As the search for Perry Borntrager's killer continues, Jacob Shrock, who got into a fistfight with Perry, feels like his world is about to crumble, and he wonders if Deborah, Perry's sister, will believe what everyone seems to think is the truth or listen to her heart.

This is a story of people whose lives are changing - a southern gentleman returning home to lead a more peaceful life and his talented New York wife who is not quite sure she is ready to make the transition. They are moving north to south, fast pace versus slow pace, downsizing. And while they are doing this, they are getting glimpses into other people's lives over the course of a summer, holidays that will amuse, shock and transform them. Prominent...

Sheriff James McPherson was eager to hire a schoolteacher, but Dr. Molly Whitcomb isn't what he expected. His instincts about people--which rarely miss the mark--tell him she's hiding something. And when Molly's secret is revealed, her reinvented life begins to unravel. What's more, she risks losing her newfound relationship with the sheriff and her renewed faith in God.

Martha "Marty" Nickerson, an assistant district attorney on Cape Cod, speaks for victims of crime and their families and sees the system as a means for doing right. The case of Manuel Rodriguez is a prime example. Rodriguez is accused of brutally murdering a college student, a kind young man with a bright future. Marty has worked hard on this case. As the mother of a teenage son, she feels a deep obligation to the murdered boy's grieving parents.

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In the halls of Newport Academy, a unique private school that has attracted generations of rebels, outcasts, and visionaries, a poignant and unforgettable lesson in the eternal truths of sisterhood is about to begin for Maggie Shaw, her fourteen-year-old daughter Beck, and her sixteen-year-old son Travis.

Mouse Mistress Hildegarde musters all her ingenuity to keep a large colony of church mice safe from the exterminator and to see that they make it through the dangerous Blessing of the Animals.

Fleeing Nazi Germany in 1936, the Schwarts immigrate to a small town in upstate New York. Here the father-a former high school teacher-is demeaned by the only job he can get: gravedigger and cemetery caretaker. When local prejudice and the family's own emotional frailty, give rise to an unthinkable tragedy, the gravedigger's daughter, Rebecca heads out into America. Embarking upon an extraordinary odyssey of erotic risk and ingenious self-invention,...

A small-town girl fresh out of an Ivy League college lands a job at a prestigious fashion magazine, but wonders if the glamorous perks are worth working for the editor from hell.

Unlike the other Birthmothers in her utopian community, teenaged Claire forms an attachment to her baby, feeling a great loss when he is taken to the Nurturing Center to be adopted by a family unit.

"Casey Fletcher has retreated to the peace and quiet of her family's lake house in Vermont. She passes the time watching Tom and Katherine Royce, the couple living in the house across the lake. One day on the lake, Casey saves Katherine from drowning, and the two strike up a friendship. But the more they get to know each other--and the longer Casey watches--it becomes clear that Katherine and Tom's marriage isn't as perfect as it appears. When Katherine...