Susan Meissner

Elise Sontag is a typical Iowa fourteen-year-old in 1943--aware of the war but distanced from its reach. Then her father, a legal U.S. resident for nearly two decades, is suddenly arrested on suspicion of being a Nazi sympathizer. The family is sent to an internment camp in Texas, where, behind the armed guards and barbed wire, Elise feels stripped of everything beloved and familiar, including her own identity. The only thing that makes the camp bearable...

"September 1911. On Ellis Island in New York Harbor, nurse Clara Wood cannot face returning to Manhattan, where the man she loved fell to his death in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Then, while caring for a fevered immigrant whose own loss mirrors hers, she becomes intrigued by a name embroidered onto the scarf he carries ... and finds herself caught in a dilemma that compels her to confront the truth about the assumptions she's made. Will what she...

When families donate their used pumpkins and jack-o'-lanterns to the zoo, the animals chomp, chew, play, and give hearty hoorays for their favorite squishy squash.

Here is the dramatic story of two young girls, Megan and Jen, who meet in first grade and quickly become inseparable friends. Inseparable, that is, until one of them is snatched away by kidnappers as the other young girl watches helplessly.   The remaining child grows up with the haunting memory of her friend's abduction...and absence from her life.  Then, sixteen years later, the stunning truth of the disappearance is revealed. And once again,...

The Janviers have the idyllic life. A beautiful home, great jobs, two wonderful kids. And surrounding it all is the proverbial white picket fence that protects them, offers them a serene sense of security-- and hides all their secrets.