In 1930 Abby Nichols is an eight-year-old girl growing up in Maine, but as the Depression deepens, and her mother dies, the responsibility of taking care of her family falls to her, and she has to put her dreams of going to college and becoming a writer on hold.

During the summer of 1926 in the lake resort town of Excelsior, Minnesota, sixteen-year-old Garnet, who dreams of indulging her passion for ornithology, is resigned to marrying a nice boy and settling into middle-class homemaking until she takes a liberating job in a hat shop and begins an intense, secret relationship with a daring and beautiful flapper.

"Marisol loves to paint. So when her teacher asks her to help make a mural for the school library, she can't wait to begin! But wait-how can Marisol ever make a sky without blue paint? After gazing out the bus window and watching from her porch as day turns into night, she closes her eyes and starts to dream"--

"As Jin Ling tries to save her sister Mei Yee from the Brotherhood of the Red Dragon in Hak Nam Walled City, one boy, Dai, can reunite them and save their lives--but only if he's willing to risk his own"-- Mei Yee has been trapped in a brothel for the past two years, dreaming of getting out while watching the girls who try fail one by one. Jin lives in the street gangs, passing as a boy to stay safe while searching for her sister. Dai traffics drugs...

"A child dreams of a life without borders after he and and his parents are forced to leave their home during the Mexican Repatriation"--Provided by publisher.

Young Derek's dream of sailing to a championship under his father's coaching is complicated by unexpected challenges.

In 1960s New York, fifth-grader Ruthie, a Cuban-Jewish immigrant, must rely on books, art, her family, and friends in her multicultural neighborhood when an accident puts her in a body cast.

"For the diver Kino, finding a magnificent pearl means the promise of better life for his impoverished family. His dream blinds him to the greed and suspicions the pearl arouses in him and his neighbors, and even his loving wife cannot temper his obsession or stem the events leading to tragedy. Kino and his wife illustrate the fall from innocence of people who believe that wealth erases all problems"--P. [4] of cover.

In 1946 Hollywood, eighteen-year-old Clara Berg dreams of becoming a film editor and going on a real date with handsome yet unpredictable screenwriter Gil, until she stumbles upon a murder mystery.

In 1930, a great ocean wave blots out a Bengali village, leaving only one survivor, a young girl. As a maidservant in a British boarding school, Pom is renamed Sarah and discovers her gift for languages. Her private dreams almost die when she arrives in Kharagpur and is recruited into a secretive, decadent world. Eventually, she lands in Calcutta, renames herself Kamala, and creates a new life rich in books and friends. But although success and even...