Having grown up in a California commune, Bliss sees her aloof grandmother's Atlanta world as a foreign country, but she is determined to be nice as a freshman at an elite high school, which makes her the perfect target for Sandy, a girl obsessed with the occult.

On her sixteenth birthday, Sky and River, the boy with whom she has shared Island since she was a toddler, are "rescued" and taken to California, where Sky is separated from River, forced to live with a grandmother she has just met, and learn new rules for survival.

Sixteen-year-old Vassar Spore's detailed plans for the next twenty years of her life are derailed when her bohemian grandmother insists that she join her in Southeast Asia for the summer, but as she writes a novel about her experiences, Vassar discovers new possibilities.

After the death of her free-spirited mother, sixteen-year-old Alexandra Lee is forced to move from Northern California to Savannah, Georgia, to live with her wealthy grandmother, who expects Alex to join a long-standing debutante society, which, Alex learns, has made a pact with a legendary Hoodoo family.

On a visit to her grandmother Ola, who is dying of cancer in her house in the desert, fourteen-year-old Emmie hears many stories about the past and her family history and comes to a better understanding of relatives both dead and living.

When fifteen-year-old Alexander Cold accompanies his individualistic grandmother on an expedition to find a humanoid Beast in the Amazon, he experiences ancient wonders and a supernatural world as he tries to avert disaster for the Indians.

When sixteen-year-old Jayd Jackson returns to South Bay High, she discovers that her former best friend is out to get her and her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend wants to fight, which forces Jayd to turn to Mama and her bag of tricks for help.