Jackie's goal is perfection―perfect grades, the perfect look, getting into the perfect school. If she can achieve that, then maybe her too-busy mom and dad will take notice. But when her parents die in a tragic accident, Jackie is shipped off across the country to live with the Walters, her new guardians…who just happen to have eleven sons (plus a daughter who is basically one of the boys).
The Walter boys are loud, dirty, annoying―and, okay, some of the older boys might be Greek god level hot, but they don't think a city girl belongs on their horse ranch. How is Jackie supposed to fit into their chaotic world when she needs to keep her parents' memory alive by living up to the promise of perfect?
But as Jackie spends more time with the Walter boys, she begins to wonder if the perfection she's always strived for isn't the only way to find love after all.
Joan Sample is not living the life she expected. Now a widow and an empty-nester, she has become by her own admission something of a recluse. But after another birthday spent alone, she is finally inclined to listen to her sister, who has been begging Joan to reengage with the world. With Emmie’s support, Joan gathers the courage to take some long-awaited steps: hiring someone to tame her overgrown garden, joining a grief support group, and even renting out a room to a local college student. Before long Joan is starting to feel a little like herself again.
Across town, Maggie Herbert works mornings as a barista, tending to impatient customers before rushing to afternoon nursing classes. She lives with her alcoholic father, ducking his temperamental outbursts and struggling to pay the household bills. But her circumstances brighten when she finds a room for rent in Joan’s home. In the unexpected warmth of her new situation, Maggie finds a glimmer of hope for a better life. But will Maggie’s budding attraction to one of her favorite customers ruin the harmony she’s only recently found with Joan? Meanwhile, what is Joan to make of the mysterious landscaper who’s been revitalizing her garden—a man who seems to harbor a past loss of his own?
When professor turned crime-fighter Brandt "Doc" Savage and his girlfriend Kira Sunlight land on a desert island in the middle of the Atlantic, they think they've found a perfect utopia. An escape from their tumultuous pasts.
But they don't have long to enjoy their newfound peace before they are violently separated and dragged to opposite ends of the Earth.
Doc's search for Kira takes him from the coast of Brazil to northern Europe and the jungles of the Congo, and he discovers they are entangled in a global conspiracy that is bigger he ever could have imagined.