"Alison O'Conner has a picture-perfect family life in small-town Vermont with her husband, Mark, and their two daughters, the revellious teenage Izzy and precocious elementary-schooler Olivia. Everyone is busily putting up holiday decoration around the house when Alison gets the call. Mavis, her estranged mother, has been diagnosed with cancer and has only weeks to live. She wants to spend her ramining days with her daughter, son-in-law, and two granddaughters....

"James Falconer -- a tycoon and a self-made man -- seems to have the world in the palm of his hand. But the Great War looms, and James decides to fight for king and country. The fighting is bloody and brutal, and James returns a changed man, with wounds both physical and mental. His beloved wife is dead, but a new woman returns to help nurse him back to health. Georgiana Ward once held James in her thrall, but years have passed and bitterness has...