Embarrassed about gathering watercress from a roadside ditch, a girl learns to appreciate her Chinese heritage after learning why the plant is so important to her parents.

"Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet. So begins the story of this exquisite debut novel, about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee; their middle daughter, a girl who inherited her mother's bright blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue-in Marilyn's case that her daughter become...

"A stunning, lyrical coming-of-age novel set in the rolling foothills of the Appalachians in which a young girl, with only the compass of her father's imagination, must navigate racism, sexism, and the dark secrets that will haunt her for the rest of her life. "A girl comes of age against the knife." So begins the story of Betty Carpenter. Born in a bathtub in Arkansas in 1954 to a Cherokee father and white mother, Betty is the sixth of eight siblings....

After finally getting noticed by someone other than school bullies and his ever-angry father, seventeen-year-old Tyler enjoys his tough new reputation and the attentions of a popular girl, but when life starts to go bad again, he must choose between transforming himself or giving in to his destructive thoughts.

In a future Chicago, sixteen-year-old Beatrice Prior must choose among five predetermined factions to define her identity for the rest of her life, a decision made more difficult when she discovers that she is an anomoly who does not fit into any one group, and that the society she lives in is not perfect after all.

Twelve-year-old Jason describes the wonderful Christmas of 1890 that he and his family celebrate in their home in Springfield, Ohio

"After a disastrous marriage, widow Mandy McClellen Gray is doing just fine in her remote mountain home. She's got her three children to keep her company and gold in the bank to keep her solvent. The last thing she needs right now is a cantankerous cowboy encroaching on her life. Rancher Tom Linscott is as tough and cranky as his unruly stallion. When he finds outlaws have trapped Mandy on her mountain, he's determined to rescue her, whether she wants...

Young Emma Miller would appear to be the luckiest girl in Indiana: An Amish beauty with a loving family and a marriage offer from the community's most eligible young man, Emma's future seems right on track. Yet she yearns for adventure and romance and when given the opportunity to spend the season helping her widowed cousin's market business in scenic Charm, Ohio, she jumps at the chance to see what else the world has to offer.