"Three Asian American teenagers meet in the New York suburbs in the 1980s. Drawn together by their shared sense of alienation from their conventionally domestic immigrant families, each wants to live a meaningful life. They envision a future defined by freedom and creativity, but on the brink of adulthood in New York City, their fortunes quickly diverge. Giselle Chin is a performance artist, pushing the boundaries of the form while socializing with...

"Olivia "Lovie" Rutledge lives in her beloved Primrose Cottage on Isle of Palms with her daughter Cara. Lovie remembers many summers, but especially 1974. Lovie had always done what was expected -- marrying Stratton Rutledge and turning over her fortune and fate to his control. But she refuses to relinquish her family's seaside cottage where she indulges her vocation as a "Turtle Lady", tending the loggerhead sea turtles. This summer, however, is...

"In her 50s, Cassie has already weathered more than most. She was orphaned at the age of two and has never fully understood why her DC-based parents were on a bridge in West Virginia that just so happened to collapse as they drove across it. Her search for answers prompted a failed career in journalism, and now she's an aspiring novelist teaching at a local community college waiting for her literary dreams to finally come true. She stood by her once-doting...

Raised by parents so intentionally isolated that they speak their own hybrid dialect, abused youth Marjorie witnesses her parents' submission to a sadistic cult leader before she is rescued by another abuse survivor who teaches her stoneworking skills.

"One daring to-do list and a crash course in flirtation turn a Type A overachiever's world upside down. When her flailing department lands on the university's chopping block, Professor Naya Turner's friends convince her to shed her frumpy cardigan for an evening on the town. For one night her focus will stray from her demanding job and she'll tackle a new kind of to-do list. When she meets a charming stranger in town on business, he presents the perfect...

"Orphaned during the Second World War, Aelish and Isabel McGuire--known as the twins of Belfast--are given over to the austere care of the Sisters of Bethlehem. Though they are each all the other has, the girls are propelled in opposite directions as they grow up. Rebellious Isabel turns her back on the church and Ireland, traveling to Newfoundland where she pursues a perilous yet independent life. Devout Aelish chooses to remain in Northern Ireland...

"A young woman walks into an employment agency and requests a job that has the following traits: it is close to her home, and it requires no reading, no writing - and ideally, very little thinking. She is sent to a nondescript office building where she is tasked with watching the hidden-camera feed of an author suspected of storing contraband goods. But observing someone for hours on end can be so inconvenient and tiresome. How will she stay awake?...

"From an award-winning young author, a novel following a feisty heroine's idiosyncratic quest to reclaim her past by mining the wisdom of her literary icons--even as she navigates the murkier mysteries of love. Zebra is the last in a line of anarchists, atheists, and autodidacts. When war came, her family didn't fight; they took refuge in books. Now alone and in exile, Zebra leaves New York for Barcelona, retracing the journey she and her father made...

"It's summertime on the North Carolina coast and the livin' is easy. Unless, that is, you've just lost your mother to cancer, your sister to her extremist husband, and your husband to his executive assistant. Meet Gray Howard. Right when Gray could use a serious infusion of good karma in her life, she inadvertently gets a stranger, Diana Harrington, fired from her job at the local pharmacy. Diana Harrington's summer isn't off to the greatest start...