Catalog Search Results

A fierce debut novel about mothers and daughters, haves and have-nots, and the stark realities behind the American Dream. A waitress at the Betsy Ross Diner, Elsie hopes her nickel-and-dime tips will add up to a new life. Then she meets Bashkim, who is at once both worldly and naive, a married man who left Albania to chase his dreams--and wound up working as a line cook in Waterbury, Connecticut. Back when the brass mills were still open, this bustling...

Ffteen years after graduaton, best friends Jay, Franny, Emerson, and Stevie meet at their college reunion. Life has taken each of them in different directions. Now the bond between the foursome takes a surprising twist, one that changes how each feels about family and friendship.

He was a fishing guide and struggling artist from a south Georgia trailer park. She was the beautiful only child of South Carolina's most powerful senator. Yet once Doss Michaels and Abigail Grace Coleman met by accident, they each felt they'd found their true soul mate. Ten years into their marriage, when Abbie faces a life-threatening illness, Doss battles it with her every step of the way. And when she makes a list of ten things she hopes to accomplish...

"From the outside, Catharine West's childhood sounds idyllic--balmy days spent running barefoot through the gardens, plucking ripe tomatoes straight from the vine as sunlight warmed her skin. Her parents built a life that was simple and community-focused, an ethos that soon attracted others in need of a change. For a time, Catharine's magnetic father was enough to keep the farm thriving, and temptation outside its gates. But as she grew older, the...

Set in modern Shanghai, a debut by a Chinese-American writer about a prodigal son whose unexpected return forces his newly wealthy family to confront painful secrets and unfulfilled promises. After years of chasing the American dream, the Zhen family has moved back to China. Settling into a luxurious serviced apartment in Shanghai, Wei, Lina, and their daughter, Karen, join an elite community of Chinese-born, Western-educated professionals who have...

Not since Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath has there been a family saga as powerful as Bucking the Sun or a family as compellingly strife-torn as the one at its center. Driven by drought from their Montana farm to "relief work" building the Fort Peck Dam, the Duff family spans the extremes of the times, from the eldest son Owen, who has made his way through college to an engineer's job on the dam to young Bruce, his antithesis, a risk-taker who works...

An unforgettable story of love, acceptance, and tradition. When Maude Chambliss first arrives at Retreat, the seasonal home of her husband's aristocratic family, she is a nineteen-year-old bride fresh from South Carolina's Low Country. Among the patrician men and women who reside in the summer colony on the coast of Maine, her gypsy-like beauty and impulsive behavior immediately brand her an outsider. She, as well as everyone else, is certain she...

Fanny Savage has been the perfect wife for nineteen years, but when she starts feeling unfulfilled and restless, she decides its time for a change and heads to Italy, where she hopes to join her father in his wine business.

Successful career woman Nora Hammon's perfect world is torn apart when she learns of her husband's longtime affair; but in her loneliness, she finds herself easy prey to a ghost from her past.

Everyone in Yorktide, Maine, knows sixteen-year-old Sarah Bauer. She' a good student, a dutiful daughter, and Cordelia Kane' best friend. It's a surprise to all when Sarah reveals that she's pregnant. Her family is supportive, yet the consequences ripple in all directions. Sarah's mother seizes on an idea: make a baby quilt together. Piece by piece, a beautiful design emerges as the women who create it find strength in the friendship and love that...