A frog explains how smiling is a great way to get through life's ups and downs.

"If Ted Ainsworth were to compare himself to one of the ice cream flavors made by his family's company, famous throughout his sleepy Lancashire hometown, it might be vanilla--sweet, inoffensive, and pleasantly predictable. At forty-three, Ted is convinced there's nothing remotely remarkable about him, except perhaps his luck in having landed handsome, charismatic Giles as a husband. Then Giles suddenly leaves him for another man, filling his social...

In a society that allows families to have only two children, third child Matthias joins the Population Police to infiltrate their system.

"Tyler es sexy, inteligente y seguro de sí mismo. Cabreado con el mundo, su carácter es impredecible. Los tatuajes de su cuerpo son el recuerdo constante de todo lo que ha perdido, de los errores que jamás podrá perdonarse y de los deseos que nunca logrará cumplir. Ha aprendido del peor modo posible que amar significa sufrir, y que el único modo de sobrevivir es regirse por sus propias reglas. Cassie es lista y divertida, un poco cínica, y...

"Elizabeth is tired. Years after coming to New York to try to build a life, she has found herself with two kids, a husband, two jobs, a PhD--and now they're filing for bankruptcy. As she tries to balance her dream and the impossibility of striving toward it while her work and home lives feel poised to fall apart, she wakes at ungodly hours to run miles by the icy river, struggling to quiet her thoughts. When she reaches out to Sasha, her long-lost...

"Richly drawn stories about the lives of ordinary families in contemporary Botswana as they navigate love, relationships, tradition, caretaking and grieving in a rapidly changing world. A young widow who for a nearly a year wears mourning clothes in part as a warning to those who believe the old superstitions about bad luck following--even though she's unsure what the traditions mean or whether she is ready to meet the world without their protection....

"Marco Carrera is 'the hummingbird,' a man with an almost supernatural ability to remain still amid the chaos of an ever-changing world. Though his life is rife with emotional challenges-suffering the death of his sister and the absence of his brother; caring for his elderly parents; raising his granddaughter when her mother, Marco's own child, is no longer capable; loving an enigmatic woman-Marco carries on with a noble stoicism that belies an intensity...

Every woman makes choices. And no one has made more difficult choices than Olivia Grayson. The enormously successful businesswoman missed out on so much of her children's lives while she built her legendary home-furnishings empire. Now, Olivia faces the past, tries to balance the present and make amends where due, while still running her vastly successful business

"When Koo, a young panda, has a dream about saving the world, he worries that the job is too big for him to manage. But his Uncle Stillwater shows him that sometimes saving the world starts with doing little things, like being kind and considerate"--Provided by publisher.

"In the title story, "Funny Once," a couple held together by bad behavior fall into a lie with their more responsible friends. In "The Village," a woman visits her father at a nursing home, recalling his equanimity at her teenage misdeeds and gaining a new understanding of his own past indiscretions. In another, when a troubled girl in the neighborhood goes missing, a mother worries increasingly about her teenage son's relationship with a bad-news...