"For generations, children around the world have come of age with Louisa May Alcott's March girls: hardworking eldest sister Meg, headstrong, impulsive Jo, timid Beth, and precocious Amy. With their father away at war, and their loving mother Marmee working to support the family, the four sisters have to rely on one another for support as they endure the hardships of wartime and poverty. We witness the sisters growing up and figuring out what role...

Hailed by Henry James as "the finest piece of imaginative writing yet put forth in the country", Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter reaches to our nation's historical and moral roots for the material of great tragedy. Set in an early New England colony, the novel shows the terrible impact a single, passionate act has on the lives of three members of the community: the defiant Hester Prynne; the fiery, tortured Reverend Dimmesdale; and the obsessed,...

Meredith and Nina are as different as sisters can be. When their father falls ill, they find themselves together, standing with their cold, disapproving mother, Anya. As children their only connection was the Russian fairy tale Anya often told the girls at night. On his deathbed, their father extracts a promise: the fairy tale will be told one last time--and all the way to the end.

A follow-up to Firefly Lane returns readers to the world of Tully, Kate, and Tully's mother, who explore their understandings about love, family, loss, and redemption while turning to each other in the hopes of salvaging their lives.

"When Katy's mother dies, she is left reeling. To make matters worse, their planned mother-daughter trip of a lifetime looms. Now she is faced with embarking on the adventure alone. As soon as she steps foot on the Amalfi Coast, Katy begins to feel her mother's spirit. And then Carol appears--in the flesh, healthy, and thirty years old. Katy doesn't understand what is happening--all she can focus on is that she has somehow gotten her mother back....

Ramona at 7 1/2 sometimes feels discriminated against by being the youngest in the family.

When an explosion rips through the nearly empty cafeteria of a Reesburgh (Pa.) Elementary School, lunch mother Rose McKenna leads two girls to safety before racing to rescue her own daughter, Melly. But Rose soon learns that she may face both civil and criminal charges for her heroics because one of the girls she saved was seriously injured in the resulting fire that killed three school staff members.

In 1949, four Chinese women--drawn together by the shadow of their past--begin meeting in San Francisco to play mah jong, invest in stocks and "say" stories. They call their gathering the Joy Luck Club--and forge a relationship that binds them for more than three decades.

To her Microsoft-guru husband, Bernadette is a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect; and to 15-year-old Bee, she's a best friend and, simply, Mom. Bee has aced her report card and claimed her reward: a family trip to Antarctica. For Bernadette, who has become increasingly agoraphobic, such a trip is problematic. Then Bernadette disappears. (Bestseller)...

Conceived to provide a bone marrow match for her leukemia-stricken sister, teenage Kate begins to question her moral obligations in light of countless medical procedures and decides to fight for the right to make decisions about her own body. New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult tells the emotionally riveting story of a family torn apart by conflicting needs and a passionate love that triumphs over human weakness. Anna is not sick, but she...