" Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet. So begins the story of this exquisite debut novel, about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee; their middle daughter, a girl who inherited her mother's bright blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue-in Marilyn's case that her daughter become...

"1977: Beatrice Bird is a Ph.D. psychologist who has fled her home, her partner, and her practice in San Francisco for a remote and sparsely populated island. She sees as few people as she possibly can, not by choice but from necessity. Normally, Beatrice is plagued by ghosts, manifestations of the emotional baggage people carry with them, but on the island, she's free from their grief and sadness. Then she meets Anne Iredale, a thirty-two-year-old...

Retreating from life after a tragedy, a man questions the universe by writing to Love, Time and Death. Receiving unexpected answers, he begins to see how these things interlock and how even loss can reveal moments of meaning and beauty.

At her thirteenth birthday party, Jenna Rink wishes she were thirty and wakes up to discover that she has an apartment in New York City, a job at a fashion magazine, and a sexy boyfriend, but inside she is still thirteen; after the death of her fiancé, Gray moves in with his roommates to make ends meet, learning surprising secrets about the man she was to marry and herself.

Mary Lennox is a prickly and unloved ten-year-old girl, born in India to wealthy British parents. When they suddenly die, she is sent back to England to live with her uncle. There, she begins to uncover many family secrets, particularly after meeting her sickly cousin Colin, who has been shut away in a wing of the house. Together, these two damaged, slightly misfit children heal each other through their discovery of a wondrous secret garden.