When Hurricane Ingrid aims a steady eye at the Alabama coast, Jenna must make a decision that will change her family's future, even as Betsy and Ty try to protect their beloved farm and their hearts.

The plans of four women--including a college student egg donor, a working-class surrogate mother, a wealthy woman, and her stepdaughter--are thrown into turmoil when the wealthy woman's husband suddenly dies and names the stepdaughter the unborn baby's guardian.

Time and Tide is a fragmented novel detailing the loves and catastrophes-and catastrophic loves-of Nell, an Irish woman trying to make a life for herself in the literary world of London. "A whimsical beauty who has swapped the suffocating narrowness of her native land for the loveless brutality of England" (The Independent), Nell is in flight from bitter, controlling, and small-minded parents, yet risks becoming just such a mother to her own sons....

"For eighteen years, Jude Farraday has put her children's needs above her own, and it shows-her twins, Mia and Zach-are bright and happy teenagers. When Lexi Baill moves into their small, close knit community, no one is more welcoming than Jude. Lexi, a former foster child with a dark past, quickly becomes Mia's best friend. Then Zach falls in love with Lexi and the three become inseparable. Jude does everything to keep her kids on track for college...

Shackled to her small town, vintage gift shop owner Jane Tanner longs to become a mother before her biological clock ticks out and drunkenly propositions the worst possible candidate, her sister's ex-boyfriend, who is on board until they're soon reminded just how messy life is.

Applying for an open adoption after several unsuccessful years of trying to conceive, Jesse and Ramon are disheartened by the bureaucratic labyrinth of red tape, training sessions, and approvals they endure.

Elsie and Edward take great delight in their burgeoning family. The aftermath of the Civil War provides them with many opportunities to uphold their heritage and faith in practical ways, but are caught up in a campaign against a powerful adversary -- the Ku Klux Klan -- as they fight to protect the innocent from unjust persecution.

"1950s Philadelphia: fifteen-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to becoming the first in her family to attend college, in spite of having a mother more interested in keeping a man than raising a daughter. But a taboo love affair threatens to pull her back down into the poverty and desperation that has been passed on to her like a birthright. Eleanor Quarles arrives in Washington, DC, with ambition and secrets. When she meets the handsome William Pride...

Amanda is a new mother, and she is breaking. After a fight with her partner, she puts the baby in the car and drives from Queens to her hometown in rural Ohio, where she shows up unannounced on the doorstep of her estranged childhood best friend. Amanda thought that she had left Carrie firmly in the past. After their friendship ended, their lives diverged radically: Carrie had a baby the summer after high school, became a successful tattoo artist,...

"For fourteen years, Letty Espinosa has worked three jobs around San Francisco to make ends meet while her mother raised her children-- Alex, now fifteen, and Luna, six-- in their tiny apartment on a forgotten spit of wetlands near the bay. But now Letty's parents are returning to Mexico, and Letty must step up and become a mother for the first time in her life. Navigating this new terrain is challenging for Letty, especially as Luna desperately...