Twelve-year-old Abby must deal with her feelings about her father's cancer and its aftermath while simultaneously navigating the difficult problems of growing up.

In an effort to hide his southern, working class roots, Macon Dead, an upper-class Northern black businessman tries to insulate his family from the danger and despair of the rank and file blacks with whom he shares the neighborhood. The plan leads his son, "Milkman"--a name he earned after his mother nursed him well past the proper age--onto a path exactly opposite the one his father had hoped. Milkman is driven into the arms of a violent, lower-class...

Everything Hope knows about the Orchard House is from the stories of her late mother. So when she arrives at the northern Michigan family estate late one night with a terrible secret and her ten-year-old daughter in tow, she's not sure if she'll be welcomed or turned away. But as Hope works the orchard alongside her aunt, daughter, and a kind man she finds increasingly difficult to ignore, a new life begins to blossom.

Chocolate shop owner Lee McKinney Woodyard investigates the murder of a retiring member of the library board at a board meeting where all in attendance are suspect.

Moving to Michigan's Upper Peninsula to care for an aging family friend, Madeline Stone becomes involved in the lives of the small community and two octogenarian sisters who teach her valuable lessons about love and goodwill.

Desperately avoiding the clutches of professional hit men who have already put a bullet in his leg, Cork finds sanctuary outside the small Michigan town of Bodine. But while he's hiding out in an old resort owned by his cousin Jewell DuBois, a bitter widow with a fourteen-year-old son named Ren, the body of a young girl surfaces along the banks of the Copper River -- and then another teenager vanishes. Instead of thwarting his assassins, Cork focuses...

When fourteen-year-old Norvia moves from Beaver Island to Boyne City in 1914, she has to contend with a new school, a first crush, and a blended family, but she also must keep secret her parents' divorce and her Ojibwe heritage. Includes author's note.