Books like The garden of small beginnings by Abbi Waxman

Twenty‑five year‑old Belly Conklin returns to the family summer home on the coast, where a cancer diagnosis forces her to confront love, loss, and growing up amid the familiar rhythm of beach life.

Don Tillman, a genetics professor with Asperger’s, designs a scientific survey to find a wife, only to meet Rosie Jarman, a drinker and late arriver who challenges his controlled worldview and leads him to discover that love can’t be measured.

After a breakup, Tiffy Moore takes a cheap flatshare with night‑shift worker Leon, and they begin exchanging notes about garbage, leftovers, and toilet seats—sparking a friendship and perhaps something more.

Alicia Russell, mother of two, finds herself unexpectedly drawn to Pierce Reynolds, a rescuer who appears during a stormy camping trip in Los Angeles, challenging her longing for love after her husband’s death.

Monsieur Perdu, a literary apothecary aboard a Seine barge, prescribes novels to heal broken hearts. When his own love remains a mystery, he journeys south of France to find closure and prove stories can mend souls.

Framboise Simon returns to a Loire‑bank village where her past as the daughter of a wartime figure remains concealed. A scrapbook of recipes and memories she inherited from her mother holds the key to a tragedy that scarred her childhood.

Corporate CEO Jason Wilding returns to his Kentucky hometown for Christmas and is introduced to his brother David’s widowed, artistic sister Amy and her child. Amid family ties and rural charms, Jason learns that love and family may require the same strategic planning he applies to business.

Libby’s new job on her Aunt Jean’s farm in the Texas Hill Country is more mysterious than she ever imagined.

Alice Glendenning, a widow, is hit by a car while trying to find her children, who have been reported missing.

A young gardener, struggling to grow her plants, makes a wish for a little help and learns that friendship, persistence, and nature can transform her garden and her life.

"Aaliya Sohbi lives alone in her Beirut apartment, surrounded by stockpiles of books. Godless, fatherless, childless, and divorced, Aaliya is her family's 'unnecessary appendage.' Every year, she translates a new favorite book into Arabic, then stows it away. The thirty-seven books that Aaliya has translated over her lifetime have never been read-- by anyone. After overhearing her neighbors, 'the three witches,' discussing her too-white hair, Aaliya accidentally dyes her hair too blue. In this breathtaking portrait of a reclusive woman's late-life crisis, readers follow Aaliya's digressive mind as it ricochets across visions of past and present Beirut. Colorful musings on literature, philosophy, and art are invaded by memories of the Lebanese Civil War and Aaliya's own volatile past. As she tries to overcome her aging body and spontaneous emotional upwellings, Aaliya is faced with an unthinkable disaster that threatens to shatter the little life she has left" --

A nurse and former marine meet the woman he loves and try to rebuild their lives after a heart-breaking event that changes everything in their lives, including their children and the men they love, in a small town in the Virgin River valley in California. The stories are told as a series of connected Christmas stories that intertwine and build on each other, creating a beautifully crafted collection of love stories, adventure, and Christmas cheer.