"Willa Cather's third novel, The Song of the Lark, depicts the growth of an artist, singer Thea Kronborg, a character inspired by the Swedish-born immigrant and renowned Wagnerian soprano Olive Fremstad. Thea's early life, however, has much in common with Cather's own. Set from 1885 to 1909, the novel traces Thea's long journey from her fictional hometown of Moonstone, Colorado, to her source of inspiration in the Southwest, and to New York and the...

"The story of a young woman from Wisconsin who goes to Chicago, becomes an actress, marries and moves to New York, and when her husband loses his job, returns to the stage." ***"A powerful account of a young working girl's rise to the 'tinsel and shine' of worldly success, and of the slow decline of her lover and protector Hurstwood." Oxford Companion to Engl Lit. ***"Plain, unaffected, and unconventional story of the actual life of the lower middle-classes...

Ragni, a single woman who is struggling with her job and her father's Alzheimer's disease, agrees against her will to fix up her great-grandmother's cabin. She's accompanied by her teenage niece, Erika, who has taken to wearing all black and rarely talks to Ragni anymore. Snelling takes this opportunity to weave together Ragni's story with the story of Nilda, her great-grandmother, who traveled out by train in the early 1900s to be a frontier housekeeper....

Best friends are forged by fire. For Winona Olsen and Lucille Pryce, that fire happened the night they met outside the police station, both deciding whether to turn their families in for abuse and mistreatment. They realize they can't wait until graduation to start their new lives. They need out. Now. All they need is three grand, fast. And really, a stolen convertible to take them from Michigan to Las Vegas can't hurt.

Back on the beat as sheriff of Tamarack County, Cork O'Connor has already seen his beautiful Northwoods jurisdiction through an eventful summer. Now, as the chill of autumn sweeps through the countryside, he's about to face a season of murder, adultery, and deceit that will take him from seedy backwoods bars and humble reservation shanties to the highest and most corrupt echelons of Chicago society.

Forced to leave medical school in order to care for her young siblings after their mother is placed in a nursing home, Sara Elliott is thrust into the role of becoming a mother figure and finds her situation challenged by a love interest with questionable family ties and the reappearance of her long-lost brother.

Gabrielle Fairbanks, having lost touch with herself after fifteen years of marriage and motherhood, moves with her husband Philip to Chicago where she takes a job as program director at Manna House Women's Shelter and is just starting to feel her life has meaning again when Philip threatens her with divorce and a loss of custody if she does not quit.

"It's 1944, and although foreign battles are escalating, the war seems distant in every way to sensible college student Liz Stephens. That is, until her chance encounter with charming infantryman Morgan McClain at a USO dance in Chicago. Their deep connection feels mutual to Liz, but to her dismay, her bombshell roommate, Betty, is the one who promises to write the deploying soldier. Singer Betty Cordell delights in the prospect of a dashing serviceman...

Gabby Fairbanks, having turned to the women of the Yada Yada Prayer Group at the homeless shelter where she works for help after her husband locked her out of the house and disappeared with her sons, begins to fall for her warm-hearted lawyer and learns what she is really made of while trying to regain custody of her children.

Consuelo is 16, heavily pregnant and married to an unemployed gangster. The last thing she needs is a negligent doctor. When she is rushed into the Friendship private hospital, the staff are reluctant to treat her. Fortunately she has V.I. Warshawski, family friend and ex-lawyer, with her. But Consuelo and her baby are the tragic victims of a system so corrupt that it pays her husband to keep quiet. Anyone who can discover anything about the unorthodox...