National Network for Equitable Library Service

A great sense of relief washes over widow Isabel Delancey when she inherits the Spanish House. Now she and her two children will have a home after being forced out of London. But the house is coveted by other interested parties, and now Isabel is caught up in their machinations.

Teenaged Lark is filled with boundless compassion and tenderness for her younger brother Termite, who cannot walk or talk. Nine years earlier and half a world away, Termite's father faced the haunting specter of the Korean War. Now, with their mother absent, the children live with their Aunt Nonie and struggle to make ends meet. Yet Lark and Termite persevere, strip away layers of their family's mysterious past, and courageously move toward an uncertain future.

Kat, a compulsive consumer at New Jersey's many malls, loves to shop until she drops--and it's taking a heavy toll on her marriage. Why else would her husband be using a secret bank account of his own? Finally, Kat is persuaded to join the Penny Pinchers Club. But there is such a thing as being too thrifty.

After she runs away from her abusive husband, Fran Benedetto lives in fear of discovery, yet also with increasing confidence, freedom, and hope, as she struggles to create a new life for herself and her son.

Despite their mother having run off with a cowboy from Denver, and having been brought up by their eccentric uncle Django, the McCabe girls actually consider themselves very normal and well-adjusted. Pip is stepmother to 10-year-old Tom, Fen has a young baby and Cat has returned to England to start a family. However, at their uncle's 70th birthday party, an unexpected guest arrives.

In 1955, a young boy brings a small infant to the door of an unsuspecting family. Forty years later, L.J. Tillman, a professional jazz musician, makes his way to New York City after a startling revelation wrecks his life in Kansas. Wandering the city streets, Tillman wants to get his thoughts in order before he can face his wife, Olivia, again. And now he must choose between wallowing in his own misery or reclaiming his life.

Joel Junior's daddy has gone off again. And since his momma and big sister got fed up and left, he's in charge of little brothers Carter and Tank. But Daddy's got Carter, and Joel and Tank need to get away. So with no one to guide him but the soul singers in his head, Joel sets off with Tank to learn the truth about love.

Twenty-six-year-old Aisha Branch has always gotten what she wants. Now she's getting an incredibly wealthy, white husband--unless self-made black man Miles changes enjoying a richly deserved sexual re-awakening. And her grandmother Geneva, who defied convention years ago by marrying a jazz musician, has plenty to say about all the romantic excitement.

Ozick takes us to the outskirts of the Bronx in the 1930s, as New York fills with Europe"s ousted dreamers, turned overnight into refugees. Rose Meadows unknowingly enters this world when she answers an ambiguous want ad for an "assistant" to a Herr Mitwisser, the patriarch of a large, chaotic household. Rosie, orphaned at eighteen, has been living with her distant relative Bertram, who sparks her first erotic desires. But just as he begins to return her affection, his lover, a radical socialist named Ninel (Lenin spelled backward), turns her out.

Although Louise Peppers' family is a bit eccentric and dysfunctional, they are also loving and supportive. In conventional Counterpoint, Georgia, Louise grows up to be a "normal" teen. But after the accidental death of her older brother, she can't get her life back on track. When she runs away to join the circus, and seeks comfort in alcohol and sex, her parents struggle to bring her hom. Will their love, however suffocating and complicated, be enough to help Louise come to her senses?