Friends Snow Flower and Lily find solace in their bond as they face isolation, arranged marriages, loss, and motherhood in nineteenth-century China.

Story of four generations in the life of the Ward family, from America's western frontier to today.

At the age of ninety-something, Beryl Dusinbery is forgetting everything - including her own children. Her tongue, meanwhile, remains as sharp as ever. She spends her days stitching macabre messages into her needlework and tormenting her two long-suffering carers with tangled stories of her love affairs. Shimi Carmelli can do up his own buttons, get around without the aid of a walking frame, and speak without spitting. Among the widows of North London,...

Presents a variation on the classic rhyme about an old lady who swallowed some books and a series of other strange items before encountering a large surprise.

Seventeen-year-old Lev Beniov, having been arrested for looting the corpse of a German paratrooper, is given the opportunity to be released from jail if he, along with a soldier imprisoned for desertion, can secure twelve eggs to be used in the colonel's daughter's wedding cake by traversing the dangerous streets of Leningrad.

The neighbors of Deepwater Cove try to help one another cope with life's tragedies and setbacks as Charlie Moore struggles with his wife's failing mind, Cody Gross discovers a surprising secret that may change his life, and two other couples fall in and out of love.

Widowed Amelia is shocked when Miriam Smith arrives on her doorstep, claiming to be her late husband's illegitimate daughter, and hides behind the pain of her husband's betrayal, refusing to accept that God is offering Amelia a new chance at the family she has always wanted.