No longer famous, journalist Cannie Shapiro writes science fiction under a pen name while raising her teenage daughter, and considers her husband Peter's request to have Cannie's flamboyant sister provide surrogate services so that they can have a second child.

As a nanny, Millicent Fairweather poured her energy and talents into the two young charges under her care--only to have them suddenly and without explanation sent to a boarding school. Bereft and unsure of where life will lead her, she agrees to accompany her sister and brother-in-law to America. They board the Opportunity, confident a better life awaits. Widower Daniel Clark determines to begin life anew in Gooding, Texas, operating a mercantile....

"A warm, funny and keenly perceptive novel about the lifecycle of one family -- as the kids become parents, grandchildren become teenagers, and a matriarch confronts the legacy of her mistakes, from the New York Times-bestselling author of Modern Lovers and The Vacationers When Astrid Strick witnesses a school bus accident in the center of town, it jostles loose a repressed memory from her young parenting days, decades years earlier. Suddenly, Astrid...

Once upon a time, he was just a hopeless cause from the wrong side of Glory, Kansas. And he'll be damned if he'll let anyone drag him back down after finally clawing his way out.
Everyone knows that Gina Townsend is a saint, always taking care of everyone around her. And now she's trying to be a mother to her six-year-old niece, Amanda Jane. But the girl's biological father isn't helping matters. The scruffy, gangly boy Gina remembers has returned...

Mick Brannigan, a construction worker, loses a good-paying job because of some freak accident, sort of his fault but not his fault. Adding insult to injury, he finds himself playing nursemaid to his three kids. "Mick's whole life felt like an accident..." Even more flustered is his wife, Layne, now forced to get a job to keep a paycheck coming in. Mick isn't the stay-at-home-dad type, she's sure. He's a good dad--when she is there to supervise it...

It's June of 1965 when Wrecker enters the world. The war is raging in Vietnam, San Francisco is tripping toward flower power, and Lisa Fay, Wrecker's birth mother, is knocked nearly sideways by life as a single parent in a city she can barely manage to navigate on her own. Three years later, she's in prison, and Wrecker is left to bounce around in the system before he's shipped off to live with distant relatives in the wilds of Humboldt County, California....

Reine Jonson is in trouble. Not only is her car falling apart, but her best friend, Deborah, is trying to set her up with the mysterious Stephen Morley, who owns Morley Cove Resort and needs help taking care of his nephews and niece after the unexpected death of his brother. Still recovering from his family's tragedy, Stephen is having difficulty balancing grief and his growing attraction to Reine. Can Reine help the Morley family without becoming...

This Book Club in a Box is a book discussion kit which circulates for six weeks and contains everything you need to host your own book club.