Kit Reed

"Among careerists who postpone parenthood, fertility problems abound. Adoptions have always been difficult and now America's borders have been closed by the Centers for Disease Control. Babies are high end commodities in this economy, microchipped at birth to protect them from theft. Tom Starbird rescues "unwanted" babies--but he's tired of meeting wealthy would-be parents' demands for "perfect" children. Tom is shutting up shop when Jake Zorn, the Television Conscience of Boston, blackmails him into doing one more job. Desperate to find one last perfect baby, Tom finds the lovely and very pregnant Sasha Egan. Stalked by her unborn child's father, on the run--Tom guesses she will be glad to be rid of her burden. Neither he nor Sasha could predict that the baby she never wanted is the one thing in her life she will do anything to keep."--Publisher's website. Pregnant and relegated to a home for unwed mothers on a world where healthy babies are rare commodities, Sasha Egan crosses paths with a famous journalist whose mentally unstable, barren wife has demanded that he obtain a baby for her.

Two women--beautiful, successful Raven, still suffering from an ugly childhood, and romance writer Holly, struggling to build a new identity--cross paths as they search for love, happiness, and happy endings in Hollywood.

Faced with her disintegrating family life, Dr. Ruby Cardillo enlists her daughter to accompany her on a trip up the East Coast to discover her family's ties to a long-rumored Edison cylinder recording of jazz musician Buddy Bolden.

"In this book, two contemporary poets undertake a series of journeys – across Britain, America and Europe – to the death places of poets of the past, in part as pilgrims, honouring inspirational writers, but also as investigators, interrogating the myth. The result is a book that is, in turn, enlightening and provocative, eye-wateringly funny and powerfully moving." --Publisher description.

Squatters in the huge, midwestern MegaMall, fifteen-year-old Tick and his gang of lost, abandoned, or runaway children face off against a rival gang, and thirteen-year-old Jule Devereaux, whose parents and aunt have mysteriously disappeared, gets caught between.