In the aftermath of the Civil War, Josephine Weatherly vows to rebuild her family's once-grand Virginia plantation, but her privileged life has now turned into a daily struggle for survival.

A mother encourages her young daughter to always do her best, be a team player, try new experiences, and strive to help others who may be in need.

"After heartbreaking betrayal, Carley is sent to live with a foster family and struggles with opening herself up to their love"--

Told in two voices, Nadja grows up in war-torn Bosnia in the 1990s and, in the present, refuses to discuss her youth with her daughter, Zara, until both are traumatized by a terrorist attack in Rhode Island.

"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....

In a reversal of the classic bedtime story, a child helps her mommy get ready for bed, enduring pleas for one more book, five more minutes of play time, and a glass of water before the lights go out.

When a young girl has a series of mishaps at home one day, her mother tries not to lose her temper--and does not quite succeed.

When she is almost sixteen years old, Rosemary decides she is sick of being overweight, mocked at school and at Heavenly Hair--her mother's beauty salon--and feeling out of control, and as she slowly loses weight, she realizes that she is able to cope with her mother's cancer, having a boyfriend for the first time, and discovering that other people's lives are not as perfect as they seem from the outside.

Told from their own viewpoints, seventeen-year-old Jill, in grief over the loss of her father, and Mandy, nearly nineteen, are thrown together when Jill's mother agrees to adopt Mandy's unborn child but nothing turns out as they had anticipated.

At bedtime, Meriam tells her mother what it was like to spend a day as a mermaid at the beach.