Eleven-year-old Cyrus knows he is not cut out to be a football hero or fireman like his adopted father, but it takes a skittish stray dog to teach him that he, too, can be brave.

"When Guinevere "Nev" Tallow receives an acceptance letter to the exclusive Deephaven Academy, they know it's the fresh start that they've been looking for. But things are strange from the moment they arrive--the house itself seems to breathe, students whisper secrets in dark corridors, and the entire east wing of the academy is locked away for reasons no one wants to explain. And Nev knows something ragged stalks the shadowy corridors, something...

Now that the Pretty Committee is no longer boycotting boys, the eighth-grade friends cannot decide who has a crush on whom, putting the Clique in jeopardy again.

Jackson confronts many challenges in his first year of middle school as his mother plans to get married, the best player on his basketball team leaves, he needs to ask a girl to go to a school dance with him, and his best friend's father is injured in Afghanistan.

When a new principal threatens to close the school library, Jamie Grimm tries to save the day by teaching a comedy class for his fellow students.

When Elle begins to volunteer two days a week working with children with special needs, she has trouble juggling her new passion, basketball obligations, and schoolwork.

When twelve-year-old Elise, orphaned since age three, becomes disheartened by middle school, with its bullies, changing relationships, and higher expectations, keys to long-locked rooms and messages from her late father help hercope.

Maverick Falconer is just starting middle school and he wishes he were a hero like his father because maybe then he could deal with his mother's drinking and series of abusive boyfriends, not to mention the kids who bully him in middle school (pretty much the same ones who bullied him in elementary school)--but as the year passes he begins to realize that other kids have problems too, and maybe if they can all survive sixth-grade things will get better....

After a fight at school leaves Marcus facing suspension, Marcus's mother takes him and his younger brother, who has Down syndrome, to Puerto Rico to visit relatives they do not remember or have never met, and while there Marcus starts searching for his father, who left their family ten years ago and is somewhere on the island.

Max and Erin continue the fight to protect South Ridge Middle School from Ralph and his henchmen, but Max's greatest challenge may be keeping his crush on Erin a secret.