Presents a series of interlinking stories that capture the lives and fortunes of the various occupants of an old Massachusetts house over the course of two centuries.

Inheriting a historic Mississippi family home she knows little about, Nora Bondurant moves to the house hoping to forget her unhappy past but becomes enmeshed in a mystery surrounding her aunt's untimely death.

Psychologist Casey Ellis never met her father -- but that didn't stop her from following in his professional footsteps. Now he has died, and Casey is shocked to have inherited his elegant Boston town house, complete with a maid and a handsome, enigmatic gardener. When she finds a manuscript that could be a novel, a journal, or a case study of one of her father's patients in her new home, she becomes engrossed in the story of Jenny, a young woman trying...

Over twenty years after the brutal murder of her mother and her own acquittal of the crime, Liza Barton's new husband, Alex Nolan, unexpectedly buys the New Jersey home where Liza's mother died and again becomes a suspect in another murder.

Lance Michelli is on a quest to discover the secrets his grandmother cannot tell. What happened all those years ago, and what is it she so desperately needs him to find? The old villa in Sonoma holds the answers, but it is now owned by a young woman who neither knows nor cares about his mission. But Rese Barret is a force to contend with, and her own impending storm could sweep him up as their sparring creates a fierce and uncomfortable attraction....

Like countless others in 1931, Samuel Wortham lost his job. And he lost his wife's inheritance, their home, and much of his self-respect. Samuel, his wife, Julia, and their two young children hitchhike from Pennsylvania to Illinois in hope of work. Caught on the road by a sudden storm, the Worthams take shelter in an abandoned farmhouse out of desperation. Feeling oddly at home, Julia insists on finding the owner of the property, despite Samuel's...

The man at Charles Blakey's door has a proposition almost too strange for words. The stranger offers him $50,000 in cash to spend the summer in Charles's basement, and Charles cannot even begin to guess why. The beautiful house has been in the Blakey family for generations, but Charles has just lost his job and is behind on his mortgage payments. The money would be welcome. But Charles Blakey is black and Anniston Bennet is white, and it is clear...

Though many retirees love their homes, the maintenance costs are in a tug-of-war with the retirement assets. Can they keep their homes and their lifestyle? Might changes in their physical ability, the neighborhood and their support network lead to isolation and depression? What steps should they take to stay home and be vibrant? Would moving to one of the many other housing options enhance their lives financially, physically and socially? Those in...

In April, when blackthorn blossom clothes the hedgerows like a wedding veil, there sometimes comes a spell of frost or snow so severe that it seems as if spring and summer will never return. This is what country people call a blackthorn winter. For Claudia Barron, the blackthorn winter of that particular April is like a metaphor for her whole life: for the end of glamour, financial security and marriage. Her rich and powerful husband has been sent...