"In Aurora, Illinois, Aubrey Wheeler is just trying to get by after her semi-criminal ex-husband split, leaving behind his unruly teenage son. Then the lights go out, not just in Aurora but across the globe. A solar storm has knocked out power almost everywhere. Suddenly, all problems are local, very local, and Aubrey must assume the mantle of fierce protector of her suburban neighborhood. Across the country lives Aubrey's estranged brother, Thom....

"Set in near-future America, The School for Good Mothers introduces readers to a government-run reform program where bad mothers are retrained using robot doll children with artificial intelligence. Protagonist Frida Liu, a 39-year-old Chinese-American single mother in Philadelphia, loses custody of her 18-month-old daughter, Harriet, after she leaves Harriet home alone for two hours on one very bad day. To regain custody, Frida must spend a year...

Burned-out private dick Michael McGill needs to jump-start his career. What he gets instead is a cattle prod to the crotch. The president's heroin-addicted chief of staff wants McGill to find the Constitution-the real one the Founding Fathers secretly devised for the time of gravest crisis. And with God, civility, and Mom's homemade apple pie already dead or dying, that time is now. But McGill has a talent for stumbling into every imaginable depravity-and...

When the mysterious first aid kit takes golden retriever Ranger to New Orleans shortly before Hurricane Katrina hits, he finds himself helping Clare Porter and her grandmother, who are waiting for Clare's father at their home in the Lower Ninth Ward--andwhen the levees break and Clare is separated from Nana, Ranger must somehow get her to the relative safety of the Superdome, and reunite her with her family. When the mysterious first aid kit takes...