Beloved author Elizabeth Berg tells the story of the recently widowed Helen Ames and of her twenty-seven-year-old daughter Tessa. Helen is shocked to discover that her mild-mannered and loyal husband had been leading a double life. The Ames's had saved money for a happy retirement, planned in minute detail, but that money has disappeared in several big withdrawals spent by Helen's husband before he died.

Anna Oh, a middle-age wife, mother and artist, divorces her husband after 27 years of marriage to marry Vivica, the Manhattan art dealer who orchestrated her professional success.

When their parents, performance artists who have dedicated themselves to making great art by sacrificing normality, plan one last performance, siblings Annie and Buster, returning home after their individual worlds collapse, are faced with a difficult decision.

"Best friends since the first day of classes at The College of Charleston, Ashley Anne Waters and Mary Beth Smythe, now 23 years old, live in Ashley's parents' beach house rent-free. Ashley is a gallery assistant who aspires to become an artist. Mary Beth, a gifted cook from Tennessee, works for a caterer while searching for a good teaching job. Though they both know what they want out of life, their parents barely support their dreams and worry for...

After her youngest son, and last one to marry, brings home his wife, Rachel feels her role of family matriarch slipping away and must deal with the loss that comes with it, while maintaining the relationships she holds dear.

"From the New York Times' bestselling author of The Vacationers, a smart, highly entertaining novel about a tight-knit group of friends from college--their own kids now going to college--and what it means to finally grow up well after adulthood has set in. Friends and former college bandmates Elizabeth and Andrew and Zoe have watched one another marry, buy real estate, and start businesses and families, all while trying to hold on to the identities...

Three daughters and their husbands are pulled into a triangle of love, jealousy, and fear when their father grows too old to manage the family's fertile thousand acre farm.