It's 1963, and Calvin Sidey, one of the last of the old cowboys, has long ago left his family to live a life of self-reliance out on the prairie. He's been a mostly absentee father and grandfather until his estranged son asks him to stay with his grandchildren, Ann and Will, for a week while he and his wife are away. So Calvin agrees to return to the small town where he once was a mythic figure, to the very home he once abandoned. But trouble soon...

Every family has its problems. But even among the most troubled, the Plumb family stands out as spectacularly dysfunctional. Years of simmering tensions finally reach a breaking point on an unseasonably cold afternoon in New York City as Melody, Beatrice, and Jack Plumb gather to confront their charismatic and reckless older brother, Leo, freshly released from rehab. Months earlier, an inebriated Leo got behind the wheel of a car with a nineteen-year-old...

"Ellie and Eric Nyland have moved their two sons back to Eric's childhood farmhouse, hoping for a fresh start. But there's no denying it, their family is falling apart, each one of them isolated by private sorrows, stresses, and missed signals. With every passing day, Ellie's hopes are buried deeper in the harsh winter snows. When Eric finds Hannah Finch, the girl across the road, wandering alone in the bitter cold, his rusty police instincts kick...

Beth is the darling of God Halsa, a pharmaceutical giant, and she's got the outrageous salary and lifestyle to prove it. Until she lands in white-collar women's prison, thanks to a high-profile whistleblower suit. Sam, Beth's husband, used to be the town's most eligible bachelor, and he's never had to do anything for himself. Until his wife goes to jail, and he's left to raise two daughters on his own. Lise, the au pair, is the whistleblower. But...

Indie Brown, living an idyllic life with her partner in rural Maine, is drawn back into the nightmare of her childhood when she is summoned home to Arizona to help her sister deal with their mother's strange illness.

"When Samantha said "I do" to Luca Ginelli, she knew she'd found a reliable soulmate--a strong, sexy man who'd stand beside her through thick and thin. And so she'd started her wedding day filled with joyful expectation, only to have her dreams shatteredwhen the man she married years before shockingly, unexpectedly, reappears, insisting she was still his wife! Seven years before, Luca's brother, Nick, had stubbornly set off on a sailing adventure,...

"Emily Glass knows she's neurotic. But she's got it under control. Sort of. She dons compression socks when she flies (because, you know, deep vein thrombosis) and responds to people routinely overestimating her age with more Lifespin classes and less gluten. Thankfully, she also has David, the wonderful man she'll soon call husband--assuming they can survive wedding week with her wildly dysfunctional family"--Amazon.com.

Follows the story of four siblings--Amy, the baby; George, the good son; Kate, daddy's girl; and Finn, the drunk--as they careen into adulthood, trying to make peace with their past, and with each other.

In the vein of "American Beauty," Shut the Door offers a glimpse into the world of a family in crisis. It focuses on two teenage sisters struggling to carve their identities as young adults, taking risks and undergoing disturbing transformations that go unchallenged by their emotionally absent parents. Meanwhile, their parents' marriage is disintegrating and no longer provides the support the girls so desperately need. Their father's prolonged absence...

In the quiet village of Noon Sun, Benedict Stone lives out the stagnant life of an unhappily married jeweler, until the daughter of his estranged brother arrives from America and turns his whole life upside down.