"At twenty-one, Shandi Pierce is juggling finishing college, raising her delightful three-year-old genius son Natty, and keeping the peace between her eternally warring, long-divorced Catholic mother and Jewish father. She's got enough complications without getting caught in the middle of a stick-up in a gas station mini-mart and falling in love with a great wall of a man named William Ashe, who willingly steps between the armed robber and her son....

At the break of dawn, Caroline Shelby rolls into Oysterville, Washington, a tiny hamlet at the edge of the raging Pacific. She's come home. Home to a place she thought she'd left forever, home of her heart and memories, but not her future. Ten years ago, Caroline launched a career in the glamorous fashion world of Manhattan. But her success in New York imploded on a wave of scandal and tragedy, forcing her to flee to the only safe place she knows....

"Growing up, Josie and Meredith Garland shared a loving, if contentious, relationship. When tragedy strikes, their delicate bond splinters. Fifteen years later, they are following very different paths. Josie, a first grade teacher, is single, but what she wants most is to become a mother -- a feeling that is heightened when her ex-boyfriend's daughter is assigned to her class. Meredith is a successful attorney who is married to a wonderful man, and...

Chicago celebrity, Charles James can't shake the nightmare that wakes him each night. He sees himself walking down a long, broken highway the sides of which are lit in flames. Where is he going? Why is he walking? What is the wailing he hears around him? By day, he wonders why he's so haunted and unhappy when he has all he ever wanted-fame, fans and fortune and the lavish lifestyle it affords him. Coming from a childhood of poverty and pain, this...

A novel based on the true story of the largest fire in Maine's history follows the experiences of a pregnant woman who struggles to protect her two young children and watches her home burn while her husband joins the volunteer firefighters.

Alan Christoffersen lost his heart when his wife was killed in an accident almost one year ago. So Alan decided to leave his painful memories behind and walk from Seattle to the farthest point on the map, Key West, but in St. Louis, he is forced to stop. Because his severe vertigo is diagnosed as the side effect of a brain tumor, Alan must go to Los Angeles for treatment. He is surrounded by those who care most for him: his father, who is happy to...

"Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage--and lost his mother and all memory of her when he was a child--but he is also gifted with a mysterious power. Hiram almost drowns when he crashes a carriage into a river, but is saved from the depths by a force he doesn't understand, a blue light that lifts him up and lands him a mile away. This strange brush with death forces a new urgency on Hiram's private rebellion. Spurred on by his improvised plantation...

In the wake of his parents' deaths, his divorce, and his retirement from a New York legal firm, Jules Epstein has felt an irresistible need to give away his possessions, alarming his children and perplexing the executor of his estate. He travels to Israel, with a nebulous plan to do something to honor his parents. In Tel Aviv he is sidetracked by a charismatic American rabbi planning a reunion for the descendants of King David. Meanwhile a young,...

"Having lived under her parents' thumb for 25 years, Beth Prudhomme is finally taking charge of her own life. She moves from Chicago to Portland to live near her favorite aunt, finding employment as a music teacher at a local high school and a fast friend in Nichole Nyquist (who readers will recognize from A Girl's Guide to Moving On). Everything is coming together, though her love life leaves something to be desired. Until Nichole introduces Beth...

The lives of 91-year-old Ira Levinson, young cowboy Luke, and Wake Forest College senior Sophia Danko converge in an extraordinary and unexpected way as Ira clings to his wife Ruth's words and his memories and Sophia finds herself imagining a future far removed from her plans.