After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson's disease, and their children have flown the family nest to live their own lives. Desperate for some pleasure, Enid has set her heart on bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home.

After seven-year-old Lavinia is orphaned on the journey from Ireland to the United States, she begins work in the kitchen house of a tobacco plantation and bonds with the slaves who become her adopted family, but when Lavinia is accepted into the big house, her loyalties are challenged.

The slow but inevitable moral degeneration of a weak woman. Describes the patient rendering of the squalor and narrowness of provincial life and of its effect on the woman's mind.

"Anna is not sick, but she might as well be. By age thirteen, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her older sister, Kate, can somehow fight the leukemia that has plagued her since childhood. The product of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, Anna was conceived as a bone marrow match for Kate -- a life and a role that she has never challenged...until now. Like most teenagers, Anna is beginning to question who she truly...

Dr. David Henry, forced to deliver his own twins during a snowstorm in 1964 with only a nurse to help him, makes a decision that has far-reaching effects on his life, and the lives of his wife and son, when his infant daughter is born with Down Syndrome, and in a vain attempt to protect his wife, he orders the nurse to take the baby to an institution.

Twelve-year-old Nicky Dillon, still dealing with the loss of her mother and baby sister two years earlier, and her grieving father's sudden decision to move to an isolated New England farmhouse, takes further steps into the adult world when she and her dad find an abandoned newborn clinging to life in the woods near their home, and later come to know the young mother and learn her story.

The death of Liam Hegarty, found drowned in the sea at Brighton, England, sparks a crisis in the life of his middle sister Veronica, who goes to retrieve the body and bring Liam home to Dublin where the Hegarty clan is gathering to mourn and remember.

"When Astrid Strick witnesses a school bus accident in the center of town, it jostles loose a repressed memory from her young parenting days, decades years earlier. Suddenly, Astrid realizes she was not quite the parent she thought she'd been to her three, now-grown children. But to what consequence? Astrid's youngest son is drifting and unfocused, making parenting mistakes of his own. Her daughter is intentionally pregnant yet struggling to give...

"Marcia Willett delivers another powerful and touching tale of the importance of friendship and family in The Sea Garden. Jess Penhaligon is on her way to Devon to receive an award for her botanical painting. Hosting her will be Kate, who gladly welcomes her into her home. Jess's own family fell apart several years ago, so she is grateful for Kate's friendliness --and her close unit of extended family and friends, who embrace Jess just as warmly....

Howard Frank Mosher is one of America's most acclaimed writers. His fiction, set in the world of Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, chronicles the intertwining family histories of the natives, wanderers, outcasts, and fugitives--white, Native American, escaped slaves fleeing north, French Canadians, and others--who settled in this remote and beautiful place. God's Kingdom explores the Kinneson family through the coming of age of the heir, Jim, and its rich...