K. L Going

"Gabriel King was a born chicken. He?s afraid of spiders, corpses, loose cows, and just about everything related to the fifth grade. Gabe?s best friend, Frita Wilson, thinks Gabe needs some liberating from his fears. Frita knows something about being brave she?s the only black kid in school in a town with an active Ku Klux Klan. Together Gabe and Frita are going to spend the summer of 1976 facing down the fears on Gabe?s list. But it turns out that...

Twelve-year-old Tia lives in a white slum in New Orleans with her mother, and her whole world revolves around singing in the gospel choir with her best friend, Keisha--but when practice is interrupted by a shooting outside the church, and a baby is killed, Tia finds that she cannot sing, and she is forced to confront her feelings about her incarcerated father who killed a girl in a failed robbery years before.

Iggy Corso, who lives in city public housing, is caught physically and spiritually between good and bad when he is kicked out of high school, goes searching for his missing mother, and causes his friend to get involved with the same dangerous drug dealer who deals to his parents.

"Jane, a budding writer and Jane Austen fan, discovers the true secret to writing when a famous author and her cute, but annoying, son come to her small coastal town and play seemingly unwitting roles in affecting the custody battle between Jane's Hollywood mother and marine biologist father"--

After getting in trouble yet again, popular high school senior Liam, who never seems to live up to his wealthy father's expectations, is sent to live in a trailer park with his gay "glam-rocker" uncle.

"A poetic look at the interconnectedness of Earth, nature, and its many creatures"--