We know you are here, our brothers and sisters . . .
Pressia barely remembers the Detonations or much about life during the Before. In her sleeping cabinet behind the rubble of an old barbershop where she lives with her grandfather, she thinks about what is lost-how the world went from amusement parks, movie theaters, birthday parties, fathers and mothers . . . to ash and dust, scars, permanent burns, and fused, damaged bodies. And now, at an age when everyone is required to turn themselves over to the militia to either be trained as a soldier or, if they are too damaged and weak, to be used as live targets, Pressia can no longer pretend to be small. Pressia is on the run.
Burn a Pure and Breathe the Ash . . .
There are those who escaped the apocalypse unmarked. Pures. They are tucked safely inside the Dome that protects their healthy, superior bodies. Yet Partridge, whose father is one of the most influential men in the Dome, feels isolated and lonely. Different. He thinks about loss-maybe just because his family is broken; his father is emotionally distant; his brother killed himself; and his mother never made it inside their shelter. Or maybe it's his claustrophobia: his feeling that this Dome has become a swaddling of intensely rigid order. So when a slipped phrase suggests his mother might still be alive, Partridge risks his life to leave the Dome to find her.
When Pressia meets Partridge, their worlds shatter all over again.

What would life be like with the one who got away? From the acclaimed author of My Husband’s Sweethearts comes this bighearted, funny, fiercely perceptive tale about a happily married woman and the little white lie that changed everything.

For Gwen Merchant, love has always been doled out in little packets—from her father, who lost himself in work after her mother’s death, and from her husband, Peter, who’s always been respectable and safe. But when an old college boyfriend, the irrepressible Elliot Hull, invites himself back into Gwen’s life with a surprising proposition, she suddenly starts questioning everything she’s ever expected from love.
Elliot, it turns out, is in need of a pretend wife, just for the weekend, in order to fulfill his dying mother’s last wish. But as Gwen finds herself drawn into Elliot’s quirky, wonderful family—and uncovers a few secrets about her own—a pretend relationship just might turn out to be the most real thing she’s ever known.