"In 1984 in the barrios of Newark, Beatriz Mendez is looking forward to dancing at her fifteenth birthday, because dancing is her true passion in life, but when her brother Juni, gang-leader of the Puerto Rican gang the Diablos, is killed by the rival Haitian Macoute gang she finds herself thrust into the role of gang-leader and drug dealer -- until she meets Nassar, a dorky Haitian boy who shares and reignites her passion for dancing."--

In 1983 New York, Michael tries to forget about his father's anger, the pressure of school, and the threat of AIDS by escaping to The Echo, where he dances with abandon and attracts the interest of another boy. 1983, New York. Michael lives in the shadow of his best friends: James, a teen performance artist who everyone wants and no one can have; and Becky, who calls things as she sees them, while doing all she can to protect those she loves. His...

Why does Skippy, a student at Dublin's venerable Seabrook College, end up dead on the floor of the local doughnut shop? Could it have something to do with his friend Ruprecht Van Doren, who is determined to open a portal into a parallel universe using ten-dimensional string theory? Or Carl, the teenage drug dealer who is Skippy's rival in love?

This meticulous inquiry into the ways that ideological evil can infect, and ultimately destroy, the intimacies and small pleasures of daily life is beautiful, thoughtful, and almost unbearably sad. A widowed grandmother, mother, and daughter are facing starvation. Since the foreign doctors have been driven away, the mother's employment at the hospital ends. Thus the young daughter, at the risk of being discovered and killed, masquerades as a boy in...