Shelby & Beth (Series)

This series follows Shelby in her adoption of Beth, moving into a new home and making a new life for herself and her new daughter, and her encounters with her neighbors, Emmett Tepley and his thirteen-year-old daughter, Joanie.

Stories
These are the stories up to this point:
 * Solid Ground [232]
 * Baby Steps [289]
 * In the Most Unexpected Ways [310]
 * Can't Easily Forget [331]
 * Make a Home of Four Walls [347]
 * The Girl in the Tree House [382]
 * Star-Crossed Lovers & Other Strangers [407]
 * A Regular Nightingale [441]
 * My Foolish Heart [540]
 * We Can Be Family [558]
 * We Get Higher [615]
 * Ready or Not [639]
 * One or the Other [667]
 * One Step at a Time [693]
 * Couple of Teenagers [705]
 * Girls' Day Out [772]
 * The Family Stone [786]
 * Bridge the Gap [816]

Characters
The primary characters are Shelby Corcoran and baby Beth. Along with them are the following:

Emmett Tepley
He lives next door to Shelby & Beth when they move into their new home, with his daughter Joanie. Helpful to a fault, he first sympathizes with Shelby as a single parent, and eventually shows affection and eventually love for her, and for Beth as though she were his own.

Joanie Tepley
Emmett's thirteen-year-old daughter, preferring the company of adults or of a book and her tree house. Extremely close to her father and no affection at all for her mother, Nicole, who had stopped feeling like a mother to her long ago. She almost immediately identifies with Shelby as a friend and mother figure.

Panda
Shelby's dog.

Alex Singh
Joanie's boyfriend.