"World War II has ended and American women are shedding their old clothes for the gorgeous new styles. Voluminous layers of taffeta and tulle, wasp waists, and beautiful colors, all so welcome after years of sensible styles and strict rationing. Jeanne Brink and her sister Peggy both had to weather every tragedy the war had to offer: Jeanne without the fianc©♭ she's counted on, Peggy now a widowed mother, both living with Peggy's mother-in-law...

"Cal has always lived in the shadow of his brother Frank, a complicated narcissist who was doted upon by their mother and beloved by the girls in their hometown--including Cal's own girlfriends. In an attempt to escape Frank's insidious presence, Cal pursues a different kind of freedom in the world's wild spaces, prospecting for gold and precious minerals everywhere from the heat of the desert at the Mexican border to the Alaskan chill to the suffocating...

Echo Reef is tail-flipping with excitement when she find a human object. But when her older sister claims the object for her own, how far will Echo go to reclaim it?

Jealous of his brother, Early Bird, who always gets the worm, Speed Bump embarks on an adventure with his best friend Slingshot.

Chester Raccoon is worried that his mother does not have enough love for both him and his new baby brother.

A girl who is always outshone by her older sister is comforted by her grandfather, who reminds her that everything and everyone is made of stardust that shines in all different ways.

The Museum of Natural History receives back a pilfered gem collection, which has been ground to dust. To quell the PR nightmare the museum decides to reopen the Tomb of Senef; that's when the killings and talk of ancient curse start. FBI agent Pendergast is pitted against his brilliant, psychotic brother Diogenes.

The biblical account of Cain and Abel is echoed in the history of two generations of the Trask family in California.