From the celebrated author of The English Patient and Anil's Ghost comes a remarkable, intimate novel of intersecting lives that ranges across continents and time. In the 1970s in Northern California a father and his teenage daughters, Anna and Claire, work their farm with the help of Coop, an enigmatic young man who makes his home with them. Theirs is a makeshift family, until it is shattered by an incident of violence that sets fire...

Jasmine Yang arrives in New York City from her rural Chinese village without money or family support, fleeing a controlling husband, on a desperate search for the daughter who was taken from her at birth--another female casualty of China's controversial One Child Policy. But with her husband on her trail, the clock is ticking, and she's forced to make increasingly desperate decisions if she ever hopes to be reunited with her daughter. Meanwhile, publishing...

Olivia Taylor-Jones is the daughter of a prominent Chicago family- or so she thought. Ivy League educated, with a handsome, politically ambitious fiance, Olivia is shattered when she learns that she's adopted. Her real parents? Todd and Pamela Larsen, notorious serial killers serving life sentences. Overwhelmed by a maelstrom of unwanted publicity, Olivia flees to home to pursue the truth about her birth parents.

"Sir Lawrence Linwood is dead. More accurately, he was murdered--savagely beaten to death in his own study with a mediaeval mace. The murder calls home his three adopted children: Alan, an archaeologist; Roger, an engineer; and Caroline, a journalist. But his heirs soon find that his last testament contains a strange proviso--that his estate shall go to the heir who solves his murder. To secure their future, each Linwood heir must dig into the past....

"Though they look like any other family, they aren't one--not quite. They are three sets of parents who find themselves intertwined after adopting four biological siblings, having committed to keeping the children as connected as possible. At the heart of the family, the mothers grapple to define themselves and their new roles. Tabitha, who adopted the twins, crowns herself planner of the group, responsible for endless playdates and holidays, determined...

"Book-smart, devoutly Catholic, and painfully unsure of herself, Jane becomes pregnant in high school; by her early twenties, she is raising three children in the suburbs of western New York State. In the fall of 1991, as her children are growing older and more independent, Jane is overcome by a spiritual and intellectual restlessness that leads her to become involved with a local pro-life group. Following the tenets of her beliefs, she also adopts...

A young mother surrenders her daughters. A loving family quickly adopts one while the other spends her turbulent youth in foster care. What happens when the sisters reunite thirty-five years later to find the woman who abandoned them?