On a summer visit to her grandmother's cottage by the ocean, twelve-year-old Martha gains perspective on the death of a classmate, on her relationship with her grandmother, on her feelings for an older boy, and on her plans to be a writer.

Eating herself into obesity in the wake of her lost childhood and over-anxious mother, Dolores Price finds herself facing adulthood in a cruel world and resolves to rise to the occasion.

Having left behind the island family cottage of her youth, a soul-weary woman struggles to come to terms with questionable choices from her past while endeavoring to remember life lessons about love and magic.

Ben Dibbuk has a good job, an accomplished wife, a bright college-age daughter, and a patient young mistress. Even as he goes through the motions of everyday life, however, inside he feels nothing. The explanation for this emotional void lies in the years he spent as a blacked-out drunk before pulling his life together--years in which he knows he committed acts he doesn't remember. Then a woman from his past turns up at a gala for his wife's new gig...

After her charmed life ends in a car crash, teenager Samantha relives the last day of her life seven times during one week in which she untangles the mystery surrounding her death and discovers the true value of everything she's in danger of losing.

When a little girl asks her mother about princesses, she learns that they are much like herself.

Eight-year-old Clementine, convinced that she has no talents, tries to find a way to avoid participating in the class talent show.

Chronicles the long-time friendship between Liz and Sarabeth, a relationship that is forged in childhood and sustained through the decades that follow, until both women are forced to reexamine their lives in the wake of a devastating crisis.