"Billy Lynch's family and friends have gathered to comfort his widow, and to pay their respects to one of the last great romantics. As they trade tales of his famous humor, immense charm, and consuming sorrow, a complex portrait emerges of an enigmatic man, a loyal friend, a beloved husband, an incurable alcoholic. Alice McDermott's striking novel, Charming Billy, is a study of the lies that bind and the weight of familial love, of the way good intentions...

Forty-year-old preschool teacher Sarah Hurlihy, dateless for two years following her divorce, places a personal ad in an attempt to get back into the social swing, and soon finds herself in some very interesting and unusual situations.

A multigenerational tale about the passionate loves and losses of women in a family of firefighters traces their experiences spanning from famine-era Ireland to Brooklyn a decade after the September 11 attacks.

"When John Blessing dies and leaves behind two small children, the loss reverberates across his extended family for years to come. His young widow, Lauren, finds solace in her large clan of in-laws, while his brother's wife Kate pursues motherhood even at the expense of her marriage. John's teenage nephew Stephen finds himself involved in an act of petty theft that takes a surprising turn, and nephew Alex, a gifted student, travels to Spain and considers...

"Happy families are all alike," said Tolstoy, and the O'Malley's are one of the happiest, if slightly crazy, families in current fiction. A Christmas Wedding continues the saga of Chucky, the youngest son who wants to live the quiet life of an accountant and raise a nice Catholic family. Fate, of course, has other plans for Chucky, in the person of the beautiful Rosemarie, his off-again on-again nemesis from the time he saved her life when he was...

Refusing to settle for anything less than a romantic relationship that pleases God, Faith O'Connor steels her heart against her desire for the roguish Collin McGuire. But when Collin tries to win her sister Charity's hand, Faith isn't sure she can handle the jealousy she feels. To further complicate matters, Faith finds herself the object of Collin's affections, even as he is courting her sister. The Great War is raging overseas, and a smaller war...

Adam Arnring, son of an Irish immigrant and a Jewish peddler, heads West and lays the foundations of what will become one of the country's greatest retail companies. But along the way, love and war intervene, testing the ties that bind him to his brothers and to his trusting wife.

In the twilight of his life, Peter O'Banyon looks out from the Massachusetts lighthouse that was his home and remembers the past. Orphaned at age 10, he came to the Port Hope Lighthouse to live with his uncle Billie. A solitary man, Billie had worked hard to amass a fortune and returned to Ireland with his wife and son, only to lose them. His son died in the influenza epidemic, and his wife drowned on the voyage back to the U.S. When Peter lost his...