Inside the abbey of a Benedictine monastery on tiny Egret Island, just off the coast of South Carolina, resides a beautiful and mysterious chair ornately carved with mermaids and dedicated to a saint who, legend claims, was a mermaid before her conversion. Jessie Sullivan's conventional life has been "molded to the smallest space possible." So when she is called home to cope with her mother's startling and enigmatic act of violence, Jessie finds herself...

The sprawling lake home Lynn Lundberg built with her husband has been an epicenter of joyful family life. But since her husband's sudden passing two years ago, Lynn has been lost in the grief and solitude she feels without him at home. She doesn't want to sell the big family place, but she can't exist there on her own much longer. After hearing of a new way of living--where single women share responsibilities as housemates--Lynn thinks she's found...

"For twenty-eight years, things have been tripping along nicely for Cannie Shapiro. Sure, her mother has come charging out of the closet, and her father has long since dropped out of her world. But she loves her friends, her rat terrier, Nifkin, and her job as pop culture reporter for The Philadelphia Examiner. She's even made a tenuous peace with her plus-size body. But the day she opens up a national women's magazine and sees the words 'Loving a...

A young girl suffering from amnesia wakes up to find that she's actually a middle-aged vampire.

Olive Kitteridge has returned, as indomitable as ever, this time as a person getting older, navigating her next decade as she comes to terms with the changes--sometimes welcome, sometimes not--in her own life. Here is Olive, strangely content in her second marriage, still in an evolving relationship with her son and his family, encountering a cast of memorable characters in the seaside town of Crosby, Maine. Whether it's a young girl coming to terms...

At eighty-four, Leota Reinhardt is alone, all of her efforts to reconcile with her adult children hadn't worked in the past, until she meets her estranged grandaughter, Annie, and confides to her the silent sacrifice she had made as a young mother of two, while her husband was gone during World War II.

"Sixty-year-old Olivia's first marriage was long and unhappy, but now she is a newlywed, thrilled to finally be starting her life with the man she's always truly loved - even if they are getting a late start. Kathy is in her forties and married to a handsome, successful businessman. Theirs would be a fairy-tale romance if it weren't for one problem: He's passionately in love with someone else! Twenty-something Elise is also in a troubled marriage,...

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.

Claire Danner Crispin, has a devoted husband, is a mother of four young children and a nationally renowned glassblower. She bites off more than she can chew when she agrees to co-chair a huge benefit concert on Nantucket. Her former high school sweetheart and world famous rock star, Max West, agrees to play the benefit. Claire agrees to create a "museum-quality" piece of glass for the auction, pre-emptorily offers her best friend the catering job,...

"Eleven years ago, Lindsey Nash escaped into the night with her young daughter and left an abusive relationship. Her ex-husband, Andrew, was sent to jail and Lindsey started over with a new life. Now, Lindsey is older and wiser, with her own business and a teenage daughter who needs her more than ever. When Andrew is finally released from prison, Lindsey believes she has cut all ties and left the past behind her. But she gets the sense that someone...