"Marty and his best friend, Shiloh are on another adventure. Marty learns when a secret is too dangerous to keep, and that hate can spread like fire"--

Alice is in the eighth grade, and while she wants her life to be exciting and outrageous, she also wants to feel protected and safe.

Fourth-grader Alice tries unsuccessfully to avoid embarrassing mistakes and to establish better relations with her older brother Lester.

After she, her older brother, and their father move from Chicago to Maryland, Alice has trouble fitting into her new third grade class, but with the help of some new friends and her own unique outlook, she survives.

When motherless Alice turns thirteen she feels in-between, no longer a child but not yet a woman, and discovers that growing up can be both frustrating and wonderful.

Fifth grade is tumultuous for Alice as she tries to help others through the many changes occurring at home and in school, including learning about sex when Rosalind gets her period and shares a book that explains what is happening.

While planning a wedding as part of an assignment for her eighth-grade health class, Alice thinks about her father's and older brother's love lives and learns that you cannot prepare for all of life's decisions.

As Alice McKinley begins a new phase as a student at the University of Maryland, College Park, she experiences many changes, both expected and surprising, that lead her into a future her seventh-grade self could only have imagined.

Maryland teenager Alice McKinley spends her last semester of high school performing in the school play, working on the student paper, worrying about being away from her boyfriend, who will be studying in Spain, and anticipating her future in college.

Alice fills the summer before her junior year of high school with a job at the mall, hanging out with her friends, and wishing she had a bigger family.