Natalie Harper feels she must sell the bookshop she's inherited to pay for her grandfather's care, but he refuses to acquiesce, and renovation of the store and its studio apartment push her life in a whole new direction. Besides, she loves the store and its books provide welcome solace for her overwhelming grief. After she moves into the small studio apartment above the shop, Natalie carries out her grandfather's request and hires contractor Peach...

In 1940, tragedy forces Lou, her little brother Oz, and their invalid mother to move to the mountains of southwestern Virginia to live with their great-grandmother, but a courtroom battle could determine the fates of the entire family.

In the tradition of Mary Karr's "The Liars' Club" and Rick Bragg's "All Over But the Shouting," Jeannette Walls has written a stunning and life-affirming memoir about surviving a willfully impoverished, eccentric and severely misguided family. The child of an alcoholic father and an eccentric artist mother discusses her family's nomadic upbringing, during which she and her siblings fended for themselves while their parents outmaneuvered bill collectors...

In each of these four novellas, a woman struggles with life events while dealing with her own pregnancy.