A Los Angeles girl whose mother goes to jail is taken in hand by the city's foster-care program and the novel describes her experience in a series of homes, each a new adventure. A first novel.

"Calla Hammond has always been a loner-a product of the foster system and avoided by others because of a skin condition. When doctors discover her immune system holds the key to curing cancer, she struggles to advance lifesaving research in a world that sees her only as a means to an end. Yet along the way, Calla gains the one thing she has always longed for: a chosen family. When a group of unscrupulous people join forces to sell Calla's blood to...

"As a teenager, Kristin Berry had heard all the horror stories surrounding foster care and adoption-abuse, neglect, rejection, anger, and misunderstandings. But instead of closing her heart, God opened it wide. This is Kristin's honest, unvarnished story of her experiences as a foster parent of twenty-three children over the course of nine years. What she learned is that living in a foster home is like living with a revolving door. You never know...

"Only one thing matters to Caleb O'Malley: his daughter. Framed for his wife's murder, Caleb's only wish is to see his little girl. But Noelle Whitman, his daughter's foster mother, isn't buying his plea of innocence until bullets start flying and they're running for their lives. Staying one step ahead of the real killer proves nearly impossible, but former SWAT cop Caleb will risk everything to keep them safe. Because now there is nothing more important...

"A ... story of family, forgiveness, and secrets that have th e power to change the course of more than one life ... When Maze returns to Wildstone for the wedding of her estranged bff and the sister of her heart, it's also a reunion of a once ragtag team of teenagers who had only each other until a tragedy tore them apart and scattered them wide. Now as adults together again in the lake house, there are secrets and resentments mixed up in all the...

"Rob Henderson, a doctoral candidate in social psychology at Cambridge, reflects on his childhood in foster care, how he narrowly escaped a broken system, and the only hope for disenfranchised kids across America: family"--

Unable to remember her life before foster care, a teen anxious to rescue her newborn from an oppressive matriarch studies the properties of a powerful but addictive plant behind the foster family's business.

"At 3.04 p.m. on a hot, sticky day in June, Bess finds out she's pregnant. She could tell her social worker Henry, but he's useless. She should tell her foster mother, Lisa, but she won't understand.She really ought to tell Boy, but she hasn't spoken to him in weeks. Bess knows more than anyone that love doesn't come without conditions. But this isn't a love story..."--

For 50 years, Stephanie Plymale kept her past a fiercely guarded secret. No one outside her immediate family would have guessed that her childhood was fraught with every imaginable hardship: a mentally ill mother who was in and out of jails and psych wards throughout Stephanie's formative years, neglect, hunger, poverty, homelessness, truancy, foster homes, a harrowing lack of medical care, and ongoing sexual abuse. Stephanie, in turn, knew very little...