While trying to become a partner at the cutthroat Philadelphia law firm where she works, Mary DiNunzio receives threatening phone calls from a dangerous stalker.

Crack trial lawyer Bennie Rosato is called to the local prison to consult with Alice Connolly, a woman accused of committing cold-blooded murder and who wants Bennie to represent her at the trial. Bennie has no intention of taking the case, until she comes face to face with Connolly: the incarcerated woman is a dead ringer for Bennie - and claims to be her long-lost twin sister.

As three teenaged sisters struggle to cope with their father's sudden death, they find they must reexamine friendships, lifelong dreams, and their relationships with each other and their father.

"After taking the fall for a rich friend, seventeen-year-old Lee Cuddy reluctantly accepts refuge in the Crystal Castle--a cooperative of homeless kids squatting in an austere, derelict building in Philadelphia. But homeless kids are disappearing in suspicious numbers, and Lee quickly discovers that the secret society's charitable facade is too good to be true."--

It is 1953 in the tight-knit Italian neighborhood in Wilmington, Delaware. Maddalena Grasso has lost her country, her family, and the man she loved by coming to America; her mercurial husband, Antonio, has lost his opportunity to realize the American Dream; their new friend, Guilio Fabbri, a shy accordion player, has lost his beloved parents. In the shadow of St. Anthony's Church, named for the patron saint of lost things, the prayers of these troubled...

In 1793 Philadelphia, sixteen-year-old Matilda Cook, separated from her sick mother, learns about perseverance and self-reliance when she is forced to cope with the horrors of a yellow fever epidemic.

In Philadelphia, two African American teenagers from different backgrounds become romantically close when one tutors the other.

In 1925, at her family's suburban Philadelphia estate, 13-year-old Emily Stewart discovers she can make a loud rapping noise with her ankle. With her sly twin brother, Michael, Emily entertains gullible schoolmates with "knockings" that spirits purportedly make to answer questions about the afterlife. When adults who have suffered the loss of loved ones start consulting her as a spirit medium, her efforts to give them consolation begin to seem increasingly...