Otto Ringling has come to a crossroads. Still struggling with his wife's death and the adjustments to his life without her, Otto returns to his family home in North Dakota, which is now a spiritual retreat run by his sister, Cecelia, and her husband, a famous Buddhist leader named Volya Rinpoche. Upon arrival, he is informed by Cecelia that she has had visions that her daughter may possibly become the next Dalai Lama. The mysterious person who must...

Willem tries to redefine himself after spending a day and night together in Paris with Allyson.

Madeleine Hanna breaks out of her straight-and-narrow mold when she falls in love with charismatic loner Leonard Bankhead, while at the same time an old friend of hers resurfaces, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is his destiny. "It's the early 1980s. In American colleges, the wised-up kids are inhaling Derrida and listening to the Talking Heads. But Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English major, is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George...

"Opening in England at the turn of the twentieth century, C is the story of a boy named Serge Carrefax, whose father spends his time experimenting with wireless communication while running a school for deaf children. Serge grows up amid the noise and silence with his brilliant but troubled older sister, Sophie: an intense sibling relationship that stays with him as he heads off into an equally troubled larger world. After a fling with a nurse at a...

"Ms. Beatrice Hempel, teacher of seventh grade, is new -- new to teaching, new to the school, newly engaged, and newly bereft of her devoted father. Overwhelmed by her newness, she struggles to figure out what is expected of her in life and at work. Is it acceptable to introduce swear words into the English curriculum, enlist students to write their own report cards, or bring up personal experiences while teaching a sex-education class?"--P. [4] of...

Marianne is stuck in a loveless, unhappy marriage. After forty-one years, she has reached her limit, and one evening in Paris she decides to take action. Following a dramatic moment on the banks of the Seine, Marianne leaves her life behind and sets out for the coast of Brittany, also known as "the end of the world". Here she meets a cast of colorful and unforgettable locals who surprise her with their warm welcome, and the natural ease they all seem...

"Smarting from her recently canceled wedding and about to turn forty, Laurie Sassalyn returns to her Maine hometown of Calcasset to handle the estate of her great-aunt Dot, a spirited adventurer who lived to be ninety-three. Alongside boxes of Polaroids and pottery, a mysterious wooden duck shows up at the bottom of a cedar chest. Laurie's curiosity is piqued, especially after she finds a love letter to the never-married Dot that ends with the line...

In Denmark, Professor Anders Larsen has lost his wife and his hopes for the future. On an isolated English farm, Tina Hopgood is trapped in a life she doesn't remember choosing. Brought together by a shared fascination with the Tollund Man, the subject of Seamus Heaney's famous poem, they begin writing letters to one another. From their vastly different worlds, they find they have more in common than they could have imagined, and an unexpected friendship...

"Grace Adams gave birth, blinked, and now suddenly she is forty-five, perimenopausal and stalled--the unhappiest age you can be, according to the Guardian. And today she's really losing it. Stuck in traffic, she finally has had enough. To the astonishment of everyone, Grace gets out of her car and simply walks away. Grace sets off across London, armed with a £200 cake, to win back her estranged teenage daughter on her sixteenth birthday. Because...

On the weekend of her wedding, Clare Hobbes meets an elderly woman named Edith Herron. During the course of a single conversation, Edith gives Clare the courage to do what she should have done months earlier: break off her engagement to her charming, yet overly possessive, fiancé. Three weeks later, Clare learns that Edith has died--and has given her another gift. Nestled in crepe myrtle and hydrangea and perched at the marshy edge of a bay in a...