Jude and her brother, Noah, are incredibly close twins. At thirteen, isolated Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude surfs and cliff-dives and wears red-red lipstick and does the talking for both of them. But three years later, Jude and Noah are barely speaking.

Twelve-year-old David and his family search for their kidnapped mother in the many different time period portals of their home, but when a stranger appears and tries to force them to sell the house, their desperation reaches new heights.

When a major earthquake hits California, trapping seventeen-year-old Ruby with Charlie, a near-stranger, in a laundromat, they struggle to stay alive and hopeful with only memories and each other's voices to sustain them. --

When fourteen-year-old Leigh's father buys a graveyard and insists she work there after school, she learns much about life, death, and the power of friendship.

Smitten with a new boy at school, California high school sophomore Cassie Howard spends months trying desperately to win him over before she finally regains some perspective.

"With three older brothers, Charlotte Reynolds, aka Charlie, has always been more comfortable calling the shots on a basketball court than flirting with the opposite sex. So when her police officer dad demands she get a summer job to pay for the latest in a long line of speeding tickets, she's more than a little surprised to find herself working at a chichi boutique and going out with a boy who has never seen her tear it up in a pickup game. Charlie...

When eleven-year-old Cat Kinsey builds a secret hideout to escape her unhappy homelife, she slowly gets to know a poor family who have come to California after losing their Texas home to the dust storms of the 1930s.

"Dust Bowl refugee Gloria Mae Willard finds herself uprooted and working on a California peach orchard, where she tries to join the secret, all-boys baseball team that she's desperate to play on"--

"When Xander travels through the portals in the King's strange house to visit Uncle Jesse as a boy, he learns that David has died and determines to do whatever it takes, and visit as many worlds as necessary, to change the future." --

Lena, almost sixteen, has always felt drawn to the waters of San Francisco Bay despite the fears of her father, a former surfer, but after she glimpses a beautiful woman with a tail, nothing can keep Lena from seeking the mermaid in the dangerous waves at Magic Crescent Cove.