Meredith and Nina are as different as sisters can be. When their father falls ill, they find themselves together, standing with their cold, disapproving mother, Anya. As children their only connection was the Russian fairy tale Anya often told the girls at night. On his deathbed, their father extracts a promise: the fairy tale will be told one last time--and all the way to the end.

Ramona at 7 1/2 sometimes feels discriminated against by being the youngest in the family.

"When a high-risk neurosurgery procedure results in the death of a teenager, Maggie Sullivan finds herself in the middle of a lawsuit. She knows she needs to slow down before she burns out completely, and the best place she can think to do that is Sullivan's Crossing, the land that now belongs to her eccentric father, Sully. But shortly after arriving, Maggie's world is rocked once again and she must take on more responsibility than she'd planned....

Seventeen year old Veronica "Ronnie" Miller's life was turned upside-down when her parents divorced and her father--a former concert pianist and teacher--moved from New York City to Wilmington, North Carolina. Three years later, she remains angry and alienated from her parents, especially her father ... until her mother decides it would be in everyone's best interest if she spent the summer in Wilmington with him. An unforgettable story of love on...

"Caitlyn Sullivan had come from a long line of Hollywood royalty, stretching back to her Irish immigrant great-grandfather. At nine, she was already a star- yet still an innocent child who loved to play hide and seek with her cousins at the family home in Big Sur. It was during one of those games that she disappeared. Some may have considered her a pampered princess, but Cate was in fact a smart, scrappy fighter, and she managed to escape her abductors....

Isabelle McAvoy (58), private art consultant in New York City. The first half of the book focuses on her past, having three daughters with three different men and following her through each of those relationships. Her first love was a reclusive American living in France, much older than her, who was always a part of their daughter's life, though they never married. Her second husband went to prison for fraud when Isabelle was pregnant with her second...

Years ago, Lyra Davis left behind a world of wealth and privilege and the people she loved most in the world, unable to reconcile the expectations of her celebrated family with the longings of her own wild heart. Now she lives quietly among a community of expatriates on the isle of Capri--until her daughter Pell travels across an ocean to find the mother she remembers and the deeper truths they all need so desperately.

"You've lost your daughter. She's addicted to drugs and to an abusive boyfriend. And she's made it clear that she doesn't want to be found. Then, by chance, you see her playing guitar in Central Park. But she's not the girl you remember. This woman is living on the edge, frightened, and clearly in trouble. You don't stop to think. You approach her, beg her to come home. She runs. And you do the only thing a parent can do: you follow her into a dark...

When things go wrong during a day at the beach, like a ball that drifts away or a gooey ice cream mess, a father could do a lot of things but always picks the loving one.

"Finley McGowan is determined that the niece she's raising will always feel loved and wanted. Unlike how she felt after her mom left to pursue a dream of stardom, and when the grandfather who was left to raise them abandoned her and her sister, Sloane, when they needed him most. Finley reacted to her chaotic childhood by walking the straight and narrow--nose down, work hard, follow the rules. Sloane went the other way. Now Sloane is back, as beautiful...