Though Iris Stern considers herself a modern woman, with a successful academic career and a happy marriage, she still holds steadfast to her old-fashioned sensibilities. But as the mother of three adult children, each with their own lives and burdens to bear, she often finds those sensibilities called into question when confronted with the choices her children have made.

"She knows what's best for everyone but herself ... With a past like hers, Jessica Clayton feels safer in a life spent on the road. She's made a career out of helping others downsize - because she's learned the hard way that the less "stuff," the better, a policy she applies equally to her relationships. But a new client is taking Jess back to Cape Sanctuary, a town she once called home ... and that her little sister, Rachel, still does. The years...

"William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him. So it's a relief when his skill on the basketball court earns him a scholarship to college, far away from his childhood home. He soon meets Julia Padavano, a spirited and ambitious young woman who surprises William with her appreciation of his quiet steadiness. With Julia comes her family; she is inseparable from her three...

"A masterful novel that moves from Roman apartments to SoHo galleries to the South of France and tells the story of the son of a great painter striving to create his own legacy, by the bestselling author of THE IMPERFECTIONISTS. Rome, 1955. The artists gather for a picture at a party in an ancient villa. Bear Bavinsky, creator of vast canvases, larger than life, is at the centre of the picture. His wife, Natalie, edges out of the shot. From the side...

As the black sheep of the family, choreographer Cassidy Bliss vowed she'd do anything to get home in time to help with her sister's wedding and avoid family disappointment...again. She just never expected "anything" would involve sharing the last rental car with the jerk who cut her off in line at the airport this morning. But horrible times apparently call for here-goes-nothing measures. Driving across the country with Luke "life can be solved with...

"This beautiful novel tells the love story of young Arthur Moses and Nola, and how a young man grew up to become the wise old man known as Arthur Trulove. Set in the 1950s in the warm community of Mason, Missouri, Arthur is a shy, unathletic teenage boy, in love with the most beautiful girl in his class. He is thrilled when they become friends, but he wants more than friendship. Alas, he learns that Nola has a crush on the wrong Moses--Arthur's older...

"You'll never truly understand love until you've read Donal Ryan: a searing, jubilant story about four generations of women and the fierce devotion that binds them together The Aylward women of Nenagh, County Tipperary, Ireland, are mad about each other, but you wouldn't always think it. You'd have to know them to know that-in spite of what the neighbors might say about raised voices and dramatic scenes-their house is a place of peace, filled with...

Helen arrives in Appalachian Ohio eager to carry out her boyfriend's ideas for living off the land, but when winter comes he calls it quits. Helped by Rudy, her government-questioning, seasonal-affective-disordered boss, and the neighbor couple Karen and Lily, Helen makes it to spring. Helen, Karen and Lily split the work and the food, build a house, and make a life that sustains them, if barely, for years. Then Karen and Lily's son, Perley, decides...

"Annie, Edward, and their young daughter, Rose, live in a cramped apartment. One night, without warning, they find a beautiful terrace hidden in their closet. It wasn't there before, and it seems to only appear when their friend Stephanie visits. A city dweller's dream come true! But every extra bit of space has a hidden cost, and the terrace sets off a seismic chain of events, forever changing the shape of their tiny home, and the shape of the world"--...

Laid off from her department store job, Carmen has perilously little cash and few options. The prospect of spending Christmas with her perfect sister Sofia, in Sofia's perfect house with her perfect children and her perfectly ordered yuppie life does not appeal. Frankly, Sofia doesn't exactly want her prickly sister Carmen there either. But Sofia has yet another baby on the way, a mother desperate to see her daughters get along, and a client who needs...