topside except to raid it for supplies, contemptuous of its ways and its people. But Talon is a curious and adventurous resident of the Downside, one who has committed the cardinal sin of allowing himself to be seen... by a Topsider. What will happen when the two worlds collide? A cynical and street-wise urban myth.

Bran Slocum is the new guy in town and he doesn't fit in. He is made an outcast and a victim at school, but Bran doesn't seem to care. He accepts it all in silence. Bran doesn't want to attract attention. He has something to hide.

"It wasn't exactly rape." Or so everyone believes. But denial won't make the memories, the fear or the guilt go away. Lies meant to protect everyone are tearing Mandy and her family apart. If she doesn't face the truth soon, Mandy will never be able to get on with her life.