Brittany is fourteen and lives in a public housing neighbourhood with her single mother. Despite her environment she is outgoing, trusting, and optimistic. When she is dumped by her boyfriend, he starts an embarrassing rumour about her that causes her to make a decision to take control of her identity.
Peter Klaven is a successful real estate agent who, upon getting engaged to the woman of his dreams, Zooey, discovers, to his dismay and chagrin, that he has no male friend close enough to serve as his Best Man.
Chelios faces a Chinese mobster who has stolen his nearly indestructible heart and replaced it with a battery-powered ticker that requires regular jolts of electricity to keep working.
Nikki Blue is a dancer at a strip club hidden along a back road in rural New England. Further down the road, Alice, a burnt-out, neurotic college grad with no particular ambitions, spends her days working at a roadside fossil and rock shop.
When she learns she's in danger of losing her visa status and being deported, overbearing book editor Margaret Tate forces her put-upon assistant, Andrew Paxton, to marry her.