Raised by his grandparents, first in Mississippi then in Wisconsin, ten-year-old Lymon moves to Chicago in 1945 to live with the mother he never knew, while yearning for his father.

On the anniversary of her daredevil brother's death, Jaycee breals into Jake's favorite hideout, an abandoned insane asylum, where her eccentric friends challenge her to rediscover buried parts of herself.

Marianne Neumann takes a job as a placing agent with the Children's Aid Society in hopes of finding her younger sister. In 1858 New York she finds it's not always easy to offer children a better life. Former schoolteacher Andrew Brady suffers from a grief that won't go away--and keeps hidden a secret from his past. As the two team up to place orphans across Illinois, a shocking tragedy threatens their work--and changes one of their lives forever.

"The flames of memory always seem to glow a little brighter during the holidays. Perhaps that's why this time of year is so difficult for airline heiress Ivy Macintosh, as she faces thoughts of yet another festive season alone. Since the plane crash that claimed the lives of her husband and two children eight years ago, she's been submerged in grief. When eleven-year-old Holly Greenwood knocks on her door, lost and frightened after a forbidden visit...

A summer rental, a new beginning. Hannah Russell's carefully crafted plans for her life have been upended without warning. When her best friend died suddenly, Hannah became guardian to a five-year-old named Noah. With no experience at motherhood, she's terrified she's not up to the challenge. She and Noah need time to get to know each other, so she decides to rent a country house with stunning views on a lake in rural Colorado. When they arrive...

"In Susan Wilson's The Dog Who Saved Me, a former Boston K-9 unit policeman turned animal control officer in bucolic Harmony Farms is up against rescuing a gun shy and wounded dog gone feral, and proving that his low-life older brother is back in the drug business. Fighting his shattering grief at the death of his K-9 partner killed in the line of duty, and a staggering loss of confidence from physical and psychic wounds of his own, Cooper Harrison...

Annie Marlow has been through the worst. Rocked by tragedy, she heads to the one place that makes her happy: Oceanside in the Pacific Northwest, the destination of many family vacations when Annie was a teenager. Once there, Annie begins to restore her broken spirit, thanks in part to the folks she meets: a local painter, Keaton, whose large frame is equal to his big heart--and who helps Annie fix up her rental cottage by the sea; Mellie, the reclusive,...

When Laurel starts writing letters to dead people for a school assignment, she begins to spill about her sister's mysterious death, her mother's departure from the family, her new friends, and her first love.

A polar bear grieves over the loss of his companion, based on the real-life Gus and Ida of New York's Central Park Zoo.