Amazon.com (ISBN 0670879118, Hardcover)

What family doesn't have secrets? The Dirty Laundry collection, edited by Lisa Rowe Fraustino (author of Ash), explores this universal fact of life via 11 original short stories penned by acclaimed young adult writers. Graham Salisbury shines with "Something Like ... Love," his story about a Hawaiian boy who befriends a Caribbean man of mystery and in the process learns a little about what matters in life. In "Popeye the Sailor," Chris Crutcher uses the cycle of child abuse to reveal that secrets tend to rear their hideous heads--no matter how firmly they are pushed aside. M.E. Kerr artfully explores the haunting of a teenage girl by her dead adoptive brother in "I Will Not Think of Maine," and in "Passport," Laurie Halse Anderson takes an amusing look at a young person torn between divorced parents and struggling to create a reality all his own. Diverse as they are, the stories share the quality of compelling, solid writing, as well as the message that no matter how normal or perfect a family appears, secrets are sure to lurk just beneath the surface. --Brangien Davis