A companion story to the author's first novel, "The Christmas Box," traces the lives of David and Mary Anne Parkin as they learn the true meaning of love, loyalty, and forgiveness.

Annie Browner and her three children find themselves drifting apart as they each wage their personal battles against the grief that consumes them after their husband and father dies.

Country music star Tess McPhail returns to her small home town to help care for her ailing mother and discovers that her fame carries no weight with her family or with the good-looking man next door.

While trying to survive seventh grade, Alice discovers that turning thirteen will make her the woman of the house at home, so she starts a campaign to get more appreciation for taking care of her father and older brother.

All of Melody's beliefs about her life and her parents are shattered when her father dies in a mining accident and her mother pawns her off on his estranged relatives who all know some deep, dark secrets about her mom and dad and the circumstances of her birth.

Crissy Moore, one of six children born to Selina Trevarton, a woman who was disowned by her wealthy parents for marrying a coachman, swallows her pride after the death of her mother and goes to her grandmother for help, but while the old woman appears to be offering grudging assistance, she is really plotting to break up the family forever.

The death of her abusive, manipulative older sister prompts seventeen-year-old Em to remember their unpleasant life together, with their parents and then later on their own.

When he goes to spend the summer with his great-aunt in the family's old house, eleven-year-old Drew is drawn eighty years into the past to trade places with his great-great-uncle who is dying of diphtheria.