"Christmas should be celebrated with family, but for Vera Swanson, that's not an option this year. Widowed and recently relocated, she is lonely in her condo-for-one--until little Fiona Albright knocks on her door needing help. With her mother seriously ill and her father out of town Fiona enlists Vera's aid, and when she finds out her new neighbor is a quilter, she has special request--a Christmas quilt for Mama. Vera will have to get a ragtag group...

The characters' lives are linked to each other by acts of generosity or cruelty. A daughter in early 20th century Chicago; a hobo during the Great Depression; an office girl in 1950s Manhattan; the young man reveling in 1960s San Francisco, then later tends to dying friends as the AIDS pandemic hits; as the new century opens, a man who has lost his way finds a measure of peace in a photograph he discovers in an old box-an image of pure and simple...

When the aroma of Omu's homemade stew fills the air, her neighbors arrive, one by one, for a taste until all is gone except for her generous spirit.

Harold is a very special bear who always wears a woolly hat, so when a crow steals the hat from him, he tries to win it back.

When a generous quiltmaker finally agrees to make a quilt for a greedy king but only under certain conditions, she causes him to undergo a change of heart.

Because she desperately wants to have her picture taken, ten-year-old Amy finds a way to accumulate the necessary five dollars but then decides to spend it in another way.

The four Alden children, aged six to fourteen, uncover a mystery while volunteering at a food pantry for the needy.

Relating the cycle of requests a mouse is likely to make after you give him a cookie takes the reader through a young boy's day. Includes "The Great Cookie Chase" board game on back lining papers.

Illustrations and simple, rhyming text introduce kids work together to give back to their community.

Mr. Whiskers faces a gloomy Christmas until Maggie and her grandmother help him straighten out his house and find the deed to the nearby pond.