"Smart, warm, uplifting, the story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes the only way to survive is to open her heart. Meet Eleanor Oliphant: she struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking. That, combined with her unusual appearance (scarred cheek, tendency to wear the same clothes year in, year out), means that Eleanor...

"An unlikely friendship between a septuagenarian and a younger woman becomes a story of broken trust, lost love, and the unexpected blooming of hope against the longest odds. "You trying to kill yourself, or are you just stupid?" Marcie Malone didn't think she was either, but when she drives from Georgia to the southwestern shore of Florida without a plan and wakes up in a stranger's home, she doesn't seem to know anymore. Despondent and heartbroken...

"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...

Seventeen-year-old Lenni Pettersson has been told she's dying, but still has plenty of living to do. She lives on the Terminal Ward at the Glasgow Princess Royal Hospital. In their arts and crafts class she meets Margot, an 83-year-old, purple-pajama-wearing, fruitcake-eating rebel. Their friendship blooms, and though their days are dwindling both are determined to leave their mark on the world. With the help of Lenni's doting palliative care nurse...

Sixteen-year-old Jackie Chavez loves her local amusement park, Kingdom Adventure, maybe more than anything else in the world. The park is all she and her friends Nikki, Daniel, and Berke--although they aren't always the greatest friends--talk about. Kingdom Adventure is where all Jackie's best memories are, and it's where she feels safe and happy. This carries even more weight now that Jackie's parents have been deported and forced to go back to Mexico,...

"After a major life upheaval on the eve of her 40th birthday, Kate Parker finds herself volunteering at Lauderdale House for Exceptional Ladies. There she meets 97-year-old Cecily Finn. Cecily's tongue is as sharp as her mind but she has lost her spark, simply resigning herself to the Imminent End. Having no patience with Kate's plight, Cecily prescribes her a self-help book with a difference - it's a 1957 cookbook, featuring menus for anything life...

Arriving in the lakeside town of Good Hart, Michigan, Becky Thatcher--just turned forty years old with little to show for it--encounters eighty-year-old Mary Jackson, who has almost given up hope that someone will come along to carry on her legacy as the owner of The Very Cherry General Store. For most of her eighty years, Mary Jackson has endured the steady invasion of tourists, influencers and real estate developers who have discovered the lakeside...

All parents want their children to grow up to be happy, responsible adults. But in spite of mom and dad's best efforts, their most heartfelt prayers, and a loving environment, some kids never successfully make the transition to independent-functioning adulthood. The result is pain for the parents -- and often the repeated cycle of "starting over" that ends only days or weeks later in yet another failure. After struggling with her own adult son, author...

"In a single year, my father left us twice. The first time, to end his marriage, and the second, when he took his own life. I was ten years old."Master storyteller Madeleine Thien takes us inside an extended family in China, showing us the lives of two successive generations--those who lived through Mao's Cultural Revolution and their children, who became the students protesting in Tiananmen Square. At the center of this epic story are two young women,...

"Thanks to her Ye-Ye's epic scavenger hunts, thirteen-year-old Ruby Chu knows San Francisco like the back of her hand. But after his death, she feels lost, and it seems like everyone--from her best friends to her older sister--is abandoning her. After Ruby gets in major trouble at school, her parents decide she has to spend the summer at a local senior center, with her grandmother, Nai-Nai, and Nai-Nai's friends for company. When a new boy from Ruby's...