"Abby Hubble lives in an unhappy home in the Sierra Nevada foothills where her father makes life miserable for her and her mother...One day Abby witnesses a man dump a litter of puppies into the nearby river. Diving in to rescue all seven...she takes them to an abandoned cabin...Grieving widower Elliot Colvin,...looking for solace, retreats to the hunting cabin...What he discovers is not at all what he expected: seven puppies and one determined girl...

"Never knowing his parents, eleven-year-old Stewie Little and his brother have been raised on a farm by their older sister...And every day Stewie goes door to door selling fresh eggs from his wagon--a routine with a surprise just around the corner. It's his new customer, Marilyn. She's prickly and guarded, yet comfortably familiar...Marilyn has a reason for keeping her distance: a secret no one knows about...But whatever difficult times lie ahead,...

"Raymond Jaffe feels like he doesn't belong. Not with his mother's new family. Not as a weekend guest with his father and his father's wife. Not at school, where he's an outcast. After his best friend moves away, Raymond has only two real connections: to the feral cat he's tamed and to a blind ninety-two-year-old woman in his building who's introduced herself with a curious question: Have you seen Luis Velez? Mildred Gutermann, a German Jew who narrowly...