Anne leaves home to go to college in Kingsport, Nova Scotia, and finds her life expanding in many different ways, including a marriage proposal, the sale of her very first story, and a tragedy that teaches her a painful lesson.

In 1942 New York City, fifteen-year-old Iris grieves for her mother who committed suicide and for the loss of her life of privilege, and secretly helps her father with his detective business since he, having lost a leg at Pearl Harbor, struggles to make ends meet.

In Queens, New York, in 1969, twelve-year-old Julian Twerski writes a journal for his English teacher in which he explores his friendships and how they are affected by girls, a new student who may be as fast as Julian, and especially an incident of bullying.

Living in the family car in their small North Carolina town after their father leaves them virtually penniless, Georgina, desperate to improve their situation and unwilling to accept her overworked mother's calls for patience, persuades her younger brother to help her in an elaborate scheme to get money by stealing a dog and then claiming the reward that the owners are bound to offer.

In a dystopian future seventeen-year-old Josephine Monarch has grown up in the Ashes, the poverty stricken borderlands of New Georgia, but today is the Lineup and if she is chosen she gets a chance to leave that behind--even though it will mean leaving all her loved ones behind, and embracing an uncertain future.