Her grandfather's dying words lead thirteen-year-old Theodora Tenpenny to a valuable, hidden painting she fears may be stolen, but it is her search for answers in her Greenwich Village neighborhood that brings a real treasure.

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...

"Mira lives in a gray and hopeless urban community until a muralist arrives and, along with his paints and brushes, brings color, joy, and togetherness to Mira and her neighbors"--

"In Oak Knoll, a verdant, tight-knit North Carolina neighborhood, professor of forestry and ecology Valerie Alston-Holt is raising her bright and talented biracial son, Xavier, who's headed to college in the fall. All is well until the Whitmans--a family with new money and a secretly troubled teenage daughter--raze the house and trees next door to build themselves a showplace. With little in common except a property line, these two families quickly...

After a devastating hurricane, a young boy asks for help rebuilding the neighborhood dock, his favorite place in the world, but finds that his neighbors need help first.

Follows the reaction of a neighborhood of birds, from a congress of crows to a gaggle of geese, when a flamboyance of flamingos moves in.

When his neighbors give a variety of answers to the question "What is a good day?" Daniel writes a poem about the everyday activities that give them joy.

Armed with pencils, paints, dreams, and Grandma Addy's memories of how beautiful the neighborhood once was, Angel and others paint the big wall that had been cold, empty, and cheerless.

"Four short stories set in a hutong, or residential alleyway, of Beijing, China. Yu'er, her grandfather, and their eccentric neighbors experience the magic of everyday life."--

"In Atlanta, Kenny Bomar is a biochemist-turned-coffee-shop-owner in denial about his divorce and grieving his stillborn daughter. Chemicals killed their child, leaching from a type of plant the government is hiding in Black neighborhoods. Kenny's coping mechanisms are likewise chemical and becoming more baroque--from daily injections of lethal snake venom to manufacturing designer drugs. As his grief turns corrosive, it taints every person he touches....