National Network for Equitable Library Service

In 1970s Boston, the glossy veneer of 16-year-old Sarah Kunitz's wealthy family is starting to show cracks. Her parents' constant fighting and her mother's prescription pill abuse drive Sarah into two romantic relationships with unforeseen consequences. With grief fresh in her heart, Sarah wonders if she or her family will ever love again.

Three middle-aged sisters--each harboring a secret pain--gather to close up their grandmother's beach house for the final time. Together, they unpack their family baggage and discover the true legacy left behind by a grandma married seven times.

Carolyn takes a break from her widowed San Francisco existence to celebrate her mother's 70th birthday in the Canary Islands. As her mother's gentle affection and the islands' soothing allure soften Carolyn's heart, a Flamenco dance lesson, a defining camel ride, and the steady gaze of an old flame reawaken feelings she thought were forever gone.

Widower Jick McCaskill, his daughter Mariah, and Mariah's ex-husband Riley take a road trip back and forth across Montana. As Jick recounts his memories of the area, Riley and Mariah fall in and out of love--and Jick unexpectedly discovers a new partner.

In the late 1960s, a group of young idealists form a commune in western New York State. Into this group is born Bit, who grows into a quiet, distant man. Over the course of 50 years, Bit witnesses the utopia crumble and the world change in unimaginable ways.

Englisher Amelia Devries gets lost in a storm and finds herself in Hickory Hollow, Pennsylvania, in an Old Order Amish community. There she meets Michael Hostetler--and this encounter changes both their lives forever.

Taking his daughter Sara home from school one day, New Jersey accountant Glen drives his car into another vehicle, killing its driver. Since no one else saw the accident, Glen lies about it to the police--a decision that sends his life spiraling out of control.

When her husband dies on the eve of their impending European vacation, housewife Emma Hanley watches her dreams of world travel vanish even as she becomes more immersed in the lives of her two living children.

Set in the quiet, small town of Mitford and starring aging Episcopal priest Father Tim Kavanagh, the books are welcome reminders of the simpler and gentler pleasures of life. Now the series concludes with Light from Heaven. An old, abandoned church is in need of immediate revival--if Father Tim is up to the task.

Just after her mother's funeral, five-year-old Holly is dropped off by her father at her grandfather's South Carolina dairy farm. It will be 30 years before Holly sees her father again--plenty of time to develop a fondness for drinking and video poker. And also plenty of time to contemplate why her father abandoned her.