Janet Quin-Harkin is the popular author of more than one hundred books, most of which are geared for teen readers. Quin-Harkin's series include "Sweet Dreams," "Sugar and Spice," "Heartbreak Café," and "On Our Own," among others, in which books of standard length feature a fixed group of characters who are involved in "the sort of lives that Middle America leads," as Quin-Harkin once said in describing her work. According to the author, the "Sweet Dreams" series opened up a new direction in publishing, providing books that were cheap enough for the readers themselves to purchase and thus making teen readers independent from the choices of parents and librarians. These books were also designed to be more upbeat than the usual YA contributions, which dealt, according to Quin-Harkin, with "the darker side of reality." In the 1990s Quin-Harkin turned to writing mystery novels for adults under the name...