Barbara Hall

At the age of 16, it's standard procedure for every girl at Lynnie Russo's posh Los Angeles prep school to get a car. So on her 16th birthday, Lynnie is startled when she opens the small gift box from her father--it doesn't contain the shiny new set of keys she was expecting. Instead she finds a worn-out bird charm bracelet. What can he be thinking? When she cuts school to go try surfing so as to have a special day, instead of grounding her, her father hands her a manuscript box and says, "Your mother wanted you to have this when it seemed you were losing perspective. I think now's the time."Through "The Noah Confessions," Lynnie uncovers her family's secrets, loves, and tragedies, and comes to recognize that their past may not necessarily determine her future.From the Hardcover edition.

Fourteen-year-old Libby's efforts to figure out who she is are influenced by her relationships with family and friends in the small town where she lives.

Pearl Swain is struggling to get past a failed marriage and a disappointing career as a musician. When she is assigned to give violin lessons to a gifted but troubled young woman, she finds herself caught up in her student's life.

The blazing hot, dry summer seems endless for fourteen-year-old girl, Dutch Peyton. Life had always been pretty good, but now things are changing, and the drought isn't Dutch's only concern. When her sophisticated, beautiful cousin Norma comes to visit, she's not sure how to handle her. Norma, on the other hand, is determined to teach Dutch all she knows about life and love. But Dutch doesn't want her cousin's advice. It hasn't helped her figure out what she's feeling for classmate Ethan Cole. And it can't relieve the drought that is destroying her family's tobacco crop as well as their morale. Will the Dixie storm so desperately needed by the parched land be enough to wash away Dutch's troubles too?

Sixteen-year-old Blanche forms a band that wins a spot at Coachella, a southern California music festival, where she hopes to reconnect with her father, a famous but reclusive musician who left when she was five years old.

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Living in a small southern beach town, seventeen-year-old Matty, unsure of his future and beset with parent and girl problems, finds his only successes in playing an out-of-style arcade game.