In which a girl can't go a day without an anxiety attack and a boy can't go a day without noticing

It's early summer, and in a small community on the central Jersey Shore, a black car screeches to a halt outside the Wright Bros grocery. Danny looks up from where he's working at the carwash to see the driver rifle out of the car and chase a girl rushing into the store. For some reason-fate perhaps or intuition-he decides to cross the lot and investigate. When he meets Mary, there is a great deal Danny doesn't know, but he certainly knows that he's been struck. For it's like the keys to an old car had been dropped into his hands and is about to start the engine that will forever alter the outcome of their lives. Some Place Better Than Here is a gritty, unflinching look at how we define family and come to grips with loss. It's about growing up in a small town, following your dreams, and mapping out the uneven ground that often lays between love, friendship, and sexual awakening.

Selene is a "non-essential" crew member on a generational spaceship that classifies artists as insane. She and her fellow non-essential artists are given a rather unique assignment: create art they find beautiful, with no angle of making it essential for life on board the ship. As they hone their art skills, Selene teams up with a troubled sculptor and learns just how dangerous art--and being non-essential--can be. This novella takes place on the spaceship Godspeed and deals with characters seen in the Across the Universe series. You can read it without reading the novels, although it might be more fitting to read it after A Million Suns.