Evelyn Couch, a woman caught in the slump of middle age, gains a new outlook on life when she befriends eighty-year-old Ninny Threadgoode who tells her the story of the Whistle Stop Cafe and the two women who ran it in the 1930s, best friends Idgie and Ruth.

"In the summer of 1942, twenty-one-year-old Anne Calloway, newly engaged, sets off to serve in the Army Nurse Corps on the Pacific island of Bora-Bora. More exhilarated by the adventure of a lifetime than she ever was by her predictable fianc,̌ she is drawn to a mysterious soldier named Westry, and their friendship soon blossoms into hues as deep as the hibiscus flowers native to the island. Under the thatched roof of an abandoned beach bungalow,...

A man remembers a girl, Grace, from his childhood, and details how she, a runaway that he cared for, came to be his first kiss and his first love over the course of one life changing winter.

"When Kendra first visits her ailing grandmother, Ella has only one request: that she write her story down, before she forgets. In 1937, seventeen-year-old Ella's life changes forever when she is sent to spend the summer on the beautiful and windswept Ile de Re and meets the charismatic, creative Christophe. They spend the summer together, exploring the island's sandy beaches and crystal-clear waters, and, for the first time in her life, Ella feels...

"[A] unique love story set in the New York City theater world during the 1940s. Told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret (but mostly pleasure), City of Girls explores themes of female sexuality and promiscuity, as well as the idiosyncrasies of true love. In 1940, nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris has just been kicked out of Vassar College, owing to her lackluster freshman-year performance....

The world of the circus: to Jacob it was both salvation and a living hell. Jacob was there because his luck had run out-orphaned and penniless, he had no direction until he landed on this locomotive "ship of fools." It was the early part of the Great Depression, and everyone in this third-rate circus was lucky to have any job at all. Marlena, the star of the equestrian act, was there because she fell in love with the wrong man, a handsome circus boss...