Shelley Darlington has lived at the Playboy mansion for the last nine years. She is Hef's favorite and acts like a den mother to the other girls. On her birthday, she is unceremoniously evicted from Hef's pad for 'being too old.' Homeless and without essential skills, Shelley wanders around L.A. until she finds a new job--the housemother at the most unpopular sorority on campus

It is the not-too-distant future. Thousands of satellites scan, observe and monitor our every move. Much of the planet is a war zone; the rest, a collection of wretched way stations, teeming megalopolises, and vast wastelands punctuated by areas left radioactive from nuclear meltdowns. It is a world made for hardened warriors, one of whom, a mercenary known only as Toorop, lives by a simple survivorâ??s code: kill or be killed. His latest assignment has him smuggling a young woman named Aurora from a convent in Kazakhstan to New York City. Toorop, his new young charge Aurora and Auroraâ??s guardian Sister Rebeka embark on a 6,000 mile journey that takes them from Eastern Europe, through a refugee camp in â??New Russia,â?� across the Bering Straight in a pilfered submarine, then through the frozen tundra of Alaska and Canada, and finally to New York. Facing obstacles at every turn, Toorop, the killer for hire, is tested like never before, in ways he could never have imagined--as he comes to understand that he is the custodian of the only hope for the future of mankind. For the first time in his life, Toorop has to make a choice: to make a difference or walk away and save himself. Too bad it came on the day he died.

Lifelong friends embark on separate paths for their first year of college and the summer beyond, but remain in touch by sharing their experiences with each other as they always have--with honesty and humor. Discovering their individual strengths, fears, talents and capacity for love through the choices they make, they come to value more than ever the bond they share and the immeasurable power of their friendship.

An ousted CIA official's memoir accidentally falls into the hands of two unwise gym employees intent on exploiting their find.