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Longing to hide from the world after the trauma of her parents' divorce and the terrible bullying inflicted on her in school, teenaged Shelley moves with her timid mother to a remote cottage in the English countryside where all goes well, until an intruder invades their reclusive life and nothing is ever the same again.

As MCC Berkshire, the mysterious, book-obsessed man helping in Ailsa's mother's antique shop, tells wild stories that persuade customers to buy various items, teenaged Ailsa believes he is a liar but fears that he is not.

Alternating passages describe the experiences of a mother and her biological daughter when each is sixteen-years-old, as one becomes unexpectedly pregnant and the other decides whether to find her birth mother.

Life has just become very complicated for seventeen-year-old Katie; her father walked out a year ago, her mother is stressed out, her brother is a "special needs" teenager, and she is caring for the maternal grandmother she has never met, who is suffering from Alzheimer's--and Katie has a secret of her own that she cannot reveal.

When east London is targeted by a bomber, fifteen-year-old Alena, raised by her half-brother and his boyfriend, becomes increasingly rebellious and insistent on learning about her long-dead activist mother.