In Stillwater, Mississippi, in 1955, thirteen-year-old African American Rose Lee Carter looks to her family and friends to understand her place in the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. Her friend Shorty wants to change things by meeting violence with violence; her best friend Hallelujah believes in the power of peaceful protests. Can one girl make a difference?

"What would the world be like if 80 percent of the population manifested superpowers called 'Quirks'? Heroes and villains would be battling it out everywhere! Being a hero would mean learning to use your power, but where would you go to study? The Hero Academy of course! But what would you do if you were one of the 20 percent who were born Quirkless?... In the third match of the joint battle training, the students of Class 1-A have their hands full...

"Before they were torn down in 2007, the Stateway Gardens public housing projects on Chicago's South Side were known as a hot-bed of poverty, drugs, gangs, and crime. But for some, like Tracy, the shy, intelligent young boy at the center of this enthralling collection of linked stories, they are simply home. Set in the mid-1980s and taking readers up to the point of the destruction of the infamous Cabrini Green housing projects -- similar to the Stateway...