The Ebersol daughters, Leah, and twins Hannah and Mary Beth, face difficult choices as they are forced to choose between the traditional Amish lifestyle and the lure of the world outside their small community. --

Myra Lipinsky, a 51-year old visiting nurse, has been content to be a self-appointed spinster--until a man she adored in high school is struck by an incurable illness and returns to New England to spend what time he has left.

It is the story - set in post-Civil War Ohio - of Sethe, an escaped slave who has risked death in order to wrench herself from a living death; who has lost a husband and buried a child; who has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad; a woman of "iron eyes and backbone to match." Sethe lives in a small house on the edge of town with her daughter, Denver, her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, and a disturbing, mesmerizing intruder who call herself Beloved....

Kitty, a house slave, always figured it was easiest to do what she'd always done--obey Missy and follow orders. But when word arrives that the Yankees are coming, Kitty is faced with a decision: will she continue to follow the bidding of her owners, or will she embrace this chance for freedom? Never allowed to have ideas of her own, Kitty is overwhelmed by the magnitude of her decision. Yet it is her hope to find the happy ever after ending to her...

36-year-old Sophie Stanton has just lost her husband to cancer. But instead of the five stages of grief, there are fourteen: Denial, Oreos, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Ashes, Lust, Waitressing, Mentoring, Dating, Baking, Acceptance, Goodwill, and Thanksgiving. Determined to be a good widow, Sophie nonetheless ends up scarfing cartons of ice cream for breakfast, weeping in the produce section, and showing up at work in her robe and bunny slippers....

Forty-two-year-old matrimonial attorney Helen Decatur's decision to take charge of her own destiny complicates things with her two best friends and sets sparks flying with a man who doesn't want a family. --

Faith Madison, a beautiful, wealthy Manhattan housewife, has begun to question her life. Her two daughters are more or less raised; her husband, while cold and standoffish, remains a dependable partner; and their family is comfortably wealthy and fairly happy. Faith's nagging need for change is stimulated further when her stepfather dies. At the funeral, as painful memories from her sad past resurface, she runs into an old friend, Brad Patterson....

When Christmas Eve comes to Elm Creek Manor, the tenor of the holiday is far from certain. Sylvia Bergstrom Compson, the Master Quilter, has her own reasons for preferring a quiet, even subdued, Christmas. Her young friend Sarah McClure, however, takes the opposite view and decides to deck the halls brightly. As she explores the trunks packed with Bergstrom family decorations that haven't been touched in more than fifty years, Sarah discovers a curious...

A science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in a dingy backstreet room. Set in a multi-layered story of the death of a woman's sister and husband in the 1940's, with a novel-within-a novel as a background.

Rebecca Bloomwood, a financial journalist at Successful Savings, seeks solace from the boredom, pressures, and difficulties in life with her shopping, a solution that brings her ever closer to financial disaster, until she finally encounters a story that she actually cares about and produces an article that will change her own life and the lives of all those around her.