Amy Harney has a job as a chambermaid for the summer, but on August 25, she will take the exam to become an EMT (third time's the charm!) and finally move on with her life. In the meantime, she doesn't mind scrubbing toilets immaculately clean or tucking the sheet corners just so. In fact, she tells herself that her work is a noble act of service to the rich guests at the yacht club. Amy's profound isolation colors everything: her job, her aspirations,...

When Chester the raccoon is reluctant to go to kindergarten for the first time, his mother teaches him a secret way to carry her love with him.

"Peeling apples for tartes tatin, an Ohio mother wonders how to exist in a world of distraction and fake facts, besieged by a tweet-happy president and trigger-happy neighbors, all of them oblivious to what Dupont has dumped into the rivers and what's happening at the factory farm down the interstate--not to mention what was done to the land's first inhabitants. A torrent of consciousness, narrated in a single sentence by a woman whose wandering thoughts...

Yoko loves kindergarten, but she doesn't want her mother to leave--until her new friend helps her realize that "mothers always come back."

When sixteen-year-old Lily Larkin's older sister, Alice, begins to struggle with her mental health, Lily attempts to keep everything together and perfect, despite her own growing anxiety.

While they are at work a mother and father send powerful "love waves" to their child at home, offering reassurance and comfort in their absence.

Seventeen-year-old Paige suffers from a paralyzing fear of making the wrong decision, so when presented with the choice between two life-long dreams Paige is forced to face the truth about her struggle with anxiety. The average person makes 35,000 decisions every single day. Paige Collins lives in debilitating fear of making the wrong choice. The simple act of picking an art elective is enough to send her into a spiral of what ifs. When Paige is...

Judy never intended to start wearing the dog. But when she stumbled across her son Teddy's old baby sling during a halfhearted basement cleaning, something in her snapped. So: the dog went into the sling, Judy felt connected to another living being, and she's repeated the process every day since. Life hasn't gone according to Judy's plan. Her career as a children's book author offered a glimpse of success before taking an embarrassing nose dive. Teddy,...

Crystal toils day and night to earn top grades at her cram school. She's also endlessly texting, shopping, drinking, vexing her boyfriends, cranking up her MP3s, and fantasizing about her next slice of cheesecake. But her nonstop frenzy never lets her do the one thing that might change her tragic fate: open up about the pressures that are driving her to the edge. She certainly hasn't talked with her best friend, Mina, nor Mina's brother, whom she's...

Told from two viewpoints, Kit has an odd, stress-induced reaction when she witnesses her best friend's public humiliation, and the secrets both girls keep may tear them apart.