Glover, Texas has three restaurants, two gas stations, and its very own underground crime syndicate. Other than that, the town’s about as lively as roadkill. That’s been Cake Donaldson’s experience, anyway....

Having never been outside the walls of Gramm Jones Foster Care Facility, sixteen-year-old Levi leaves in the middle of the night with an empty backpack and a newfound lust for life. A journey that leads him into the arms of delusional newlyweds, drunkards, polygamists, the dangerous, and the batshit crazy. His destination? Hermosa Beach, California where he's told there is another like him, with the face of a skull.

For some kids, Long Lake, Georgia is home. But for 14-year-old Baker Gray, it’s just another stop, another town in another state. Because of his mother’s nomadic lifestyle, he’s never had a best friend, never kissed a girl, and he’s certainly never met anyone like Cassandra Larsson - the enigmatic, older girl whose idea of fun blurs the line between right and wrong.

Erik and Lara are in mourning for their daughter, who was born "incompatible with life". To get away from their suffocating grief and the ever-present shadow their daughter has cast in their lives since passing, and desperately trying to recover their increasingly rocky relationship, they take a trip to the seaside town of Polperro, in Cornwall. But no sooner have they arrived, than they realize that their grief cannot be so easily eluded. Drawn to the waters, Erik and Lara discover a large Devil's Pocketbook, and inside: the miracle child they could never have. Scylla.

A neglected 12-year-old boy does nothing to report the death of his mother in order to compete in a spelling bee. A tragic coming-of-age tale of horror and drama in the setting of a hot New Orleans summer.