Mary B. Addison killed a baby. Allegedly. She didn't say much in that first interview with detectives, and the media filled in the only blanks that mattered: A white baby had died while under the care of a church-going black woman and her nine-year-old daughter. The public convicted Mary and the jury made it official. But did she do it? She wouldn't say. Mary survived six years in baby jail before being dumped in a group home. The house isn't...

"Gecko Fosse drove the getaway car. Terence Florian ran with the worst gang in Chicago. Arjay Moran killed someone. All three boys are serving time in juvenile detention centers until they get a second chance. Douglas Healy, a former juvenile delinquent himself, is running an experimental halfway house in New York City, where he wants to make a difference in the lives of kids like Gecko, Terence, and Arjay. Things are going well until one night Healy...

"In this young adult novel, fourteen-year-old Eva Brown is coping with difficulties at home and at school, most significantly her mother's alcoholism. When Eva's nohkum (grandmother) is hospitalized, her mother struggles to care for Eva and her younger brother. After Eva's brother wanders away, he is sent to live with a foster family and Eva finds herself in a group home. Furious at her mother's weakness, Eva struggles to adjust to the group home--and...

While helping police officers Esther and Lon investigate a suspicious death at her group home, nineteen-year-old Sal Miyake, who is mentally challenged, gains insights into herself and makes new friends.

In Victorian England, sixteen-year-old Orpha, imprisoned for crimes she did not commit, is released upon accepting the invitation of Charles Dickens for a fresh start at a home for fallen women. Orpha has been imprisoned at the infamous Tothill prison for crimes she did not commit. Haunted by recurring flashbacks of sexual abuse, neglect, exploitation, and the horrors of a Victorian workhouse, she refuses to be crushed. When she is chosen by Charles...