Brandon is visiting his dad on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 when the attack comes; Reshmina is a girl in Afghanistan who has grown up in the aftermath of that attack but dreams of peace, becoming a teacher and escaping her village and the narrow role that the Taliban believes is appropriate for women--both are struggling to survive, both changed forever by the events of 9/11.

Teenager Aman and his mother lose their loyal spaniel Shadow while escaping Afghanistan to flee to England, and they must depend on a friend and his grandfather to enable Shadow's return.

Gus Dempsey is a newly trained dog handler in the United States Marine Corps, and when he is deployed to Afghanistan he is paired with Loki, a bomb-sniffing black Labrador with a mischievous streak.

Told in a series of reports to his therapist, Hazard is resentful about being forced into counseling after being suspended from his school football team for unsportsmanlike conduct, angry that his father has served four tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, angry that his father has lost a leg when an IED blew up--but as his therapy progresses he begins to process what has happened to him and his family, including his father's psychological trauma...

When Travis returns home from Afghanistan, his parents are splitting up, his brother has stolen his girlfriend and car, and he has nightmares of his best friend getting killed but when he runs into Harper, a girl who has despised him since middle school, life actually starts looking up.

When his helicopter crashes in Kunar Province in Afghanistan, Lieutenant Jamal Jenkins is cut off from the forward base where the rest of his pararescue team is under fire--injured and captured by the Taliban Jenkins struggles to survive while the rest of his team sets out to find and rescue him.