Mothers of the Year: Mommy for Rent/Along Came a Daughter/Baby Steps » (~)

Lori Handeland sold her first book in 1993. Since then she has written for Dorchester Publishing, Kensington Publishing, the Harlequin Superromance series, St. Martin's Press and Avon Books. Her books span the historical, contemporary and paranormal genres.

She is a Waldenbooks and USA TODAY bestselling author. Her novel Blue Moon won the RITA Award from Romance Writers of America for the best Paranormal of 2004.

Lori lives in Southern Wisconsin with her husband, two teenaged sons and a yellow lab named Elwood.

Rebecca Winters, an American writer and mother of four, lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. When she was 17, she went to boarding school in Lausanne, Switzerland, where she learned to speak French and met girls from all over the world.

Anna's day revolves around the men in her life: her talented, techie husband, who taught her how to program computers in college; her creative, incredibly smart son, who doesn't know the meaning of the word can't.

In Mommy for Rent by Lori Handeland, a Rent-a-Mommy job for the Mother's Day picnic turns into the real thing.

In Along Came a Daughter by Rebecca Winters, a daughter goes to work for her dream mom...and then has to wait for her dad to fall in love.

In Baby Steps by Anna DeStefano, it takes a troubled little boy to help a woman take baby steps toward a loving future with her husband.

Kristin Ramsdell - Library Journal

Poignant, heartwarming, and satisfying, this trio of novellas highlights the different faces of motherhood and is a tribute to mothers everywhere. When Dani Delgado volunteers her nonexistent Mommy to help with the Mother's Day Picnic, she hires Kelly Rosholt to play the role and ends up with a new stepmother in Handeland's "Mommy for Rent." A teenager takes a hand in ensuring her single dad's romantic happiness with a widowed restaurant owner in Rebecca Winters's "Along Came a Daughter." A childless teacher learns, almost too late, that there is more to being a mom than just having a baby in Anna DeStefano's "Baby Steps." A well-written, enjoyable anthology.