When Ruth, a wealthy divorcée, offers to host a kindergarten meet-and-greet, she hopes this will be a fresh start for her and her introverted daughter, Marley. Instead, the parents are turned off by Ruth’s ostentatious wealth, and Ruth and Marley become outcasts. The last guest to arrive at the meet-and-greet is Gemma, a widow and a single mother to her daughter, Bee. Ruth sets her sights on them, and soon the two families are inseparable. But when Ruth’s affair with a married Hillside dad is exposed, Gemma severs ties with Ruth. Six years later, Gemma finds herself embroiled in a scandal of her own, and Ruth comes to her defense. Soon, though, Gemma starts to feel trapped as Ruth grows more and more obsessed with their relationship.

Lux is a single mom struggling to make her way in the world when she stumbles across an idyllic community in the Sonoma valley, where she feels instantly at home. It seems like a place from another time --- until she realizes it actually is. One night in 1906, an earthquake left Greengage stuck in the past. Lux must keep one foot in her world, raising her son as well as she can with the odds stacked against her. But every day she is more strongly drawn in by the sweet simplicity of life in Greengage, and by the irresistible connection she feels with a man born decades before her time. Soon she finds herself torn between her ties to the modern world and the first place she has ever felt truly at home.

Alice Buckle sees herself as a wife, mother, drama teacher, Facebook chatter, downloader of memories and Googler of solutions. Then an anonymous online study called “Marriage in the 21st Century” shows up in her inbox. She becomes Wife 22 and is assigned a caseworker (Researcher 101). Along the way, she shares her innermost thoughts and secrets in this survey, and her confessions end up making some sparks fly.