"When Kate Bowman temporarily moves to her grandmother's Missouri farm with her husband and baby son, she learns that the lessons that most enrich our lives often come unexpectedly. The family has given Kate the job of convincing Grandma Rose, who's become increasingly stubborn and forgetful, to move off her beloved land and into a nursing home. But Kate knows such a change would break her grandmother's heart. Just when Kate despairs of finding answers,...

Words are like a road map to reporter Camille Preaker's troubled past. Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, Camille's first assignment from the second-rate daily paper where she works brings her reluctantly back to her hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. Since she left town eight years ago, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with...

"The bestselling author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is at her superb best in this fun loving, moving novel about what it means to be truly alive. Elmwood Springs, Missouri, is a small town like any other, but something strange is happening at the cemetery. Still Meadows, as its called, is anything but still. Original, profound, The Whole Towns Talking, a novel in the tradition of Thornton Wilders Our Town and Flaggs own Cant Wait...

When a group of friends in Mason, Missouri, decide to start a monthly supper club, they get more than they bargained for. The plan for congenial evenings - talking, laughing, and sharing recipes, homemade food, and wine - abruptly changes course one night when one of the women reveals something startlingly intimate. The supper club then becomes Confession Club, and the women gather weekly to share not only dinners but embarrassing misdeeds, deep insecurities,...

"Challenging perceptions of discrimination and prejudice, three different women navigate challenges in a changing school district--and in their lives. When an impoverished school district loses its accreditation, the affluent community of Crystal Ridge has no choice but to open their school doors. Tensions rise, culminating in an unforeseen event that impacts them all"--

"Ellie Bowman barely remembers the incident that put her into a coma. When she awoke, filled with unease, all she knew for certain was that her boyfriend, Rick, was missing. She knew she needed to get away from her old life and recover in safety. With the proceeds of a video game she helped develop, Ellie starts over in rural Missouri, working from her cottage and trusting no one except her friend and business partner. Yet even in this quiet small...

"On a farm in western Missouri during the first half of the twentieth century, Matthew and Callie Soames create a life for themselves and raise four headstrong daughters. Jessica will break their hearts. Leonie will fall in love with the wrong man. Mary Jo will escape to New York. And wild child Mathy's fate will be the family's greatest tragedy. Over the decades they will love, deceive, comfort, forgive-- and, ultimately, they will come to cherish...

"This beautiful novel tells the love story of young Arthur Moses and Nola, and how a young man grew up to become the wise old man known as Arthur Truluv. Set in the 1950s in the warm community of Mason, Missouri, Arthur is a shy, unathletic teenage boy, in love with the most beautiful girl in his class. He is thrilled when they become friends, but he wants more than friendship. Alas, he learns that Nola has a crush on the wrong Moses--Arthur's older...

Minor but nagging setbacks continue to challenge Grant and Audrey Whitman's initiation into the world of inn keeping, but larger challenges brew when an occasional flirtation leads to big trouble for the Whitman's son-in-law, Jesse. Jesse Pennington's friendly, outgoing personality has always served him well, especially in a career that has earned him and his wife Corinne a very comfortable lifestyle. But Corinne and Jesse are both restless--and for...

Katie Nash, the beloved heroine of Elizabeth Berg's previous novels Durable Goods and Joy School, is thirteen years old in 1961, and she's facing a summer full of conflict. Her father has enlisted her in two care-taking jobs, baby-sitting for the rambunctious Wexler boys and, equally challenging, looking after Mrs. Randolph, her elderly, bedridden neighbor. To make matters worse, Katie has been forcibly inducted into the "loser" Girl Scout troop,...