Four generations of mothers and daughters express their love through family traditions that are the same but different.

Sharing the dream of being the best horsewoman in the world, Maggie Atwood and Becky McCabe, mother and daughter champion riders, break their vow of never going up against each other when they both participate in the competitions leading up to the Olympics.

"Caitlyn Sullivan had come from a long line of Hollywood royalty, stretching back to her Irish immigrant great-grandfather. At nine, she was already a star- yet still an innocent child who loved to play hide and seek with her cousins at the family home in Big Sur. It was during one of those games that she disappeared. Some may have considered her a pampered princess, but Cate was in fact a smart, scrappy fighter, and she managed to escape her abductors....

"Lindy Carmichael isn't feeling particularly joyful when she returns home to Wenatchee, Washington, for Christmas. The man she thought was the one has cheated on her with her best friend, and she feels completely devoid of creativity in her graphic-design job. Not even carolers or Christmas cookies can cheer her up but Lindy s mother, Ellen, remembers an old tradition that might lift her daughter's spirits. Reading through a box of childhood letters...

"Heads always turned when Rose McCarthy walked into a room. Nearly six foot tall, she was ramrod straight, and impeccably put together with faultless style, long graceful legs, her snow-white hair cut in a chin-length rounded cap. Her piercing blue eyes missed nothing. She could terrify anyone with a few, well chosen, soft-spoken, eloquent words, or comfort and delight a young employee with generous praise. For twenty-five years, she had been the...

On a mission to restore her hypochondriac mother to health, Gillian Ormsby also sets about reviving her mother's wilted garden to its former glory, enlisting the help of Adam, a handsome man who owns a family gardening business with his father.

Thirteen-year-old Dinah Lance is in a rock band with her two best friends and has a good relationship with her mom, but when a mysterious figure threatens her friends and family, she learns more about herself and her mother's secret past.