Having graduated from high school, Virginia Simpson thought she would feel different--like an adult with an inner knowledge that she was on the edge of the nest, ready to try her own wings. And then circumstancers began swirling around her, making her rethink her plans and reevaluate her priorities.

Two girls who grow up to become women. Two friends who become something worse than enemies. In this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison tells the story of Nel Wright and Sula Peace, who meet as children in the small town of Medallion, Ohio. Their devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the black community and Sula has become a pariah. But their...

When August, an anthropologist who has studied the funeral traditions of different cultures, revisits her old neighborhood after her father's death, her reunion with a brother and a chance encounter with an old friend bring back a flood of childhood memories. Flashbacks depict the isolation she felt moving from rural Tennessee to New York and show how her later years were influenced by the black power movement, nearby street violence, her father's...

The day before a teenage Ellie moved from Georgia to California, she and her best friend Nolan sat beneath the Spanish moss of an ancient oak tree where they wrote letters to each other and buried them in a rusty old metal box. The plan was to return eleven years later, dig the box up, and read the letters. But now, as that date approaches, much has changed. Ellie has abandoned the faith she grew up with, her days consumed with loving her little girl...

Jodie Harland and Bethan Keane, two young women with very different goals and personalities, develop a strong friendship when the plight of a homeless puppy brings them together. Soon their shared joys and trials make them more like sisters than friends. Then tragedy strikes Jodie's family, and her faith begins to waver. Through it all, Bethan remains a loyal companion. But when Jodie's possible romance with Bethan's brother causes a rift between...

Despite having jobs and men that they love, Tibby, Lena, Carmen, and Bridget know something is missing: the closeness that once sustained them. Carmen is a successful actress in New York, engaged to be married, but misses her friends. Lena finds solace in her art, teaching in Rhode Island, but still thinks of Kostos and the road she didn't take. Bridget lives with her longtime boyfriend, Eric, in San Francisco, and though a part of her wants to settle...

Mrs. Threadgoode's tale of two high-spirited women of the 1930s, Idgie and Ruth, helps Evelyn, a 1980s woman in a sad slump of middle age, to begin to rejuvenate her own life. A remarkable novel of two Southern friendships--the basis of the hit film.

YA-YAS IN BLOOM reveals the roots of the Ya-Yas' friendship in the 1930s and roars with all the raw power of Vivi Abbott Walker's 1962 T-Bird through sixty years of marriage, child-raising, and hair-raising family secrets.

"Years ago, the Gypsy kumpania where Janeal Mikkado lived was attacked by outsiders. With her best friend about to be consumed by fire, Janeal had two options: try to save her friend -- and put her own life in serious jeopardy -- or disappear with the million dollars she just found. But the past has come back to haunt Janeal. Both the best friend and the boyfriend that she was sure were dead have reappeared in her life -- and so has someone who knows...

When reclusive writer Leonora is invited to the English countryside for a weekend away, she reluctantly agrees to make the trip. But as the first night falls, revelations unfold among friends old and new, an unnerving memory shatters Leonora's reserve, and a haunting realization creeps in: the party is not alone in the woods.