When Darroti, a young merchant in the city of Lemabantunk, is accused of murdering a highborn woman, he and his family are exiled to the unknown world that lies beyond a mysterious gate, where they encounter a world tormented by hatred and warfare.
Melody Logan, attempting to learn the secrets of her past, gets a summer job working for artist Kenneth Childs, a man she believes may be her real father.
Tells the story of two sisters: Nettie, a missionary in Africa, and Celie, a child-wife living in the South, in the medium of their letters to each other and in Celie's case, the desperate letters she begins, "Dear God.".
Crystal, a scientifically minded fourteen-year-old who has been an orphan since birth, is finally adopted and moves to suburbia--but she quickly learns that having a family does not necessarily bring happiness.
Ruth, a farm girl from Honey Creek, Illinois, reviews the events of her life in an effort to make sense of the violence and tragedy that have plagued her and her family from the time she was a child.
In early nineteenth-century England, a spirited young woman copes with the courtship of a snobbish gentleman as well as the romantic entanglements of her four sisters.
Raised as siblings, Sunny DeLony and her cousin Gil are separated when their families notice the attraction between them, Gil enlisting to fight in World War I, and Sunny marrying a local man, but nothing can make them forget their feelings.
