Three Pennies — Melanie Crowder

A girl in foster care tries to find her birth mother before she loses her forever in this spare and beautifully told novel about last chances and new opportunities.

For a kid bouncing from foster home to foster home, The Book of Changes is the perfect companion. That's why Marin carries three pennies and a pocket-sized I Ching with her everywhere she goes. Yet when everything in her life suddenly starts changing -- when Marin lands in a foster home that feels like somewhere she could stay, maybe forever -- the pennies don't have any answers for her.

Marin is positive that all the wrongs in her life will be made right if only she can find her birth mother and convince her that they belong together. Marin is close, oh so close -- until she gets some unwelcome news and her resolve, like the uneasy Earth far beneath the city of San Francisco, is shaken.