In this 1983 short story about race and the relationships that shape us through life, Twyla and Roberta, friends since childhood who are seemingly at opposite ends of every problem as they grow older, cannot deny the deep bond their shared experience has forged between them. Twyla and Roberta have known each other since they were eight years old, roommates in the St. Bonaventure shelter. After losing touch, they meet several times by accident. Seemingly...

On New Year's morning, 1975, Archie Jones sits in his car on a London road and waits for the exhaust fumes to fill his Cavalier Musketeer station wagon. Archie--working-class, ordinary, a failed marriage under his belt--is calling it quits, the deciding factor being the flip of a 20-pence coin. When the owner of a nearby halal butcher shop (annoyed that Archie's car is blocking his delivery area) comes out and bangs on the window, he gives Archie...

"Gilbert Silvester, eminent scholar of beard fashions in film, wakes up one day from a dream that his wife has cheated on him. Certain the dream is a message, and unable to even look at her, he flees - immediately, irrationally, inexplicably - for Japan. In Tokyo he discovers the travel writings of the great Japanese poet Bashō and decides to find solace in nature the way Bashō did, despite knowing nothing of the culture he's stepped into. Suddenly,...

"A lonely little girl and her grandparent need to fill the run-down apartment in their building. But taking over the quarters above their store will mean major renovations for the new occupants, and none of the potential renters can envision the possibilities of the space--until one special couple shows up. With their ingenuity, the little girl's big heart, and heaps of hard work, the desperate fixer-upper begins to change in lovely and surprising...

Convention doesn't carry much weight in Alder Creek. It doesn't in Amoris Westmore's family either. Daughter of a massage therapist and a pothead artist, inheritor of her grandmother's vinyl collection, and blissfully entering her senior year in high school, Amoris never wants to leave her progressive hometown. Why should she? Everything changes when Jamison Rush moves in next door. Jamison was Amoris's first crush, and their last goodbye still stings....

After an American family adopts eleven-year-old Wen from a Chinese orphanage, she vows to find a family for her best friend, too.