Against the wilds of sea and wood, a young immigrant woman settles into life outside Duluth in the 1890s, still shocked at finding herself alone in a new country, abandoned and adrift; in the early 1920s, her orphan son, now grown, falls in love with the one woman he shouldn’t and uses his best skills to build them their own small ark to escape. But their pasts travel with them, threatening to capsize even their fragile hope. Against the wilds of...

Once upon a time, when her dad married Sages mom, Daisy was thrilled to get a bright and shiny new sister. But Sage was beautiful and popular, everything Daisy was not, and she made sure Daisy knew it.Sage didn’t have Daisy’s smarts she had to go back a grade to enroll in the fancy rich-kid school. So she used her popularity as a weapon, putting Daisy down to elevate herself. After the divorce, the stepsisters rivalry continued until the final,...

It's been ten years since Payton Thatcher's twin sister died in an accident. Payton has reinvented herself as a partner in a successful party-planning business and is doing just fine-- as long as she manages to hold her memories and her family at arm's length. With her middle sister Jillian's engagement, Payton's party-planning skills are called into action, which means working alongside her opinionated oldest sister, Johanna. When a frightening diagnosis...

Decades ago, after the death of his wife, Texas ranch hand JT Tucker took his three small daughters to California to start a new life. With almost no money, a will of iron, and hard work, he eventually built the biggest ranch in California. But when he dies suddenly at the age of sixty-four, the ranch is inherited by his three daughters--each of them finding it impossible to believe that this larger-than-life figure is gone from their lives. JT's...

"A zookeeper fights to save the animal she loves, even as her own life crumbles around her...Meg Yancy knows she may be overly attached to Jata, the Komodo dragon that has been in her care since it arrived at the zoo from Indonesia. Jata brings the exotic to Meg's Minnesotan life: an ancient, predatory history and stories of escaping to freedom. A species that became endangered soon after being discovered, Komodos have a legacy of independence, something...

Some days Nora Nolan thinks that she and her husband, Charlie, lead a charmed life--except when there's a crisis at work, a leak in the roof at home, or a problem with their twins at college. And why not? New York City was once Nora's dream destination, and her clannish dead-end block has become a safe harbor, a tranquil village amid the urban craziness. Then one morning she returns from her run to discover that a terrible incident has shaken the...

Greenie Duquette lavishes most of her passionate energy on her Greenwich Village bakery and her young son. Her husband, Alan, seems to have fallen into a midlife depression, while Walter, her closest professional ally, is nursing a broken heart. At Walter's restaurant, the visiting governor of New Mexico tastes Greenie's coconut cake and decides to woo her away to be his chef. For reasons both ambitious and desperate, she accepts-heading west without...

Laurel Thorpe, Belinda Rowe, and Scarlett Oliver share only two things; a love for the man they all married, Deacon Thorpe--a celebrity chef with an insatiable appetite for life--and a passionate dislike of one another. They've established a delicate understanding over the years--they avoid each other at all costs. But their fragile detente threatens to come crashing down after Deacon's tragic death on his favorite place on earth: a ramshackle Nantucket...

With her wedding day approaching, Claire Cavenaugh prepares to confront her estranged older sister and self-absorbed mother after more than twenty years apart and find out how to transform themselves into a family.

"A literature professor tries to rediscover who she is after the sudden death of her husband, even as a series of family and political jolts force her to ask what we owe those in crisis in our families, biological or otherwise"--