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.

I, Lois Mai Reynolds, am all kinds of clumsy. I fall over flat surfaces. I drop expensive vases, and miraculously find ways to trip over thin air. Not a day has passed by when I'm not wearing a Band-Aid for some kind of accident that I've endured, and it's stooped to the level now that my parents call me King Kong and joke about having warning signs and safety tape around my bedroom door. Once upon a time, I used to think of that as a laughing matter, but not anymore. Not since I almost killed my crush's mom. Suddenly, being compared to a giant gorilla of mass destruction doesn't actually seem that crazy. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED #11 Romance