Working on a bridal quilt for a granddaughter who abruptly calls off the wedding, Ellen imparts the story of a woman who avoided marriage twice before finding the love of her life.

In 1918 Colorado, as the Spanish Influenza runs rampant, sisters Helen and Lutie, after their tenant dies, must care for her daughter, which leads to murder, placing them both in danger from the ensuing investigation and the flu.

It's 1942: Tomi Itano, 12, is a second-generation Japanese American who lives in California with her family on their strawberry farm. Although her parents came from Japan and her grandparents still live there, Tomi considers herself an American. She doesn't speak Japanese and has never been to Japan. But after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, things change. No Japs Allowed signs hang in store windows and Tomi's family is ostracized. Things get...

Sandra Dallas, best-selling author of The Persian Pickle Club, weaves an intricate and sophisticated tale in New Mercies. Nora Bondurant is divorced-unfathomable for a woman in 1933-and has inherited a house from a dead aunt she never even knew existed. But when she travels to Mississippi to claim her inheritance, she finds her eccentric neighbors would rather help her acquire a new husband than reveal the secrets surrounding her aunt's death.