When a disaster affects her family's income, Astrid's dreams of becoming a doctor are shattered, but an opportunity opens for her in Chicago for medical training, forcing her to choose between love and the pursuit of her dream.

Unemployed and homeless after being dumped by his girlfriend, perpetual graduate student Joseph Geist answers a strange ad for a companion conversationalist and enters the world of Alma Spielman, who poses a fateful challenge.

"Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general--also known as her tough-as-talons mother--has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders. But when you're smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away ... because dragons don't bond to "fragile" humans....

"For the very driven medical student Caitlyn Winters, catching the bridal bouquet at a Christmas wedding has set off a chain reaction that she's sure is more curse than blessing. Not only has she fallen in love with family medicine resident Noah McIlroy, but an unexpected pregnancy threatens her well-laid plans for the future. It doesn't help that Noah--with a whole lot of help from her O'Brien relatives--is completely on board with the prospect of...

"In the shared and private spaces of Iowa City, a social circle of lovers and friends navigate tangled webs of connection as they try to figure out what they want, and who they are"--