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A woman on a suicide run kicks her abused son out of the car. The little boy, apparently mute, is an artistic prodigy who excels at chess.

When her close-knit community of Roswell Station is attacked by enemies, Judith is forced to choose between continuing to live in silence and recovering her voice.

Sometimes Charity cannot control her body and because she has low-functioning autism, Charity cannot communicate her thoughts to anyone else, even though she feels all of the frustrations, fears, and doubts of a typical thirteen-year-old.

When Elise leaves homeschooling for public school, she copes by speaking as little as possible, but soon her silence becomes an impediment to friendship and to dealing with family secrets.

In a near-future society that claims to have gotten rid of all monstrous people, a creature emerges from a painting seventeen-year-old Jam's mother created, a hunter from another world seeking a real-life monster.

Twelve-year-old Thea, devastated after seeing her best friend die, begins to open to the possibility of new friendships and forgiveness, and comes to believe in what cannot be fully explained.

"Judith stopped talking long ago when Mom left her in the care of beloved Aunt Cora. Going back into a regular fifth-grade classroom won't be easy, but she has her Dog and new friend who will help her through"--

Near the start of World War II, young Manami, her parents, and Grandfather are evacuated from their home and sent to Manzanar, an ugly, dreary internment camp in the desert for Japanese-American citizens.

Angry that her father has left, twelve-year-old Alice swears that she will live in her family's old Renaissance tent until he agrees to return; but after she meets her mute four-year-old neighbor Piper she finds herself becoming involved in the child's life--and when she hears the little girl speak a word for the first time in years she sets out to prove to Piper's parents that the dismal diagnosis they received for their daughter may be all wrong....

"Parallel plotlines set in different times, one told in text and one in art, inform each other as a young girl unravels the mystery of a ghost next door"-- 1982: Mary is a lonely orphan at the Thornhill Institute For Children at the very moment that it's shutting its doors. When her few friends are all adopted or re-homed and she's left to face a volatile bully alone, her revenge will have a lasting effect on the bully, on Mary, and on Thornhill...