After years in foster homes, seventeen-year-old Benson Fisher applies to New Mexico's Maxfield Academy in hopes of securing a brighter future, but instead he finds that the school is a prison and no one is what he or she seems.

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson descendants, Charlotte and Jamie, students at a Connecticut boarding school, team up to solve a murder mystery.

Student essays, scholarship committee members' notes, and other writings reveal interactions between a group of modern-day students at an exclusive New South Wales high school and their strange connection to a young Irishman transported to Australia in the early 1800s.

"Best friends Dave and Julia were determined to never be cliche high school kids--the ones who sit at the same lunch table every day, dissecting the drama from homeroom and plotting their campaigns for prom king and queen. They even wrote their own Never List of everything they vowed they'd never, ever do in high school. Some of the rules have been easy to follow, like #5, never die your hair a color of the rainbow, or #7, never hook up with a teacher....

Bitsy Bee, Busy Bug, and their friends attend their first day of school, where they learn the alphabet with the spelling bees, paint with the paintbrush bugs, and play ball with the baseball bug.

When they hear that their teacher, Mr. G., is cutting off his ponytail and picking up a suit, the students jump to the wrong conclusion, until Katie finds out what is really happening when she turns into Mr. G.

When fashionista Sicilee, arty Maya, and antisocial Waneeda risk their reputations by joining Clifton Springs High School's Environmental Club to be near gorgeous new student Cody Lightfoot, each finds a new way of looking at the world.

Mary, Patrick, Winter, and Dez are determined to win the unofficial Senior Week Scavenger Hunt, but throughout the afternoon and evening Mary encounters the demons she and her friends have faced as high school "also-rans," and ponders what her college and future will bring.

Nervous about middle school because her family does not get her and her friends know exactly what they want to do, Abbie Wu searches for her own passion before discovering a knack for leadership when injustices in the cafeteria come to light.

"Rhiannon is disappointed that her neglectful boyfriend Justin doesn't remember the one perfect day they shared, until a stranger tells her that the Justin she spent that day with, the one who made her feel like a real person... wasn't Justin at all"--