Teenager Tim Temples must decide if he wants to leave his comfortable life in a small town and go to college.

They left their homelands during the worst moments in history - and arrived in America ready to reach for their dreams.

Inspired by her late grandmother, thirteen-year-old Nina spends a summer secretly doing good deeds for her neighbors and enjoying the changes she brings about, even as she is dealing with changing friendships and family issues.

Fifteen-year-old Hope describes events leading her to agree to her boyfriend's plan to stage her abduction, and the consequences for their relationship, her family life, and her budding career as an actress.

Illinois attorney general Martin Vail accepts a top secret assignment from the president, trying to bring down an ultra-right-wing militia group known as the Sanctuary, but his task is complicated when his old nemesis Aaron Stampler joins the group in the guise of a fanatical preacher anxious to bring about Armageddon.

Father Dowling comes to the aid of a former classmate who had left the priesthood twenty-five years earlier, when he is sued by a woman alleging that he had sexually exploited her as a child, a case that is complicated by the son she claims is his.

Gabrielle Fairbanks moves to Chicago with her businessman husband, Philip, leaving their sons behind at boarding school in Virginia. She literally stumbles over a homeless woman, an event that changes Gabby's life. She looks her up at Manna House, a homeless shelter, and first finds welcome and eventually a job. But her husband is hostile toward both Gabby and her job. Can she juggle her angry husband and his new business, her sons when they come...

First published in 1937, They Came Like Swallows was William Maxwell's second novel. It tells of an ordinary American family overtaken by the devastating epidemic of the Spanish influenza of 1918. The book begins on the day before the armistice in a small midwestern town, and the events are seen from the perspective, in turn, of eight-year-old Peter Morison - called Bunny; of his older brother, Robert; and of their father. They are witnesses to a...

"Newly engaged, Clive and Henrietta now begin the difficult task of meeting each other's family. "Difficult" because Clive has neglected to tell Henrietta that he is in fact the heir to the Howard estate and fortune, and Henrietta has just discovered that her mother has been hiding secrets about her past as well. When Clive brings Henrietta to the family estate to meet his parents, they are less than enthused about his impoverished intended. Left...

With too many churches and not enough people to fill them, the Archdiocese has to make some cuts, and many of them, including the proposed closing of St. Hilarys, are dangerously close to the bone. Father Dowling rushes to drum up support from church officials and parishioners, including the Deveres, who dont want to see the stained glass windows they donated go anywhere other than the church they were meant for, but they can hardly be of help when...