Angela Alexander, a New England bookshop owner and support talk-line volunteer, is dedicated to listening to people without her own filter getting in the way. Though her life is full and satisfying, she faces the ultimate dilemma after her husband, Tucker—an exuberant bird photographer and blues musician—is harmed by medical malpractice during a routine hernia repair. Left in intractable pain, he struggles to focus on any shred of quality of life. When Tucker expresses the desire to end his life before he loses full autonomy, Angela has to decide to support him in that decision, or not.

Even if others abandon you, you must never abandon yourself. This simple truth became Terry Helwig’s lifeline as she was forced to grow up too soon. Terry grew up the oldest of six girls in the big-sky country of the American Southwest, where she attended 12 schools in 11 years. Helwig’s stepfather, Davy, a good-hearted and loving man, proudly purchased a mobile home to enable his family to move more easily from one oil town to another, where Davy eked out a living in the oil fields.

Jenny Smith, a young journalist, secures a career-making interview with a famous but reclusive author, AJ Kenton. Jenny's time with Mr. Kenton, however, is not spent with her asking questions but with his telling one last story. During three afternoons, Kenton describes a pivotal point in his life. As a 12-year-old, he went door to door in his neighborhood and sold packets of flower seeds. His goal was to earn a prize from the seed company's catalog. His memories reveal the hidden struggles of middle-class life in the early 1960s, a time that many people living today picture as ideal.

Molly has arrived home from Vassar to reveal that she has an important announcement to make. Her mother, Suzanne, is convinced that Molly’s news is history repeating herself and that she’s about to become a thirty-six-year-old grandmother. Suzanne’s mother, Ava, develops a case of impending great-grandmother fever that is, when she’s not spying on the new next-door neighbor, Buddy McKinley, who turns out to be a blast from her past.

At 22, Dan Brown came to the Bronx's P.S. 85 as an eager, fresh-faced teacher. Unbeknownst to him, his assigned class, 4-217, was the designated "dumping ground" for all fourth-grade problem cases, and his students would prove to be more challenging than he could ever anticipate. Intent on being a caring, dedicated teacher but confronted with unruly children, absent parents, and a failing administration, Dan was pushed to the limit time and again: he found himself screaming with rage, punching his fist through a blackboard out of sheer frustration, often just wanting to give up and walk away.

It’s nineteen years since they stopped speaking to each other, but now Morgan needs to contact her three best friends from school: Paige, Emily and Tiff. Her teenage son wants to meet his dad and Morgan can’t ignore his requests any longer. And Paige, Emily and Tiff all knew what actually happened back then. Even if that was what led to their friendship group falling apart, they’re the only people Morgan can think of who might be able help her find the man who disappeared without a trace before she could tell him she was pregnant.

When they meet in the 1930s, Doris and Tup’s love is immediate. They marry quickly and Doris commits to the only life Tup ever wanted: working the Senter family farm. Soon their first child, Sonny, is born and Doris and Tup understand they are blessed. More children arrive - precocious, large-hearted Dodie and quiet, devoted Beston - but Doris and Tup take nothing for granted. When an unimaginable tragedy turns the family of five into a family of four, everything the Senters held faith in is shattered.

When Caroline, a gifted ornithologist who wants a life of travel and adventure, gets pregnant against her wishes, her husband, Charlie, assumes she will change her mind. She doesn't—and as their daughter, Grace, grows up, she falls through the devastating schism that has grown between them. Told by all three of the characters involved and set against the backdrop of Lake Superior, Finding Grace is a piercing chronicle and a poignant comic-of-age journey for a daughter and her parents.

Heroic bookseller Laurent Letellier comes across an abandoned handbag on a Parisian street. There's nothing in the bag to indicate who it belongs to, although there's all sorts of other things in it. Laurent feels a strong impulse to find the owner and tries to puzzle together who she might be from the contents of the bag. Especially a red notebook with her jottings, which really makes him want to meet her. Without even a name to go on, and only a few of her possessions to help him, how is he to find one woman in a city of millions?

Lucas is thrilled when his grandmother comes to live with him. She’s his best friend after Justin from down the street. But when she starts remembering things from her past, is he the only one who will listen? If no one else believes her, how can he fulfill her dying wish? A compelling story about the complexity and value of family as seen through the eyes of a seven-year-old boy.

I can’t trust anything Cain says. Desperate for answers, I agree to meet Charlotte in secret. But it’s Charlotte who is full of questions: about our lives, our relationship. It’s only when she lets slip the name of the road I used to live on, that I realize how much she knows about me, too. Cold fear floods through my body. My husband may not have told the truth, but his lies are nothing compared to mine. If Charlotte knows my darkest secret, my whole life could fall apart. How far will I have to go to keep the truth hidden?

Jubilee tells the true story of Vyry, the child of a white plantation owner and his black mistress. Vyry bears witness to the South's antebellum opulence and to its brutality, its wartime ruin, and the promises of Reconstruction. Weaving her own family's oral history with 30 years of research, Margaret Walker's novel brings the everyday experiences of slaves to light. Jubilee churns with the hunger, the hymns, the struggles, and the very breath of American history.

When Leah and her husband moved to France, it was with the dream of becoming self-sufficient. But in truth, it’s not the ‘good life’ she’d imagined, as three hours of digging barely yield a single straggly carrot. Worse, her teenage daughter is acting up, and her husband seems to find every strange excuse under the hot French sun to disappear. So when her friend entreats her to join the new book club she’s forming, Leah decides it’s something she will do for herself.

I’ll do anything to keep my daughter. But so will my husband… As I look across the courtroom at the man I once shared everything with, I can’t believe it’s come to this. I can see in his eyes: he is here to destroy me. But I can’t let him have our little girl. We swore to keep our divorce civil, for Lola. We agreed to put her first and keep her safe. Then the lawyers got involved, and all our promises went up in smoke.

From a distinguished chronicler of American social history and political culture, An Unfinished Season captures the postwar moment of the 1950s when the modern world lay just over the horizon. In a time of rabid anticommunism, worker unrest, and government corruption, even the small-town family could not escape the nationwide suspicion and dread of "the enemy within".