Ten-year-old Allie's family moves from urban New Haven to rural Stamford, Connecticut, in the midst of the Great Depression.

"From the winner of the National Jewish Book Award-Ronald H. Balson's An Affair of Spies tells of a spy mission to rescue a defector from Germany and prevent the Nazis from creating an atomic bomb. Nathan Silverman grew up in Berlin in the 1920s, the son of a homemaker and a theoretical physicist. His idyllic childhood was soon marred by increasing levels of bigotry against his family and the rest of the Jewish community, and after his uncle is arrested...

In 1966 Illinois, twelve-year-old Wilhelmina, convinced that she, her parents, and sisters are Abraham Lincoln's family reincarnated, determines to keep them from suffering the same fates, which is complicated when she and her father become involved in the Civil Rights Movement.

In 1983 seventh-grader David Da-Wei Horowitz has a lot to worry about--his bar mitzvah's coming soon, his Jewish and Chinese grandmothers argue about everything, his teammates for the upcoming trivia contest, Scott and Hector, don't like each other, he's beginning to notice girls, and Scott's persuaded him to begin digging a fallout shelter just in case the Cold War heats up.

As a new sophomore at an exclusive boarding school, a young black man is witness to the persecution of another student with bad acne.

When orphaned Dave is sent to the Hebrew Home for Boys where he is treated cruelly, he sneaks out at night and is welcomed into the music- and culture-filled world of the Harlem Renaissance.

When sixteen-year-old Mateo and Chela discover each other and their powers during a political battle between neighborhood factions, they set aside their differences to unravel the mystery behind their sunken homeland and to stop a dangerous political operative who is trying to harness their gifts to unleash terror on the world.

Twelve-year-old Isabel has no interest in the war in Europe until her family welcomes Helga, a German war refugee, into their home in the Bronx.