Margaret Hughes, a septuagenarian living in Seattle, takes in a series of boarders who help her cope with her illness, and whose lives become unexpectedly connected to each other. Seventy-year-old Margaret Hughes is tired of living alone in her Seattle mansion, so she welcomes Wanda Schultz, a young woman suffering a broken heart, into her home, and the two form an unlikely friendship.

A grad student meets his intellectual match and seals his dark fate when he responds to a newspaper ad seeking a conversationalist.

A property rights battle between young banker Doug Fanning and retired teacher Charlotte Graves is marked by Charlotte's bank-president brother, Charlotte's tenacious grip on sanity, and a troubled high school senior.

Sending her family away at Christmas so she can host guests at the Valley View Motel, mischievous octogenarian Lola Quinlan unveils the reasons her guests are not with their loved ones until drama in her own family threatens her plans.

When Emily Pollifax recieves an airmail, special delivery letter bidding her to rest and recuperate in a convalescent home in Switzerland, she knows Carstairs is behind it. And within minutes, Bishop calls with a most astonishing explanation. Nine pounds of plutonium have been stolen in two separate shipments in America and England, and it is believed they have been sent with highly suspicious designs to the Hotel-Clinic Montbrison, a luxurious...

"A sweeping and gorgeously rendered exploration of grief and yearning, following the fracturing of an multinational family in the wake of its patriarch's death. In the early hours of June 14, 2017, the world watches as flames leap up the sides of a residential high-rise in West London, devouring Grenfell Tower and the makeshift lives it houses--those of London's immigrants, its refugees, its working class. At the same time across town, another spark...