When their father invites a mail-order bride to come live with them in their prairie home, Caleb and Anna are captivated by their new mother and hope that she will stay.

While still grieving for her mother and unable to accept her stepmother, a girl clings to the memories represented by forty-three buttons on a string.

"Annie loves living with her dad and her bunny, Snowball. But she wants her dad to find someone to love. Then he meets a woman named Martha. Soon it is time for a wedding!"--

The scene: New York City. The dazzling lights cast shadows that grow ever darker as the glitzy prosperity of the Roaring Twenties screeches to a halt. Enter a cast of familiar characters: a young girl, Samantha White, returning after being sent away by her cruel stepmother, the Queen of the Follies, years earlier; her father, the King of Wall Street, who survives the stock market crash only to suffer a strange and sudden death; seven street urchins,...

Abandoned by their father and living in poverty with their heartless stepmother in Louisiana, two sisters from the Philippines, twelve-year-old Sol and six-year-old Ming, learn the true meaning of family.

In this fairy tale, loosely based on English and Scottish lore, feisty Princess Rosamond, who prefers good books to good looks, risks her throne and all her wealth to save her father's life.

In 1810, Lucy Bluecrowne, twelve, is bored living ashore with her stepmother and half brother until two nefarious strangers identify her little brother as the pyrotechnical prodigy they need for their evil plan.

When eleven-year-old Zack Jennings moves to Connecticut with his father and new stepmother, they must deal with the ghosts left behind by a terrible accident, as well as another kind of ghost from Zack's past.

In this variation on the Cinderella story, Ash grows up believing in the fairy realm that the king and his philosophers have sought to suppress, until one day she must choose between a handsome fairy cursed to love her and the King's Huntress whom she loves.

Fifteen-year-old Sydney Foster is a troubled teen from a broken home, heading for trouble. After being caught shoplifting and a bout of alcohol poisoning, her volatile behavior has finally reached a breaking point. Sydney is sent to spend the summer with her father, who hopes to reconnect with her. At first Sydney isn't happy but she slowly develops relationships with those around her, including a friend whose mom is dying of cancer and her newly...