Laura Baker

"With the birth of her first child, soon-to-be professor Laura Jean Baker finds herself electrified by oxytocin, the "love hormone"--the first effective antidote to her lifelong depression. Over the next eight years, her "oxy" cravings, and her family, only grow--to the dismay of her husband, Ryan, a freelance public defender. As her reckless baby-making threatens her family's middle-class existence, Baker identifies more and more with Ryan's legal...

A high school junior, anxious to spend a successful first year at a new school, finds herself preoccupied with worries about an old friend who is getting into serious trouble.

A sixteen-year-old boy's life becomes complicated when the daughter of friends of his parents spends the summer with his family, and he first begins to think of plans for his future.

A young girl tells the story of her family during her senior year in school when her mother remarries a rich man, her sister dies in an accident, and she discovers pride in her Father's memory.