As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.

A group of teens at the Hope Juvenile Treatment Center are shocked to discover their guards have abandoned them, but their joy turns to fear when they learn a catastrophic pandemic has occurred outside their walls, turning their new-found freedom into a fight for survival.

When four teens who would never interact socially find themselves running from a party that is being busted by the cops, they flee in a SUV they find nearby. Unbeknownst to them, they have just stolen a police car that is filled with drugs. Afraid they'll be in terrible trouble, they go to a cabin in the woods to calm down. There they face down their own inner demons as they make decisions that could change the entire course of their futures.

Teenaged Isaac, who steals to give his younger sister the basic necessities that his alcoholic mother cannot provide, is sentenced to a juvenile detention center and during therapy sessions with fellow criminals, a repressed memory surfaces that changes everything.

Having escaped from juvenile detention centers and foster care, two teenaged boys live on their own in an abandoned shack in a New York City park, making their way by stealing, occasionally working, and trying to keep from being arrested.

Based on an experience in the author's life, the story describes how fourteen-year-old Jack falls under the spell of a delinquent Florida neighbor and gets way more trouble than he bargained for in the process.

A seventeen-year-old boy, a blind and talented twelve-year-old musician, the Austin family, and Canon Tallis become involved in an evil scheme relying on the ability of a refined laser to control people's minds.

Garvie Smith is a sixteen-year-old with a genius level IQ, who can not be bothered with school, smokes cannabis, and hangs out with the bad boys--but when fifteen-year-old Chloe Dow is murdered he comes up against the ambitious Detective Inspector Singh, and both of them are determined to solve the case.

Mike Klingenberg is a troubled fourteen-year-old from a disfunctional family in Berlin who thinks of himself as boring, so when a Russian juvenile delinquent called Tschick begins to pay attention to him and include Mike in his criminal activities, he is excited--until those activities lead to disaster on the autobahn.

After being caught stealing one too many times, Benjamin Waterfalls is sent to a "boot camp" at the Ojibwe reservation where he searches for answers as he tries to turn his life around and embrace this second chance.