"Joan Sample is not living the life she expected. Now a widow and an empty-nester, she has become by her own admission something of a recluse. But after another birthday spent alone, she is finally inclined to listen to her sister, who has been begging Joan to reengage with the world. With her support, Joan gathers the courage to take some long-awaited steps: hiring someone to tame her overgrown garden, joining a grief support group, and even renting...

Recovering from her failed marriage and opening her own cooking store, Jenna finds her new life upended by the arrival of her aging hippie birth parents as she struggles to reconcile her past with the present.

Struggling with the demands of her job, distant husband, spoiled daughter and Alzheimer's patient father, Allison becomes addicted to painkillers and lands in rehab, where amid fellow inpatients she confronts incompatible recovery techniques, barely trained counselors and her own denial. "Allison Weiss has a great job...a handsome husband...an adorable daughter...and a secret. Allison Weiss is a typical working mother, trying to balance a business,...

Faith Bass Darling, the richest woman in Bass, Texas, and a twenty-year recluse, holds a garage sale on the last day of the millennium, sparking curiosity and protectiveness throughout her Texas community.

"Fifteen-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to becoming the first in her family to attend college, in spite of having a mother more interested in keeping a man than raising a daughter. But a taboo love affair threatens to pull her back down into the poverty and desperation that has been passed on to her like a birthright...Eleanor Quarles arrives in Washington, DC, with ambition and secrets. When she meets the handsome William Pride at Howard University,...

"Elizabeth, Veronica, Rachel and Emily met at Camp Birchwood as girls in 1985, where over four summers they were the Clover Girls--inseparable for those magical few weeks of freedom--until the last summer that pulled them apart. Now approaching middle age, the women are facing challenges they never imagined as teens, struggles with their marriages, their children, their careers, and wondering who it is they see when they look in the mirror. Then Liz,...