Eleanor Oliphant struggles with appropriate social skills, tends to say exactly what she's thinking, and carefully avoids unnecessary human contact. But everything changes when she meets Raymond, an IT worker from her office, and Sammy, an elderly gentleman. Raymond's compassion helps Eleanor find the way to repair her own damaged heart and she learns that she is capable of finding friendship and love.

When fifteen-year-old, home-schooled Sunny gets arrested for shoplifting a dictionary at the local library, the judge assigns her to do community service at the library for the summer. Bright, curious, and eager to connect with someone other than her off-the-grid hippie parents, Sunny coaxes librarian Kit out of her self-imposed isolation. They're joined by Rusty, a Wall Street high-flyer suddenly crashed to earth. As they come to terms with how their...

"Iris Maynard lost her husband in World War II, her daughter to illness and, finally, her reason to live. Walled off from the world for decades behind the towering fence surrounding her home, Iris has built a new family...of flowers. Iris propagates her own daylilies and roses while tending to a garden filled with the heirloom starts that keep the memories of her loved ones alive. When Abby Peterson moves next door with her family--a husband traumatized...

"Since her divorce, Emily Lucretia--affectionately known as the flower lady to the people of Cemetery, Indiana--has been focused on her flower shop and taking care of her aging aunt and uncle. Her love life is hardly the centerpiece of her busy days. Saul Culver, the town's favorite bachelor and owner of the local barbecue joint, has been interested in Emily for a while. But as much as Emily knows about flowers, she can be a little oblivious to her...

This is the story of the Meisenheimer family, told by James, a third-generation American living in Beatrice, Missouri. It's where his German grandparents -- Frederick and Jette -- found themselves after journeying across the turbulent Atlantic, fording the flood-swollen Mississippi, and being brought to a sudden halt by the broken water of the pregnant Jette. A Good American tells of Jette's dogged determination to feed a town sauerkraut and soul...

"A Black father makes amends with his gay son through letters written on his deathbed in this wise and penetrating novel of empathy and forgiveness, for fans of Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robert Jones Jr. and Alice Walker. As Jacob lies dying, he begins to write a letter to his only son, Isaac. They have not met or spoken in many years, and there are things that Isaac must know. Stories about his ancestral legacy in rural Arkansas that extend back to slavery....

Madeleine Thien takes us inside an extended family in China, showing us the lives of two successive generations--those who lived through Mao's Cultural Revolution and their children, who became the students protesting in Tiananmen Square. At the center of this story are two young women, Marie and Ai-Ming. Through their relationship Marie strives to piece together the tale of her fractured family in present-day Vancouver, seeking answers in the fragile...

"Kathleen is eighty years old. After she has a run-in with an intruder, her daughter wants her to move into a residential home. But she's not having any of it ... Martha is having a quarter-life crisis. Unemployed, unloved and uninspired, she just can't get her life together ... When Martha sees Kathleen's advertisement for a driver and companion to share an epic road trip across America with, she decides this job might be the answer to her prayers...

Seventy-seven-year-old Dorothy Darling has lived in Shelley House longer than any of the other residents, and if you take their word for it, she's as cantankerous as they come. But Dorothy has her reasons for spying. And none of them require justifying herself to Kat Bennett. Twenty-five-year-old Kat has never known a place where she felt truly at home, and crumbling Shelley House is no different. Her neighbors find her prickly and unapproachable,...

"Paris, 1939. Young, ambitious, and tempestuous, Odile Souchet has it all: Paul, her handsome police officer beau; Margaret, her best friend from England; her adored twin brother Remy; and a dream job at the American Library in Paris, working alongside the library's legendary director, Dorothy Reeder. But when World War II breaks out, Odile stands to lose everything she holds dear - including her beloved library. After the invasion, as the Nazis declare...