National Network for Equitable Library Service

Widowed mother Libby worries about her handsome son, Chase. Chase is going to marry Liam, but both men resist including their traditional parents. Libby surprises them all after she joins a support group for women.

Sara thought teaching philosophy at Kuwait University was temporary, and yet inertia kept her there. Then she's accused of blasphemy for teaching Nietzsche, and must reconcile her place in the world.

Eleven-year-old Ellis Johnson has the summertime blues. He dreamed of spending the summer of 1976 hanging out with friends, listening to music, and playing his harmonica. Instead, he'll be sleeping on a lumpy pullout in Dad's sad little post-divorce bungalow and helping bring Dad's latest far-fetched, sure-to-fail idea to life: opening the world's first chocolate chip cookie store.

A son's relationship with his divorced father has disintegrated over the years. But when the father enters a bodybuilding competition, he asks his son's help to fit in with his antiquated notions of manhood.

Emmy Quinn is West Texas through and through. She loves her community, but she knows that when she comes out as a lesbian, she may not be able to call Steinbeck--which is steeped in the Southern Baptist tradition--home anymore. Her father is offered a dream job coaching high school football, but the school board says that he can't accept the position if he's got any skeletons in his closet. Steve is still wrestling with Emmy's coming-out: he loves his daughter, but he's a man of faith, raised in the Baptist community.

Phoebe Adams and her mother Ruth both need a safe haven, so they head for Summer Island where Grandma Alice still rules the roost from the big New England beach house Phoebe and Ruth once called home. Phoebe's plan for a peaceful retreat is quickly hijacked when globe-trotting Great Aunt Vera makes an unannounced pit stop. Soon they're all enjoying things they used to do and discovering new ones. Each adventure opens a part of themselves they've neglected for too long and brings them closer together.

KJ and Becka, cousins but strangers, have no idea why their grandfather's will makes them team up to complete a bucket list. But the bigger question is, can they work together to earn the inheritance?

Edward Bennett does not understand his Italian immigrant mother's overprotectiveness, and, while studying abroad, he vows to solve the puzzle by finding her native town in southern Italy that she has refused to revisit.

Rival stepsisters put aside their differences for their common younger sister. But when their fragile truce is threatened, will they turn their backs on each other, or could they learn to forgive?

A community in the Piedmont of North Carolina rises in outrage as a county initiative draws students from the largely Black east side of town into predominantly white high schools on the west. When Gee and Noelle join the school play meant to bridge the divide between new and old students, their paths collide, and their two seemingly disconnected families begin to form deeply knotted, messy ties that will shape the trajectory of their adult lives. And their mothers, each determined to see her child inherit a better life, will make choices that will haunt them for decades to come.