Forced to help in her parents' cadaver lab for the summer, Fovea Munson, twelve, discovers three talking heads in need of a favor.

Maya Aziz is caught between her India-born parents' world of college and marrying a suitable Muslim boy, and her dream world of film school and dating her classmate, Phil. In the aftermath of a terrorist attack hundreds of miles away, the community she's known since birth is transformed by fear, bigotry, and hatred.

On a cold winter day in Chicago, Early's father disappeared, and now she, her mother and her brother have been forced to flee their apartment and join the ranks of the homeless--and it is up to Early to hold her family together and solve the mystery surrounding her father.

Fifth-grader Brittany struggles to plan, or even imagine, a future away from her mother's abusive boyfriend and the poverty and crime of Chicago's West Side.

Honoria, Shohei, and Elias, who are "united together against That Which Is The Peshtigo School," face conflict over their budding romantic interest and a science project gone awry.