Popular Teen-Agers #18

Connie Hughes, daughter of a prominent banker, faces an impossible choice when she falls head over heels for Dan Newton, an ambitious young architect she meets at a resort—just as her father announces her engagement to Roger Princeton, son of his business partner. Torn between honoring her father's deepest wish and following her heart, Connie returns home committed to the marriage, only to discover that fate may have other plans when she and Roger visit their newly designed house. A tender look at what happens when duty and desire collide, and whether love can find a way.

Bobbie Charteris needs $5,000 to claim her inheritance—but there's a catch: she has to be married. When she convinces Peter Williams, an actor she knows from the radio studio, to pose as her husband for a month in exchange for $500, what starts as a simple business arrangement becomes something neither of them bargained for. As the fake marriage takes on a life of its own, Bobbie discovers that playacting romance is far easier than controlling what the heart actually wants.

Nancy Drake, a twenty-four-year-old art instructor at a youth club, finds herself caught between two very different worlds when she begins dating Tommy Lawson, a student at the center—and when gossip about their romance threatens both her career and her sense of who she's supposed to be. As Nancy wrestles with pressure from Mrs. Lawson, disapproval from the school director Rex Dunn, and whispers from her own students, she must confront what it really means to grow up and stop clinging to youth.