Darkness had come to the town. Strange things were happening in the dead of night. Children would put a tooth under their pillow for the tooth fairy, but in the morning they would wake up to find a dead slug; a live spider; hundreds of earwigs creeping and crawling beneath their pillow. Evil was at work. But who or what was behind it?

After her parents' divorce, eighth-grader Rachel Lee joins her mother's new housecleaning business, which has her scrubbing bathrooms in her more popular classmates' homes and learning useful secrets.

Franklin Delano Donuthead, a fifth-grader obsessed with hygiene and safety, finds an unlikely friend and protector in Sarah Kervick, the tough new student who lives in a dirty trailer, bonds with his mother, and is as "irregular" as he is.

When Mallory and Jared attempt to rescue Simon from goblins, they use a magical stone which enables them to see things that are normally invisible.

Creative, intelligent, nine-year-old Mina keeps a journal in her own disorderly way that reveals how her mind is growing into something extraordinary, especially after she begins homeschooling under the direction of her widowed mother.

"Tory and her comrades must track a new pack of rogue Virals who have brought on the attention of a shadowy government organization intent on learning the secret to their powers"--

Thirteen-year-old Jeff's life spirals downward into homelessness after his alcoholic mother loses her job.

When Mama's pregnancy draws attention away from Gia, she worries that the special bond they share will disappear forever once the baby is born.

A young girl and her brother stay with their grandmother while their mother works at night.

Fifth-grader Cally Louise Fisher stops talking, partly because her father and brother never speak of her mother who died a year earlier, but visions of her mother, friendships with a homeless man and a disabled boy, and a huge dog ensure that she still communicates.