The Spirit of Covington

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Fannie Flagg · 403 pages

Folksy and fresh, endearing and affecting, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is a now-classic novel about two women: Evelyn, who’s in the sad slump of middle age, and gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode, who’s telling her life story. Her tale includes two more women—the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth—who back in the thirties ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Ala

The Quilter's Apprentice

Jennifer Chiaverini · 271 pages

Christmas on Ladybug Farm

Donna Ball · 239 pages

It's Christmas Eve, and Cici, Bridget and Lindsay are busy preparing for their annual holiday party. The tree is sparkling, the turkey is roasting, the stockings are hung and the eggnog is chilled ... but the entire state is in the midst of a heat wave. No one can find any mistletoe. The Christmas tree lights keep exploding, and, perhaps worst of all, something has gone terribly wrong with Ida Mae

Mrs. Saint and the Defectives

Julie Lawson Timmer

Inheriting Edith: A Novel

Zoe Fishman

For years, Maggie Sheets has been an invisible hand in the glittering homes of wealthy New York City clients, scrubbing, dusting, mopping, and doing all she can to keep her head above water as a single mother. Everything changes when a former employer dies leaving Maggie a staggering inheritance. A house in Sag Harbor. The catch? It comes with an inhabitant: The deceased’s eighty-two-year old moth

The Story of Arthur Truluv

Elizabeth Berg · 247 pages

"Truluv is a moving novel about three people who have lost the person they love most, and must find their way back to happiness. Arthur, a widower, meets Maddy, an angry and friendless teenage girl, while visiting his late wife at the cemetery, where he goes every day for lunch. Against all odds, the two strike up a friendship that pulls them out of a serious rut. They band together with Arthur's

Ya-Yas in Bloom

Rebecca Wells · 336 pages

Don't Let Me Go

Catherine Ryan Hyde · 432 pages

The One-in-a-Million Boy

Monica Wood · 336 pages

Guitarist Quinn Porter chases gigs on the road, largely absent to his twice-ex-wife Belle and their odd, Guinness recordsobsessed son. When the boy dies suddenly, Quinn seeks forgiveness by completing the requirements for his son's unfinished Boy Scout badge. For seven Saturdays he does yard work for Ona Vitkus, the wily 104-year-old Lithuanian immigrant the boy had visited weekly. Despite himself

Hot Flash Holidays

Nancy Thayer · 299 pages

When the Hot Flash friends gather at the spa to trim the Christmas tree, they share steaming mugs of hot chocolate, a few laughs, and a vow to make this holiday one to remember.

The Goodbye Summer

Patricia Gaffney · 448 pages

The New York Times bestselling author is back with a warm, winning new novel about daring to love, braving a loss, and setting yourself free. Caddie Winger's mother died when she was nine, and Caddie was raised by her grandmother. Now their roles are reversed, and it's Caddie -- thirty-two years old, still living with her grandmother, and giving piano lessons to neighborhood children -- who takes

Francesca's Kitchen

Peter Pezzelli · 340 pages

Winter Solstice

Rosamunde Pilcher · 563 pages

Elfrida Phipps, once on the London stage and retired at 62, never anticipates going off with a man. But after a devastating tragedy, church organist Oscar Blundell asks for her companionship. So with her brown-and-white dog in tow, Elfrida begins her journey, not knowing that joining her and Oscar at a rundown Victorian house in Scotland will be a young woman nursing a broken heart, a teenager esc

Wife-in-Law

Haywood Smith · 369 pages

Sharing a decades-long friendship in spite of disparate personalities, prim conservative Betsy and irreverent hippie Kat struggle to retain their bond when Kat marries Betsy's ex-husband, whose philandering becomes a shared grievance for both women.

The Bullet That Missed

Richard Osman · 385 pages

The third installment in the beloved and New York Times bestselling series from Richard Osman, also author of We Solve Murders “The quartet of aging amateur sleuths…remain wonderful company.” —The New York Times Book Review It is an ordinary Thursday, and things should finally be returning to normal. Except trouble is never far away where the Thursday Murder Club are concerned. A decade-old cold c

The Bean Trees

Barbara Kingsolver · 240 pages

Taylor, a poor Kentuckian making her way west with an abandoned baby girl, stops in Tucson where she finds friends and discovers resources in apparently empty places.

Every Last Cuckoo

Kate Maloy · 290 pages

Sarah Lucas imagined the rest of her days would be spent living peacefully in her rural Vermont home in the steadfast company of her husband. But now, with Charles's sudden passing, seventy-five-year-old Sarah is left inconsolably alone. As grief settles in, Sarah's mind lingers on her past: her imperfect but devoted fifty-year marriage to Charles; the years they spent raising their three very

Broken for You

Stephanie Kallos · 371 pages

"When we meet septuagenarian Margaret Hughes, she is living alone in a mansion in Seattle with only a massive collection of valuable antiques for company. Enter Wanda Schultz, a young woman with a broken heart who has come west to search for her wayward boyfriend. Both women are guarding dark secrets and have spent many years building up protective armor against the outside world. But as the two b

All the Single Ladies

Dorothea Benton Frank · 368 pages

Lisa St. Clair knows a thing or two about weathering storms. A dedicated nurse with a healthy sense of humor, she single-handedly raised her truculent daughter, Marianne, after her ex walked out on them twenty-four years ago, sending them a lottery ticket once a year as support. One day he reappeared and lured their daughter into a dubious but lucrative venture in Colorado. Now mother and daughter

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt

Beth Hoffman · 313 pages

When Camille Sugarbaker Honeycutt, the pretty but crazy 1951 Vidalia Onion Queen dies, her twelve-year-old daughter CeeCee has barely a hope in the world. To her rescue arrives Great Aunt Tootie in the most magnificent car CeeCee has ever seen, and she is whisked away to the city of Savannah. Among the sweet scent of magnolias and the loving warmth of Tootie and her colourful collection of friends

The Friday Night Knitting Club

Kate Jacobs · 384 pages

Gathering for their weekly knitting club at a small yarn shop on Manhattan's Upper West Side, a group of friends shares such challenges as raising children, navigating the ups and downs of their careers, and pursuing uncertain relationships.

Islands

Anne Rivers Siddons · 374 pages

Anny Butler is a caretaker, a nurturer, first for her own brothers and sisters, and then as a director of an agency devoted to the welfare of children. What she has never had is a real family. That changes when she meets and marries Lewis Aiken, an exuberant surgeon fifteen years older than Anny. When they marry, she finds her family -- not a traditional one, but a group of Charleston childhood fr

Auld Acquaintance

Ruth Hay · 270 pages

The Tea-Olive Bird-Watching Society

Augusta Trobaugh · 317 pages