As a child Great-aunt Alice Rumphius resolved that when she grew up she would go to faraway places, live by the sea in her old age, and do something to make the world more beautiful--and she does all those things, the last being the most difficult of all.

"Paige Watts is the ultimate stage mother. The daughter of Hollywood royalty, Paige channels her own acting dreams into making her daughter, Emma, a star. By the age of nine, Emma is playing a central role in a hit TV show. Then everything is shattered by unforeseeable tragedy. Now Emma is living with her aunt Whitney, who had chosen a very different path than her sister. Whitney was always the studious older sister, hating the cult of celebrity that...

After his mother's death, eleven-year-old Marcus is sent to live on a small South Carolina island with his great aunt, a reclusive painter with a haunted past. Aunt Charlotte, otherwise a woman of few words, points out a ruined cottage, telling Marcus she had visited it regularly after she'd moved there thirty years ago because it matched the ruin of her own life. Eventually she was inspired to take up painting so she could capture its utter desolation.The...

"One woman discovers the beauty in chaos in this poignant and heartwarming story about the threads that hold family together from #1 New York Times bestselling author Susan Mallery. With her divorce settlement about to run out and a mortgage she can't afford, Robyn Caldwell needs a plan for her future. She nurtured her family and neglected herself. But how's she supposed to think when her daughter has become the most demanding bride ever, her son...

"A young, queer Palestinian American woman pieces together her great-aunt's secrets in this sweeping debut, a family saga confronting questions of sexual identity, exile, and lineage. In a Pacific Northwest hospital far from the Rummani family's ancestral home in Palestine, the heart of a stillborn baby begins to beat and her skin turns a vibrant, permanent cobalt blue. On the same day, the Rummanis' centuries-old soap factory in Nablus is destroyed...

When orphaned eleven-year-old Pollyanna comes to live with austere and wealthy Aunt Polly, her philosophy of gladness brings happiness to her aunt and other unhappy members of the community.

Rosie has four roses for her aunt's birthday, but after four animals "borrow" one, her gift is reduced to a rainbow ribbon.

Returning to her hometown of Heart's Harbor, Maine, to help her great-aunt run a teashop, Callie Aspen is entangled in a murder investigation when one of the guests at a party she is catering ends up dead.

During the summer before fifth grade, Ferris Wilkey has her hands full with her little sister terrorizing the town, her Aunt Shirley moving into their basement and her grandmother seeing a ghost--one who has wild, impractical and illuminating plans.

As a teenager, Hannah Benson ran away from home in order to save herself. Twenty years later, this loner is called home by tragedy, finding herself the sole responsible party for a troubled teenage niece.