loss (psychology)

Former child prodigy Benjamin Ziskind, pushed by his twin sister Sara into attending a singles' cocktail hour at a Jewish art museum, steals a Marc Chagall painting that once hung in his home, and begins investigating the provenance of the work in an effort to learn how it came to the museum, while urging Sara, an artist, to create a forgery to take its place.

After his parents are killed in an auto accident and he also learns of his sister's death in Los Angeles, Smithy Ide, overweight and friendless, embarks upon a transcontinental bicycle ride to claim his sister's body and rediscovers what it means to live.

Two years after the death of her husband, Tessie Lockhart decides that what she and her daughter need is a change, so they move to Gainsville, Florida, where they discover that they aren't the only ones struggling to move forward.

Thirty-six-year-old Sophie Stanton gives up the struggle to be a gracious widow after driving her car through the garage door and succumbs to crying in the produce aisle, eating buckets of ice cream, and showing up for work in her bathrobe, but she starts back on the path to life again after moving to Oregon to live with a friend and becoming involved with a troubled teen, and an alarmingly handsome actor.

Lila Wheeler returns to her childhood home in New Hampshire to investigate the crime of passion involving her older brothers, Aaron and Jack, and Aaron's mysterious girlfriend, Suzanne, that took place there ten years earlier.

When seventh-grader Bette finds an angel coin she puts it in her pocket and forgets it but soon the mysterious and kind Gabby moves into her building and helps her face her major losses, and then the coin connects her with three classmates who all find new ways to believe in themselves.

Although she longs to be an all-American girl, Roxanne, a timid, Israeli-born thirteen-year-old who idolizes Wonder Woman, begins to see things differently when the supremely confident Liat, also from Israel, moves into the cursed house next door and they become friends.

Holly, still struggling with her grief two months after the death of her beloved husband Gerry, begins taking steps to reclaim her life after receiving a packet of letters Gerry wrote before he died--one for each of the next ten months--in which he leaves instructions for her to perform a series of unexpected tasks.