NNELS Upgrade

The strkingly beautiful and daringly bold Siena McMahon wants to be a movie star like her legendary grandfather. Her bigshot producer father, however, wants her to be a doctor. But Siena is her own woman, and she's determined to live life on her own terms. So she strikes a chord for independence, finding success as a model, exploring her decadent taste for the opposite sex, and striving to become the biggest starlet in tinseltown.

Nina and her brother Andrew share a strong bond: during childhood, they helped each other survive the cruelty of their physician father. Their mother has not fared so well: she is a drunken byproduct of domestic mythology. Now Nina, a reclusive editor, has sealed herself off from the world since her husband's accidental death, while her brother is busy locating and seducing women he knew in high school.

Claire O'Rourke is a young writer visiting per parents in her small hometown. Her life soon becomes connected to that of the reclusive Sophia Fleming, an older woman who has lived in isolation for many years. When Sophia finds a long-lost journal belonging to a woman nameed Josephine Vanderrook, she reaches out to Claire to share her discovery.

In war-torn Asia and stricken Europe, men and women, still young but veterans of harsh experience, must reinvent their lives and expectations, and learn, from their past, to dream again. Some will fulfill their destinies, others will falter. At the center of the story, a brave and brilliant soldier find that survival and worldly achievement are not enough. His counterpart, a young girl living in occupied Japan and tending her dying brother, falls in love, and in the process discovers herself.

Eight years ao, the three teenaged McKenna sisters, Kate, Ashley, and Caroline, became famous by winning an arduous, around-the-world sailboat race. Driven hard by their ambitious father, the three young women faced months of intense emotional strain and physical hardship and persevered. But the cost of their tremendous victory didn't come cheap.

After discovering that her husband has lost all of their money and left her broke, Bonnie Duke Cullman is abandoning her comfortable life in Atlanta to teach at a community college in rural Alabama. Ruth Elkin just lost her sewing job at the Cherished Lady factory, and now she must attend college classes to get back on track. The two women's lives become intertwined, and together they survive the ups and downs of small town life.

Brennert tells the story of Rachel Kalama, a seven-year-old Hawaiian girl who contracts leprosy and is quarantined on the island of Moloka'i during the 1890s. Separated from her family and forced to grow up in the leper colony of Kalaupapa, Rachel experiences intense isolation. But she remains strong, finding moments of joy, and even love.

When a young Korean girl known as Regret leaves her homeland for a better life in Hawaii, as a "picture bride," she expects to find prosperity and a chance at education. But the rich husband she is promised turns out to be a poor plantation worker with drinking and gambling problems, and the girl now known as Jin is forced to seek her own path. Joining with her fellow picture brides to start a business, Jin must shed her naieveté and overcome prejudice to succeed in this foreign land.

Mr. and Mrs. Cook-Goldman need a nanny for their two children. When they hire Randi, they fail to check her references. The convenient new arrangement soon leads to a string of troubling events.

Presents a horrifying and compelling glimpse into the mind of a psychotic genius.