In a riveting and unputdownable thriller from the Queen of Suspense, a young woman is ensnared into returning to a place she had wanted to leave behind forever—her childhood home.
At the age of ten, Liza Barton shot her mother, trying desperately to protect her from her estranged stepfather, Ted Cartwright. Despite his claim that the shooting was a deliberate act, the Juvenile Court ruled the death an accident. Many people, however,...

"Magic is illegal in Newworld, so Maggie struggles to explain the strange shadows--that only she can see--that seem to accompany her new stepfather everywhere"--

Laura Stiles and her sisters have been able to deal with their mother's choice in husband until they discovered his plans to marry each of them off to his lecherous friends. Now they must run away to find better matches to claim their portion of their father's lumber dynasty. During their escape, Laura befriends a mission group heading to California. She quickly volunteers herself and her sisters to join their efforts. The sisters are excited to put...

"Trent Powers relocates his family from Anaheim to Arkansas to take over as head coach of the Denton Pirates, a high school football team powered by a volatile but talented running back named Billy Lowe. Billy comes from an extremely troubled home: a trailer park where he is terrorized by his unstable mother's abusive boyfriend. Billy takes out his anger on the field, and it's not long before he crosses a line. Instead of punishing him, though, Trent...

After his mother divorces his father and remarries, Asa's sharp intellect and capacity for forgiveness help him deal with the instabilities of his new world.

Alex feels that he does not have much in common with his stepfather Jake until a fuzzy spider brings them together.

Fifteen-year-old Cassie Streng is determined to expose her stepfather after learning that he is giving a dangerous experimental drug to his teenaged psychiatric patients, but he sends her to a boot camp for troubled teens in Mexico in order to keep her quiet.

After his stepfather becomes an abolitionist, ten-year-old Joseph struggles with his own thoughts about slavery as he sees its divisive power in his small Kentucky town.

Josh, who has just moved to Vermont with his mother, stepfather, and new baby brother, must deal with the bullying of a neighbor boy and discovers that his dog, whom he hears talking with other dogs, is also facing a bully of his own.

When Eden Radley's estranged mother kills herself and her young disabled son, a guilt-ridden Eden heads to Cleveland for the funeral and the more she discovers, the more she thinks her mother's death was not a suicide.