The antagonism between fifteen-year-old Jill and her new sixteen year-old stepsister threatens to destroy the entire family.

With Christmas approaching, Callie is drawn into a confrontation about the meaning of family when her father decides to remarry.

While visiting his mother and new stepfather whom he hates, an English teenager is terrorized by three scarecrows embodying people who met violent death and who silently threaten the entire family.

While trying to deal with his parents' marital fortunes and his own burgeoning sexuality, fourteen-year-old Jim runs off to Hawaii where he courts death by riding the Pipeline.

Christmas hearts: "Thirteen-year-old Amelia longs for a new ma. Little George needs a father's guidance. For their children's sake, Cole Matheson and Mercy Jacobs agree on a businesslike marriage. But though Cole tries to keep his distance, Mercy offers the very thing he's stopped believing in--the chance to forge a real family"--Publisher. Mistletoe kiss in Dry Creek: ""Passable cook wanted as wife. Marriage in name only." Noah Miller doesn't expect...

Having lived all her life with her widowered father in their small Southern town, twelve-year-old Letty resents his new girlfriend and tries to grow up in a hurry to stop him from remarrying.

When an old friend comes to visit, Charlie is not at all happy with the changes he sees--especially when Rick gets reckless on his snowboard, chasing X and some of Charlie's other friends off the slopes.