"Punkzilla" is on a mission to see his older brother "P", before "P" dies of cancer. Still buzzing from his last hit of meth, he embarks on a days-long trip from Portland, Ore. to Memphis, Tenn., writing letters to his family and friends. Along the way, he sees a sketchier side of America and worries if he will make it to see his brother in time.

After the death of her abusive father and loss of her beloved Ethan and their unborn child, Pattyn runs away, desperately seeking peace, as her younger sister, a sophomore in high school, also tries to put the pieces of her life back together.

"When Pearl runs away from her abusive father, she has nowhere to go--until she stumbles upon a disguise that gives her the key to a new identity. Reborn as a boy named Soupy, she hitches her star to Ramshackle, a hobo who takes her under his wing. Ramshackle's kindness and protection go a long way toward helping Soupy heal from her difficult past. But he has his own demons to wrestle with, and he'll need Soupy just as much as she needs him. Two misfits...

Wilf is convinced his parents want nothing to do with him. When he isn't in school, he is left to his own devices or shipped away to camp. But at fifteen, Wilf is adamant that he is too old for summer camp. When his parents ignore his protests and ship him off anyway, he knows how he will get their attention: He will escape from camp by canoe and spend the rest of his vacation alone in the woods, proving to his parents he deserves his independence....

A few months before his eighteenth birthday, Hector runs away to the remote Isle Royale on Lake Superior. In the spring, when he'll be legally free from his brutal uncle, he can go back to the mainland. Until then, he'll have to weather the vicious autumn storms and find a way to survive the hostile, uninhabited island.

"Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, step inside Mosco's Traveling Wonder Show, a menagerie of human curiosities and misfits guaranteed to astound and amaze! But perhaps the strangest act of Mosco's display is Portia Remini, a normal among the freaks, on the run from McGreavy's Home for Wayward Girls, where Mister watches and waits. He said he would always find Portia, that she could never leave. Free at last, Portia begins a new life on the bally,...

"Seventeen-year-old 'Hank,' who can't remember his identity, finds himself in Penn Station with a copy of Thoreau's Walden as his only possession and must figure out where he's from and why he ran away."

"Fourteen-year-old foster kid Tamika finds herself on the edge of the Missouri river in the grips of depression. A stray rock and some quick thinking puts her in the company of a young couple on a source-to-sea kayaking trip down the river. When the group faces the dangers of the river, Tamika must decide if she has the strength to fight for her own life" --

All her life Iph has protected her sensitive younger brother, Orr. This summer, with their mother gone at an artist residency, their father decides it is time for Orr to toughen up at a wilderness boot camp. When he brings Iph to a work gala in downtown Portland and breaks the news, Orr has already been sent away. Furious at his betrayal, Iph storms off and gets lost in the maze of Old Town. Enter George, a queer Robin Hood who swoops in on a bicycle,...

Seventeen-year-old Xochi's life changed when she became governess to precocious twelve-year-old Pallas, but the duo unintentionally summons a pair of ancient creatures determined to right the wrongs of Xochi's adolescence. Xochi is on her own in San Francisco, running from a painful past. She accepts a position as governess to Pallas, a precocious twelve-year-old with a rockstar family that lives in one of the city's storybook Victorian mansions....