Fleeing Southerland Plantation with his little sister, twelve-year-old Homer finds a secret community called Freewater, created by formerly enslaved people, but when he learns of a threat that could destroy this place, he crafts a plan to help his new home.

In 1955 Hadley, Virginia, twelve-year-old Dawnie Rae Johnson, a tomboy who excels at baseball and at her studies, becomes the first African American student to attend the all-white Prettyman Coburn school, turning her world upside down. Includes historical notes about the period.

Caleb Franklin and his younger brother, Bobby Gene, spend an extraordinary summer with their new, older neighbor, Styx Malone, a foster boy from the city.

Ten-year-old Bud, a motherless boy living in Flint, Michigan, during the Great Depression, escapes a bad foster home and sets out in search of the man he believes to be his father--the renowned bandleader, H.E. Calloway of Grand Rapids.

"Otto and Sheed Alston are local sleuths in their zany Virginia town, masters of unraveling mischief using their unmatched powers of deduction. As summer winds down and the first day of school looms, the boys are craving just a little more time for fun, eve as they bicker over what kind of fun they want to have. That is, until a mysterious man named Mr. Flux appears with a camera that literally freezes time. Now, with the help of some very strange...