Growing up in a world of physical and emotional poverty, Ruth believes her shrewish mother's assessment of her - that she is dimwitted and worthless....

Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life, he, too, will be trying to fly....

Pretty Amy Curran was just 18 years old when she met Barney Patterson, the love of her life. Their romantic, passionate marriage was made in heaven, or so they both believed....

Ria lived on Tara Road in Dublin with her dashing husband, Danny, and their two children...

Kathryn has learned to expect both intense exhilaration and long periods alone - but nothing has prepared her for the late-night knock that lets her know her husband has died....

It is 1972 when circumstance carries Ellen Grier and her family back to Holly's Field, Wisconsin....

When 19-year-old Fran married Bobby Benedetto, she never dreamed that she would find herself in an abusive relationship....

In Oklahoma early one morning in 1976, nine men from Ruby (pop. 360), in defense of "the one all-black town worth the pain", assault the nearby Convent and the women in it....

March Murray, along with her 15-year-old daughter, Gwen, returns to the small Massachusetts town where she grew up to attend the funeral of Judith Dale, the beloved housekeeper who raised her....

At the age of 12, Sophie Caco is sent from her impoverished village of Croix-des-Rosets to New York, to be reunited with a mother she barely remembers....

Novelist Sheri Reynolds weaves lyrical prose and folksy dialogue into her spellbinding tales....

Songs in Ordinary Time is set in the summer of 1960 - the last of quiet times and America's innocence....

"When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy. I would figure out this or that way and run it down through my head until it got easy....