"Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasn't spoken for many years, comes to see her. Gentle gossip about people from Lucy's childhood in Amgash, Illinois, seems to reconnect them, but just below the surface lie the tension and longing that have informed every aspect of Lucy's life: her escape from her troubled family, her desire to become a writer, her marriage, her love for her two...

" For more than a decade, Jenna Metcalf has never stopped thinking about her mother, Alice, who mysteriously disappeared in the wake of a tragic accident. Refusing to believe that she would be abandoned as a young child, Jenna searches for her mother regularly online and pores over the pages of Alice's old journals. A scientist who studied grief among elephants, Alice wrote mostly of her research among the animals she loved, yet Jenna hopes the entries...

Handsome, widowed, sophisticated, utterly charming, Paul Parker won the heart of a wealthy young Frenchwoman--the daughter of an American financier, the granddaughter of a major French art dealer--as his second wife. In two marriages, he fathered a challenging son and three very different daughters. But as irresponsible as he was irresistible, he ultimately shrugged off the demands of marriage and parenting to pursue life as an international bon vivant....

Embarking on an ill-conceived Alaskan cruise, septuagenarian Harriet reunites with her estranged daughter and confronts pivotal events from her life surrounding the true character of her husband, who died two years earlier.

In 1949, four Chinese women--drawn together by the shadow of their past--begin meeting in San Francisco to play mah jong, invest in stocks and "say" stories. They call their gathering the Joy Luck Club--and forge a relationship that binds them for more than three decades.

Gathering for their weekly knitting club at a small yarn shop on Manhattan's Upper West Side, a group of friends shares such challenges as raising children, navigating the ups and downs of their careers, and pursuing uncertain relationships.

Katharine Hilbery, the beautiful grand-daughter of a great Victorian poet, must choose between becoming engaged to the oddly prosaic poet William Rodney and her attraction to Ralph Denham, with whom she feels a more profound and disturbing affinity

"Sunday Forrester lives with her sixteen-year-old daughter, Dolly, in the house she grew up in. She does things more carefully than most people. On quiet days, she must eat only white foods. Her etiquette handbook guides her through confusing social situations, and to escape, she turns to her treasury of Sicilian folklore. The one thing very much out of her control is clever headstrong Dolly, now on the cusp of leaving home"--

Devon McAllister flees danger with her daughter and ends up in Thunder Point, Oregon, where she meets widowed father Spencer Lawson, a man who can teach her about safety and stability.

August 2011. Tropical Storm Irene wreaked havoc on Vermont, flooding rivers and destroying homes. New Orleans bartender Vale receives a call and is told that her mother, Bonnie, has disappeared. Beginning her search in the hometown she left eight years earlier, Vale finds herself falling back into the lives of the family she thought she'd left behind--and careening toward a family origin secret more stunning than she ever imagined.