"For more than a decade, Jenna Metcalf has never stopped thinking about her mother, Alice, who mysteriously disappeared in the wake of a tragic accident. Refusing to believe that she would be abandoned as a young child, Jenna searches for her mother regularly online and pores over the pages of Alice's old journals. A scientist who studied grief among elephants, Alice wrote mostly of her research among the animals she loved, yet Jenna hopes the entries...

For a little girl on a rainy day, the best place to be is with Mama.

As the awkward one, Courtney Watson may not be as together as her sisters, but she excels at one thing: keeping secrets, including her white-hot affair with a sexy music producer. Planning Mom's wedding exposes her startling hidden life, changing her family's view of her--and how she views herself--forever. When Sienna's boyfriend proposes--in front of her mom and sisters, for crying out loud--he takes her by surprise. She already has two broken engagements...

When Katy's mother dies, she is left reeling. Carol wasn't just Katy's mom, but her best friend and first phone call. She had all the answers and now, when Katy needs her the most, she is gone. To make matters worse, their planned mother-daughter trip of a lifetime looms: two weeks in Positano, the magical town Carol spent the summer right before she met Katy's father. Katy has been waiting years for Carol to take her, and now she is faced with embarking...

"A debut novel about the generations of a family that spends summers in a seaside enclave on Maine's rocky coastline. In 1944, Maren Larsen is a blonde beauty from a small Minnesota farming town, determined to do her part to help the war effort--and to see the world beyond her family's cornfields. As a cadet nurse at Walter Reed Medical Center, she's swept off her feet by Dr. Oliver Demarest, a handsome Boston Brahmin whose family spends summers in...

"Ayosa is a wandering spirit- joyous, exuberant, filled to the brim with longing. Her only companions in her grandmother's crumbling house are as lonely as Ayosa herself: the ghostly Fatumas, whose eyes are the size of bay windows, who teach her to dance and wail at the death news; the Jolly-Annas, cruel birds who cover their solitude with spiteful laughter; the milkman, who never greets Ayosa and whose milk tastes of mud; and Sindano, the kind owner...

When Lizzie gets a call about a big, mixed-breed puppy that needs a place to stay, she must try to take care of him without ruining her mom's plans to have friends stay over for a long weekend.

Izzy’s favorite place to be is in Mama’s arms—skin to skin, safe and warm. One night, cuddled up on Mama’s lap, Izzy notices something she’s never noticed before: her skin is the color of chocolate, but Mama’s skin is the color of sand. When Izzy realizes she’s different from Mama in other ways, too, she feels sad and confused. She wants to be beautiful like Mama! But Mama addresses Izzy’s disappointment with a gentle, loving refrain:...

In 1967 Los Angeles a widowed mother and her two daughters add a new stunt to bolster their seance scam business and unwittingly invite authentic evil into their home. When the youngest daughter is overtaken by the merciless spirit, this small family confronts unthinkable fears to save her and send her possessor back to the other side.

"Alice Lange's neighbors are proud to know her-a high-achieving student, cheerleader, and all-around good citizen, she's the perfect emblem of their sunny neighborhood. But the night before she's expected to be crowned Homecoming Queen, Alice commits a shocking act of vandalism, then disappears. She hasn't been kidnapped. She's run away with a magnetic stranger named Wesley, who has promised her freedom and enlightenment in his nearby bungalow. But...