Charlie, twelve, who has autism and obsessive compulsive disorder, must endure a cross-country trip with his siblings and a strange babysitter to visit their father, who will undergo brain surgery.

A gifted but troubled physician, Blue Calhoun runs a thriving medical practice from his Nob Hill mansion in San Francisco while raising his son alone after an unthinkable tragedy. Then one day a female fugitive with a gunshot wound appears in Blue's surgery. Even though she holds a pistol aimed at his heart, the desperation in her eyes awakens Blue's compassion. Reluctantly he is drawn to her fragile beauty, her nerves of steel and the mystery surrounding...

It tells the story of three women: the thirty-year-old unmarried narrator, her older sister Makiko, and Makiko's daughter Midoriko. Unable to come to terms with her changed body after giving birth, Makiko becomes obsessed with the prospect of getting breast enhancement surgery. Meanwhile, her twelve-year-old daughter Midoriko is paralyzed by the fear of her oncoming puberty and finds herself unable to voice the vague, yet overwhelming anxieties associated...

Sixty-eight-year-old David has a brain tumor that he attributes to Agent Orange exposure. He wakes up from surgery repeating the name of a Native American soldier whom he was once ordered to discipline, and decides to return something precious he long ago stole from that man.

Planning the best summer ever, Andrea Williams realizes that there's just one thing that could ruin it: her best friend Hailee finding out her true feelings, so Andrea will fall out of love with her--or so she thinks. Last summer, Andrea Williams spent all her time in bed, recuperating from the latest surgery for her cerebral palsy. This summer she plans to live it up-- and part of that means falling out of love with her best friend, Hailee. Even...

When twelve-year-old Rachel learns that her scoliosis has worsened and she will need to wear a back brace to keep her spine straight, she is devastated; afraid that she will not be able to play soccer, and terrified that she will not be able to hide her condition from her friends and classmates--but her mother is determined to spare her the spinal fusion surgery that she herself had as a teenager.

Tippi and Grace. Grace and Tippi. For them, it's normal to step into the same skirt. To hook their arms around each other for balance. To fall asleep listening to the other breathing. To share. And to keep some things private. The two sixteen-year-old girls have two heads, two hearts, and each has two arms, but at the belly, they join. And they are happy, never wanting to risk the dangerous separation surgery. But the girls' body is beginning to fight...

Endometriosis materializes when the endometrium--the tissue that lines the inside of the uterus--sheds, but does not exit a woman's body during her period. Instead, it grows outside of the uterus, spreading to organs and nerves in and around the pelvic region. The resulting pain is so physically and emotionally insufferable that it can mercilessly dominate a woman's life. The average woman with endometriosis is twenty-seven years old before she is...

Charlotte, twelve, and Ben, eleven, are highly-skilled competitors at online Scrabble and that connection helps both as they face family issues and the turmoil of middle school.