"Sonya used to perform on stage. She used to attend glamorous parties, date handsome men, ride in fast cars. But somewhere along the way, the stage lights Sonya lived for dimmed for good. And then, in their absence, came darkness--blackouts, empty cupboards, hazy nights she can't remember. Haunted by her failed career and unresolved childhood trauma, Sonya has fallen deep into an alcoholic abyss. What keeps Sonya from losing herself completely is...

Twelve stories with surprising conclusions

Ignatius J. Reilly of New Orleans, --selfish, domineering, deluded, tragic and larger than life-- is a noble crusader against a world of dunces. He is a modern-day Quixote beset by giants of the modern age. In magnificent revolt against the twentieth century, Ignatius propels his monstrous bulk among the flesh posts of the fallen city, documenting life on his Big Chief tablets as he goes, until his maroon-haired mother decrees that Ignatius must work....

"Erika Cass has a perfect family and a perfect life. Until, one quiet evening, two detectives show up at her front door. "Mrs. Cass, we were hoping your son could answer a few questions about the girl who disappeared last night..." A high school girl has vanished from Erika's quiet suburban neighborhood. The police suspect the worst--murder. And Erika's teenage son, Liam, was the last person to see the girl alive. Erika has always sensed something...

Held captive by her employers — and by her own demons — on a mysterious farm, a widow struggles to reunite with her young son in this uniquely American story of freedom, perseverance, and survival.
Darlene, once an exemplary wife and a loving mother to her young son, Eddie, finds herself devastated by the unforeseen death of her husband. Unable to cope with her grief, she turns to drugs, and quickly forms an addiction. One day she disappears...

A single mother learns that her chronically ill son can communicate with a special dog, and the lessons this dog teaches can shape the future and transform their lives.

"Valerie has been forgetting things. Her daughter worries about her being on her own in her big Victorian house--one rumored to be haunted after a tragedy decades earlier--and truth be told, she is a little lonely. With few options, she asks her adult son to move home, but it's not quite the reunion she hoped for. Hudson is taciturn, moody and frequently gone. The neighbors already hold a grudge against Hudson, and they aren't happy about his return....

After her 12-year-old son falls into a coma after being hit by a truck, single mom Thelma copes with the devastation by completing items on his bucket list in the hope it will bring him back to her.

About a Boy meets Parenthood in this smart, big-hearted love story about a family for whom everything changed one night, a decade ago, and the young boy who unites them all. Ten-year-old Zac Hutchinson collects facts: octopuses have three hearts, Usain Bolt is the fastest man on earth . But no one will tell him the one thing he wants to know most: who his father is and where he went. When Zac's mother, Juliet, inadvertently admits that his dad is...

Twenty-one-year-old activist Reed, determined to devote himself to the Black Lives Matter movement, is challenged by his mother, once the leader of a Korean-Black coalition, to rethink his outrage, and along with it, what it means to be an organizer, a student, an ally, an American, and a son