Spanning four decades, and three continents, Picking Bones from Ash tells the story of Satomi and her daughter Rumi. Satomi, a talented pianist, lives with her mother in northern Japan. When her mother remarries and Satomi gains two stepsisters, she feels betrayed. Thirty years later, Rumi lives a sheltered life in San Francisco working as an art dealer with her father, but the ghosts of her past call her to visit her mother’s homeland.
As Queen Catherine’s maid and daughter of the Duke of Buckingham, the future seems bright for Elizabeth Stafford. But when her father gives her hand to Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, the spirited young woman must sacrifice all for duty. Yet Elizabeth is surprised by her passion for her powerful new husband. And when he takes on a mistress, she is determined to fight for her love and her honor… Naïve and vulnerable, Bess Holland is easily charmed by the Duke of Norfolk, doing his bidding in exchange for gifts and adoration. For years, she and Elizabeth compete for his affections.
The little beach house has a rickety porch and no closets, but the location is unbeatable—close to a gorgeous shoreline and the best nightlife on Martha’s Vineyard. All in all, more than enough to entice three total strangers into a house share for the summer…
At first, the only thing Gincy, Danielle, and Clare have in common is a desire to spend weekends away from the city. No-nonsense Gincy has worked hard to leave her small-town childhood behind. Danielle grew up with every advantage and is looking for a husband who’ll fit neatly into her pampered life,
In a remote, piney wood in Finland stands a convalescent hospital called Suvanto, a curving concrete example of austere Scandinavian design. It is the 1920s, and the patients, all women, seek relief from ailments real and imagined. On the lower floors are the stoic Finnish women; on the upper floors are foreign women of privilege—the “up-patients.” They are tended to by head nurse Sunny Taylor, an American who has fled an ill-starred life only to retreat behind a mask of crisp professionalism. On a late-summer day a new patient arrives on Sunny’s ward—a faded, irascible former ballroom-dance instructor named Julia Dey.
The remarkable heroines of Terry McMillan’s unforgettable novel are back—and are at a crossroads that will define their future. All four are learning to heal past hurts, and are more determined than ever to reclaim their lives and dreams. They’ve exhaled: now they are learning to breathe.
Now, McMillan revisits Savannah, Gloria, Bernadine, and Robin fifteen years later. Each is at her own midlife crossroads: Savannah has awakened to the fact that she’s made too many concessions in her marriage, and decides to face life single again-at fifty-one. Bernadine has watched her megadivorce settlement dwindle, been swindled by her husband number two,
While vacationing in India, Kiria Langdon, the opinionated and driven CEO of a major company, meets Santoshi, a former slave who now works as a cleaning lady and lives in a shelter for homeless women in Chennai. Appalled by the conditions in the shelter, Kiria becomes obsessed with the idea of building decent housing for poor working women in India. Santoshi reluctantly agrees to help, even though she thinks Kiria’s ideas are too crazy to succeed.
Embarking on a rich journey of personal discovery, both women will learn invaluable lessons about themselves as they forge a powerful bond of sisterhood across the barriers of language and culture—a bond that makes anything possible.
