It's 1960 in the Panhandle town of Charnelle, Texas - a year and a half since sixteen-year-old Laura Tate's mother boarded a bus and mysteriously disappeared. Assuming responsibility for the Tate household, Laura cares for her father and three brothers and outwardly maintains a sense of calm. But her balance is upset and the repercussions of her family's struggles are revealed when a chance encounter with a married man leads Laura into a complicated...

Sharing a family life in the 1930s near the legendary Palisades Amusement Park, a family of dreamers explores ambitions and cultural boundaries that are challenged by the realities of the Great Depression, multiple wars, and the park's eventual closing in 1971.

When a woman's four-year-old son and husband are killed in a suicide bombing at a London soccer match, the woman writes a letter directly to Osama bin Laden to convince him to stop his attacks. The woman then takes a job helping the anti-terrorism effort, but outside her doors, the world feels like a war zone--and it pushes her to desperation.

"Lucy Kilgore has her bags packed for her escape from her rural Tennessee upbringing, but a drunken mistake forever tethers her to the town and one of its least-admired residents, Jeptha Taylor, who becomes the father of her child. Together, these two young people work to form a family, though neither has any idea how to accomplish that, and the odds are against them in a place with little to offer other than bluegrass music, tobacco fields, and a...

Estranged from the gruff parents who blame him for their divorce, Nick enjoys life with his attractive wife and teenage daughter until his father's belief in his imminent death forces a haphazard attempt at reconciliation.

"It's 1990 and seventeen-year-old Marley West is blazing into the river valley town of Mercury, Pennsylvania. A perpetual loner, she seeks a place at someone's table and a family of her own. The first thing she sees when she arrives in town is three men standing on a rooftop. Their silhouettes blot out the sun. The Joseph brothers become Marley's whole world before she can blink. Soon, she is young wife to one, The One Who Got Away to another, and...

"On Christmas Eve, 1913, Agnes Conway is working in her family's confectionery shop when she meets well-to-do Charles Farrier. Despite their different backgrounds, Agnes and Charles are immediately attracted to one another. But Agnes soon becomes preoccupied with a family crisis that has consequences far worse than any of them could imagine"--Container.

A conservative bigot clashes with family and neighbors, with comedic results.