When Annie Brown, a fun-loving woman, suddenly dies, her husband, best friend, and her children all struggle to find ways to go on after the loss of the woman who was the center of their lives, and who made life happy, fun, and secure. Her husband is overwhelmed with four children to raise, and turns to his teenage daughter for help, and to an old girlfriend for solace. Annie's best friend struggles again with opioid addiction, having depended on...

Leap years are a strange, enchanted time. And for some, even a single February can be life-changing. Ricki Wilde has many talents, but being a Wilde isn't one of them. As the impulsive, artistic daughter of a powerful Atlanta dynasty, she's the opposite of her famous socialite sisters. Where they're long-stemmed roses, she's a dandelion: an adorable bloom that's actually a weed, born to float wherever the wind blows. In her bones, Ricki knows that...

In these visceral, stunningly crafted stories, women's lives are etched by deprivation-material, emotional, sexual-but also splashed by beauty, sometimes even joy, as they search for the good in the cards they've been dealt. A wife is abandoned by her new husband in a derelict housing estate. An expectant mother's worst fears about her husband's entanglement witha teenage girl are confirmed. A sister is tormented by visions of the man her brother...

Esme Cahill thinks she has failed spectacularly: fired from her New York City publishing job, divorced from her husband, and possessing little more than a broken-down car and a pile of unfinished manuscripts, she drives home to Asheville at the request of her late grandmother, Adele, who had begged her, just before she died, to return to the place she grew up. There she discovers the once-charming lakeside retreat run by her family is sliding toward...

Librarian Chloe Sampson has been struggling: to take care of her three younger siblings, to find herself, to make ends meet. She's just about at the end of her rope when she stumbles across a rare edition of a book from the 1960s at the local flea market. Deciding it's a sign of her luck turning, she takes it home with her-only to be shocked when her cranky hermit of a neighbor swoops in and offers to buy it for an exorbitant price. Intrigued, Chloe...

Adam, a prisoner in the Warsaw Ghetto, is approached by a mysterious figure with a surprising request: Will he join a secret group of archivists working to preserve the truth of what is happening inside these walls? Adam agrees and begins taking testimonies from his students, friends, and neighbors. One of the people he interviews is his flatmate Sala, who is stoic, determined, and funny-and married with two children. Over the months of their confinement,...

The London house Winston rents shares a dilapidated back garden with the house next door, recently bought by Bernice. Their feud starts even before she moves in, mostly fueled by Winston's grief as he watches his workaholic boyfriend drift away and newly divorced Bernice's desperate attempt to provide a stable home for her son. Winston starts receiving envelopes with images from the garden's heyday, inspiring him to start cleaning it up, for himself...

Determined to save the family farm from foreclosure, Derby-winning horse trainer Jo Beth Ellis reinvents the property as a healing retreat for horses and makes a deal with her handsome neighbor in hopes of winning a trifecta--a champion horse, a happy family and a forever love.

An environmental journalist in Washington, DC, Rachel has shunned her New England working-class family for years. Divorced and childless in her middle age, she's a true independent spirit with the pain and experience to prove it. Coping with challenges large and small, she thinks her life is in free fall--until she's summoned home to deal with the aftermath of her mother's death. Then things really fall apart. Surrounded by a cast of sometimes comic,...

Ten-year-old Lina wants to create a viral video to help her mom's business, but as she navigates the world of likes and views with her two best friends, Lina must find the courage to stay true to her authentic self.