On his deathbed, surrounded by his family, George Washington Crosby's thoughts drift back to his childhood and the father who abandoned him when he was twelve.

The seventy-eight-year-old painter Hope Chafetz, who in the course of her eventful life has been Hope Ouderkirk, Hope McCoy, and Hope Holloway, answers questions put to her by a New York interviewer named Kathryn, and recapitulates, through the story of her own career, the triumphant, poignant saga of postwar American art. In the evolving relation between the two women, the interviewer and interviewee move in and out of the roles of daughter and mother,...

The ritual is the same every December: 12 handmade paper ornaments and a small plastic Christmas tree. Twelve days for Sarah to remember her long-ago love. Twelve chances for Sarah to sing her song once more...

A sweeping historical tale based on the life and times of the daughter of a New York merchant finds the orphaned Belle suffering at the hands of a rival cousin before working as a prostitute and transforming herself repeatedly to win the love and life she desires. In 1838, Arabella Godwin and her brother, Lewis, are orphaned and sent to live on their aunt's desolate farm in upstate New York. Time and again she will be broken and remade. She will...

Folksy and fresh, endearing and affecting, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is a now-classic novel about two women: Evelyn, who’s in the sad slump of middle age, and gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode, who’s telling her life story. Her tale includes two more women—the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth—who back in the thirties ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, offering good...

John and Ella Robina, a couple married 50+ years--she has stopped her cancer treatments, he has Alzheimer's-- kidnap themselves from the adult children and the doctors who seem to run their lives, and steal off on a forbidden vacation determined to prove that, when it comes to life, you can go back for seconds and sneak a little extra time.

Beloved author Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction with a unique love story set in the New York City theater world during the 1940s. Told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret (but mostly pleasure), City of Girls explores themes of female sexuality and promiscuity, as well as the idiosyncrasies of true love. In 1940, nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris has just been kicked out of Vassar College,...

If you had to pick five people to sum up your life, who would they be? If you were to raise a glass to each of them, what would you say? And what would you learn about yourself, when all is said? At the bar of a grand hotel in a small Irish town sits 84-year-old Maurice Hannigan. He's alone, as usual, though tonight is anything but. Pull up a stool and charge your glass, because Maurice is finally ready to tell his story. Over the course of this evening,...

Nancy Rawles pens a moving story about Huck Finn's slave friend Jim, told through the eyes of the wife Jim was forced to leave behind. Sadie shares her story of loss with her granddaughter as they weave Sadie's most treasured items-her mother's knife, a piece of a bowl from Africa, a piece of Jim's hat found when he was thought to be dead-into a quilt.

"In 1945 on the outskirts of Salzburg, victorious American soldiers capture a train filled with unspeakable riches: piles of fine gold watches; mountains of fur coats; crates filled with wedding rings, silver picture frames, family heirlooms, and Shabbat candlesticks passed down through generations. Jack Wiseman, a tough, smart New York Jew, is the lieutenant charged with guarding this treasure--a responsibility that grows more complicated when he...