After being assigned to perform community service at a nursing home, sixteen-year-old Alex befriends a cantankerous old man who has some lessons to impart about jazz guitar playing, love, and forgiveness.

"Love Lives Here is a collection of stories that include the ways Maria and her husband navigated family their way, without clear instructions or a road map. It's meant to inspire you to think about how to make life meaningful and how to create a space to grow while loving others."--Back cover.

When sixteen-year-old Chelsea Martin's future stepmother gives her a total makeover, she attracts all of the wrong boys and drives away many girls, but her friend Janelle keeps telling Chelsea to be true to herself, while helping her find a way to catch the eye of Nicholas, the one "non-jerk" at school.

A beauty contestant since she was three, Olivia, now thirteen, has begun feeling limited by her beauty but a shared journey with Danny, a boy struggling with his own appearance, show her she has choices and resources beyond her appearance.

A superhero with total disregard for the damage he causes while saving people finds himself having his image changed by a public relations executive, in return for saving the executive's life.

Deciding a new haircut will give her the boost she needs, Karen is devastated when the hairstylist cuts her hair all wrong and wonders if she will ever get back to feeling like her usual confident self.

Fifteen-year-old Georgia learns a great deal about herself and her troubled best friend Riley when they become part of a group of suburban Pennsylvania teenagers that go to Anapra, a squatters village in the border town of Juarez, Mexico, to undertake a community construction project.

"Hazel doesn't like to make waves. Middle school is hard enough without causing more trouble, right? She's happy just eating lunch in the library with her BFF, writing secret haikus, and taking care of an adorable rescue tortoise. But then Hazel discovers a list that rates the girls at her middle school based on their looks -- started by her best friend's older brother. She knows she has to do something, and she can't do it alone. The wave she'll...

Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common. But as the loners start spending time together, they discover that they share a special friendship -- the kind that changes lives and lasts a lifetime. And it is through this friendship that Ari and Dante will learn the most important truths about themselves...

In alternating chapters, two teenagers describe how their feelings about themselves, each other, and their families have changed over the years.