Claire and Abi have always loved summers at the lake house, but a pregnant stepmother and Abi's intense new interest in boys have changed everything.

"Leigh Fletcher: happily married stepmom to two boys goes missing on Monday. Kai Janssen: married to wealthy Dutch businessman Daan and vanishes the same week. Detective Clements knows that people disappear all the time--far too frequently. Most run away from things, some run toward and others are taken but find their way back. A sad few never return. These two women are from very different worlds. Their disappearances are unlikely to be connected....

Thirty-six-year-old Grace McAllister never longed for children. But when she meets Victor Hansen, a handsome, charismatic divorced restaurateur who is father to Max and Ava, Grace decides that, for the right man, she could learn to be an excellent part-time stepmom. After all, the kids live with their mother, Kelli. How hard could it be? At thirteen, Ava Hansen is mature beyond her years. Since her parents divorce, she has been taking care of her...

In the four years since Monica Brooks moved to Cedar Key to take over her mother's knitting shop, she has found a home, a husband, and a business to nurture. But newlyweds Monica and Adam are blind-sided when a social worker contacts Adam to tell him that his ex-wife has been deemed an unfit mother, and that custody of eight-year-old Clarissa is being transferred to him. Normally an easy-going, even-keeled woman, Monica has doubts about her parenting...

Lucy Bluecrowne is beginning a new life ashore with her stepmother and half brother, though she's certain the only place she'll ever belong is with her father on a ship of war as part of the crew. She doesn't care that living in a house is safer and the proper place for a twelve-year-old girl; it's boring. But then two nefarious strangers identify her little brother as the pyrotechnical prodigy they need to enact an evil plan, and it will take all...

Twelve-year-old Princess Meriel must sew shirts from stinging nettles in order to rescue her five older brothers from their evil stepmother's spell lest they remain swans forever. Inspired by the Andersen fairy tale, "The Wild Swans."

Fourteen-year-old Daisy Meyer is angry and frustrated with her world: her German American town, New Ulm, is under surveillance, her father's newspaper was forced to shut down for criticizing the United States' entry into World War I, her beloved older sister Elsie's fianc�e is deployed to France, and she deeply resents her stepmother--but worse is coming, because this is October 1918, and influenza is about to descend on her home and family, and...

"When Samantha is given a second chance at love at the age of 40, she moves to southwestern France, thinking she's prepared for her new role in life as an instant American wife and stepmom. It turns out, though, that making a French family takes more than just good intentions and a quick lesson in croissant-baking. Even while suffering from culture shock and struggling to parent her 10-year-old stepson and 13-year-old stepdaughter in a culture drastically...

Born into exile, eleven-year-old Nuri, the son of worldly parents who fled the revolution in their Arab country, is transfixed along with his widowed father by an Arab-English woman who joins their family, a situation that is complicated by Nuri's father's disappearance.