Marcelo Sandoval, a seventeen-year-old boy on the high-functioning end of the autistic spectrum, faces new challenges, including romance and injustice, when he goes to work for his father in the mailroom of a corporate law firm.

Four months ago Sara Zapata's best friend, Linda, disappeared from the streets of Juarez, and ever since Sara has been using her job as a reporter to draw attention to the girls who have been kidnapped by the criminals who control the city, but now she and her family are being threatened--meanwhile her younger brother, Emiliano, is being lured into the narcotics business by the promise of big money, and soon the only way for both of them to escape...

"Hector has always worked hard and minded his own business. He wants to be captain of his school's chess team, go to college, and help his family make their way to a better life someday. Until Joey singles him out. Joey, whose older brother, Chavo, is head of the Discipulos gang, tells Hector that he's going to kill him: maybe not today, or tomorrow, but someday. And Hector, frozen with fear, does nothing. From that day forward, Hector's death hangs...

Kate, eighteen, and Mary, sixteen, must make some adult decisions about the course their lives should take when their loving but old-fashioned father dies suddenly, leaving them with their mother, who has been in a persistant vegetative state since an accident four years earlier.

"Ismael Diaz is on death row. As he sits in his cell waiting to die, he writes a diary that reconstructs his life and the circumstances that led him to commit murder. The reader meets a man who is a successful real estate lawyer in Boston until he trespasses on a neighbor's property to put out a "spring cleaning" fire. This incident sets off a chain reaction that results in the loss of everything that has made his life worthwhile. At loose ends,...

"In this mixed-media collection of short stories, personal essays, poetry, and comics, this celebrated group of authors share the borders they have crossed, the struggles they have pushed through, and the two cultures they continue to navigate as Mexican Americans." --book jacket