Raised in a wealthy family with ties to the ruler of Galilee, Ana is rebellious and ambitious, with a brilliant mind and a daring spirit. She is expected to marry an older widower, but an encounter with 18-year-old Jesus changes everything. Their marriage evolves with love and conflict, humor and pathos in Nazareth, where Ana makes a home with Jesus, his brothers, and their mother, Mary. Ana's pent-up longings intensify amid the turbulent resistance to Rome's occupation of Israel, partially led by her brother, Judas. She is sustained by her fearless aunt Yaltha, who harbors a compelling secret. When Ana commits a brazen act that puts her in peril, she flees to Alexandria, where startling revelations and greater dangers unfold, and she finds refuge in unexpected surroundings.

Hetty “Handful” Grimke, an urban slave, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household. On her 11th birthday, Sarah Grimke is given ownership of Handful. We follow their remarkable journeys over the next 35 years, as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each other’s destinies, and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love.

Set in South Carolina in 1964, THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES is the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the town's fiercest racists, Lily decides they should both escape to Tiburon, South Carolina --- a town that holds the secret to her mother's past.