As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.

A group of teens at the Hope Juvenile Treatment Center are shocked to discover their guards have abandoned them, but their joy turns to fear when they learn a catastrophic pandemic has occurred outside their walls, turning their new-found freedom into a fight for survival. The Hope Juvenile Treatment Center is ironically named: no one has hope for these delinquent teenagers. When the guards don't show up one day, the teens are shocked to learn a...

"Fourteen-year-old Jack falls under the spell of a delinquent Florida neighbor and gets way more trouble than he bargained for"--