Paul Baumer enlisted with his classmates in the German army of World War I. Youthful, enthusiastic, they become soldiers. But despite what they have learned, they break into pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. And as horrible war plods on year after year, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principles of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against each other—if only...

"With her wedding day approaching, Claire Cavenaugh prepares to confront her estranged older sister and self-absorbed mother after more than twenty years apart and find out how to transform themselves into a family."

In the late 1950s, a minister in the small town of West Annett, Maine, struggles to regain his calling, his family, and his happiness after a devastating loss.

"Soon after the fall of the Taliban, in 2001, Deborah Rodriguez went to Afghanistan as part of a humanitarian aid group. Surrounded by people whose skills--as doctors, nurses, and therapists--seemed eminently more practical than her own, Rodriguez, a hairdresser and mother from Michigan, despaired of being of any real use. Yet she found she had a gift for befriending Afghans, and once her profession became known she was eagerly sought out by Westerners...

In 1946, as London emerges from the shadow of World War II, author Juliet Ashton is having a terrible time finding inspiration for her next book. Then she receives a letter from Guernsey Island, and learns of a unique book club formed on the spur of the moment as an alibi to protect its members from arrest by the occupying Germans during the war. Captivated, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds there will change her life forever.

After the untimely death of Charles Dickens, his American publisher, Fields & Osgood, sends a trusted clerk to recover the manuscript of Dicken's last unfinished novel, but when the clerk is found dead on the docks without the manuscript, James Osgood decides to make the voyage to England, with the clerk's older sister Rebecca in tow, only to pick up the trail of a murderer.

"A rich vision of the pain, loveliness, mystery, and promise of New York City in the 1970s. A radical young Irish monk struggles with his own demons as he lives among the prostitutes in the middle of the burning Bronx. A group of mothers gathers in a Park Avenue apartment to mourn their sons who died in Vietnam, only to discover just how much divides them even in grief. A young artist finds herself at the scene of a hit-and-run that sends her own...

Lainey Carson and Sydney Beaumont were the closest of friends in high school, until popular Sydney leaves her contemplative, ungainly friend behind. Eighteen years later Sydney and her infant daughter come to Lainey's doorstep. Sydney tells her friend that she is escaping the child's abusive father. Lainey takes the child but then Sydney tells the news that the child has been kidnapped. Whom can Lainey trust?

"For fans of Alice Hoffman, Sarah Addison Allen, and Adriana Trigiani, The Dress Shop of Dreams is a captivating novel of enduring hopes, second chances, and the life-changing magic of true love. Since her parents' mysterious deaths many years ago, scientist Cora Sparks has spent her days in the safety of her university lab or at her grandmother Etta's dress shop. Tucked away on a winding Cambridge street, Etta's charming tiny store appears quite...

"Having unexpectedly lost her husband and lacking the means to support herself and her two young daughters, Josie DiSanti takes refuge with her aunt in Mill River, Vermont. Thanks to Aunt Ivy, who runs the town's book shop, the community quickly come to know Josie and her girls, Rose and Emily. The sisters are inseparable growing up, but in their early college years, a tragedy tears them apart. Years later, the sisters agree to return for the reading...