I thought I’d left my past behind for good. But when my older brother gets killed in a car accident, I’ve got to come back to take over his car-tuning business. But things are not like I remember. There’s something weird going on in Santo Domingo, something that seems connected to the city’s underground street racing scene. There’s the orange-haired mechanic at the tuning shop with the FOXGRRL license plate. There’s the strange black cat hanging around my house, and the dreams I’ve been having about a racer girl with cat ears and a tail.

I was just an anonymous clerk at a game store. Then one day a disgruntled customer ran over me and my hot co-worker Kelly—all because of an unreleased game I wouldn’t sell him. Now we’re trapped in a huge three-dimensional maze where gravity seems optional, competing in dangerous contests with a team of fellow social outcasts. And failure is often fatal. But I think I know what’s going on here. We’re gathering territory, I’m gaining strange abilities, and every contest we win adds another member to my team of hot girls. We just need get to the bottom of this maze. If only we can find it.

Marion Baldwin, Mars to his friends, has built a nice, safe life that guarantees a slow path to moderate wealth, two-point-five kids, a house in the suburbs, and a wife on the PTA. In other words, he’s bored beyond reason and has no idea how to turn away from his dismal future. Life changes dramatically for Mars when one fateful Saturday morning, a messenger delivers a book entitled Familiar Magic, a Guide.

When 26-year-old Maggie Reeves wakes up in a hospital after a car accident, the last thing she expects is for a doctor from the planet Aureus to show up at her bedside. It is disturbing enough that she has seen this handsome alien before, in dreams so intimate that just thinking about them leaves her blushing, but the real shock comes when he calmly informs Maggie that she is his destined mate, and he will be taking her with him to his world to finish her treatment.

When their daughter goes off to college, Samuel and his wife Gayle begin to take stock of their lives. Realizing they’re best friends and not in love with one another, the two agree to an amicable split. Nervous about jumping back into the dating world, they accept a friend’s invitation to attend a swap party. Tossing their keys into a bowl and leaving it up to fate to decide who they’re paired with is too tempting to resist. But when Samuel is faced with an audacious young man who strikes up a conversation, the attraction to men he’s kept buried for so long comes rushing back.