The antics of a group of women in a small town where they were expected to raise babies, not Cain. The story is recounted by a mother to a daughter, the daughter thinking she is so much better because she got out of that town and is now a theater producer. The moral: mothers too were once rebels.

"Richards pieces together each woman's story as artfully as a quilter creates a quilt... Transcendent, endowed with warmth and compassion."-Booklist Three generations of women discover the healing gift of family, memories and love Needing time to contemplate her troubled marriage, Tessa MacRae agrees to spend the summer helping her mother and grandmother clean out the family home in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. But the three women have never...

Brought up at Dorlcote Mill, Maggie Tulliver worships her brother Tom and is desperate to win the approval of her parents, but her passionate, wayward nature and her fierce intelligence bring her into constant conflict with her family. As she reaches adulthood, the clash between their expectations and her desires is painfully played out as she finds herself torn between her relationships with three very different men: her proud and stubborn brother,...

Plantagenet Palliser must face new challenges and a changing world if he is to hold his family together in the final installment of the Palliser Novels. After losing his devoted wife, Glencora, Duke Plantagenet Palliser takes on a task he has never had the time or skills to bother with before: dealing with his children. Palliser has never been a doting father, what with the responsibilities of title and duty constantly beckoning him away, but now...

Since her father died, Katie Raber's mother has tried to keep Katie close at hand, but the young Amish woman wants to break free from her mother's shadow, hoping to gain independence by attending nearby Mennonite youth gatherings.

Young and recently widowed, Jasmine Houston confronts the vital issues of freedom and slavery, love and hate, life and death. As Jasmine's opposition to slavery grows and her friendship with her bachelor brother-in-law Nolan deepens, her Massachusetts horse farm soon becomes a stop for the Underground Railroad. With both her mother and mammy dying, she and her young son rush to the family plantation in Mississippi--escorted by Nolan. Keeping a death-bed...

When Olympia Rubinstein's twin daughters are invited to a debutante ball, chaos erupts. One twin and Olympia's ex-husband are anxious to go, while the other twin and Olympia's current husband refuse to go.

"'Wandering Stars' traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Industrial School for Indians through to the shattering aftermath of Orvil Redfeather's shooting in 'There There'"-- "Colorado, 1864, Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison-castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on...

Ruth loves to bake cakes. When she is alone, she dreams up variations on recipes. When she meditates, she imagines herself in the warm, comforting center of a gigantic bundt cake. If there is a crisis, she bakes a cake; if there is a reason to celebrate, she bakes a cake. Ruth sees it as an outward manifestation of an inner need to nurture her family—which is a good thing, because all of a sudden that family is rapidly expanding. First, her...