Colorado Parks & Wildlife Research Library

It's 1894, the year of Essie's thirtieth birthday, and she decides the Lord has more important things to do than provide her a husband. If she wants one, she needs to catch him herself. So she writes down the names of all the eligible bachelors in her small Texas town, makes a list of their attributes and drawbacks, closes her eyes, twirls her finger, and picks one. But convincing the lucky "husband-to-be" will be a bit more of a problem.

Lottie just knows that her boyfriend is going to propose during lunch at one of London's fanciest restaurants. But when his big question involves a trip abroad, not a trip down the aisle, she's completely crushed. So when Ben, an old flame, calls her out of the blue and reminds Lottie of their pact to get married if they were both single at thirty, she jumps at the chance. No formal dates -- just a quick march to the altar and a honeymoon on Ikonos,...

When they meet as girls on a beach in Nantucket, Maggie McIntyre and Emily Porter become fast friends--though Emily's well-heeled mother would prefer that she associate with the upscale daughters of bankers and statesmen rather than a child of the local seamstress. Even as Emily falls for Maggie's brother, Ben, and the young women's paths diverge, the duo remain close friends. Then the unthinkable happens: a lifelong friendship is pushed to its breaking...

"It begins with a reality TV show. Twelve contestants are sent into the woods to face challenges that will test the limits of their endurance. While they are out there, something terrible happens--but how widespread is the destruction, and has it occurred naturally or is it man-made? Cut off from society, the contestants know nothing of it. When one of them--a young woman the show's producers call Zoo--stumbles across the devastation, she can imagine...