Nine-year-old Anna is happy to spend a week at her aunt and uncle's Beltsville, Maryland, farm until she meets Theodore, who calls her a "city slicker" and spurs her to prove that she's just as clever and brave as he is.

"This time the mysterious box that Ranger the Golden retriever found transports him to a Maryland plantation before the Civil War, where he must help a young house slave named Sarah and her younger brother Jesse find their way to the underground railroad and North to freedom, before Jesse is sold to a plantation further South." --

During fall semester of her junior year of high school, Alice decides to change her good girl image, while major remodeling begins at home and some important relationships begin to change.

As Alice McKinley begins a new phase as a student at the University of Maryland, College Park, she experiences many changes, both expected and surprising, that lead her into a future her seventh-grade self could only have imagined.

Tenth-graders Ethan and Ti-Anna go to Hong Kong seeking her father, an exiled Chinese democracy activist who has disappeared, and follow his trail to Vietnam and back, also uncovering illegal activity along the way. Includes author's note and the history behind the novel written by the girl who inspired it.

"Eleven-year-old Avery Lee loves living in Hickory Valley, Maryland. She loves her neighborhood, school, and the end-of-summer fair she always goes to with her two best friends. But she's tired of feeling squished by her six siblings! They're noisy and chaotic and the younger kids love her a little too much. All Avery wants is her own room -- her own space to be alone and make art. So she's furious when Theo, her grumpy older brother, gets his own...

Clara's dream of enriching her rough life on the family farm is fulfilled when a horse-drawn book wagon visits with the country's first traveling library.

Although their long-term friendship is strained by new relationships and connections, rising high school seniors Jade, Meg, and Miles pull together when a real estate developer plans to destroy their coastal Maryland resort town's historic boardwalk.

Having lost her stepfather, grandmother, and mother in the span of a year, seventeen-year-old Lainey unexpectedly reconnects with long-lost relatives, copes with her five-year-old brother's behavioral problems, and endangers her long-term romance when drawn to a young man with an unexpected connection to her mother.

Along with the usual concerns of senior year in high school, Alice faces some very difficult situations, including vandalism by a group of Neo-Nazis and a friend's confession that a teacher has been taking advantage of her.