Contemporary Family Life

Priya, Jamini and Deepa, Dr Nabakumar Ganguly's daughters, live in Ranipur, Bengal, safe from the rising turbulence in the country. When their father is killed on Direct Action Day, their world turns upside-down.

When Olivia Rawlings - pastry chef extraordinaire for an exclusive Boston dinner club - sets not just her flambéed dessert but the entire building alight, she escapes to the most comforting place she can think of - the idyllic town of Guthrie, Vermont, home of Bag Balm, the country's longest-running contra dance, and her best friend, Hannah. But the getaway turns into something more lasting when Margaret Hurley, the cantankerous, sweater-set-wearing owner of the Sugar Maple Inn, offers Livvy a job.

Millanie McAllen is always logical. But after returning to her childhood home, she learns that some things are beyond explanation - like her undeniable passion for Drew Cunningham.... After finding success as a singer on the road, Beau Yates returns to Harmony to make peace with his dying father - only to find the woman he's been dreaming of for years. But the secrets they discover might be too much for him to bear....

In a sleepy seaside town in Maine, recently widowed Eveleth "Evvie" Drake rarely leaves her large, painfully empty house nearly a year after her husband’s death in a car crash. Everyone in town, even her best friend, Andy, thinks grief keeps her locked inside, and Evvie doesn’t correct them. Meanwhile, in New York City, Dean Tenney, former Major League pitcher and Andy’s childhood best friend, is wrestling with what miserable athletes living out their worst nightmares call the "yips": he can’t throw straight anymore, and, even worse, he can’t figure out why.

When a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter Julia has any idea where he might be - until they find a love letter he wrote many years ago to a Burmese woman they have never heard of. Intent on solving the mystery and coming to terms with her father’s past, Julia decides to travel to the village where the woman lived. There she uncovers a tale of unimaginable hardship, resilience, and passion that will reaffirm the listener’s belief in the power of love to move mountains.

Jennifer’s life isn’t going as she planned. Fired from her job and on the brink of divorce, her only salvation lies at the bottom of a wine bottle. When her mother insists she get away from everything, she reluctantly agrees to explore her Italian roots in Tuscany. Staying in her family’s centuries-old cottage, she becomes embroiled in a mysterious tragedy involving her great-grandmother.

This is the final volume of The Cazalet Chronicle, the quartet of novels chronicling the lives of a British family before, during, and after the Second World War. VE Day has been celebrated, but the war with Japan goes on. Polly, Clary, and Louise are grown up, discovering loneliness, loss, and passion. Rupert, missing in France for so long, returns to find Zoe curiously withdrawn; Edward will be forced to choose between wife and mistress; Hugh must finally accept Sybil's death.

In the snowy Highlands of Scotland, Suzanne McBride is dreaming of the perfect cozy Christmas. Her three adopted daughters are coming home for the holidays and she can’t wait to see them. But tensions are running high… Workaholic Hannah knows she can’t avoid spending the holidays with her family two years in a row. But it’s the secret she’s hiding that has her panicked. Stay-at-home mom Beth is having a personal crisis. Posy isn’t sure she’s living her best life, but with her parents depending on her, making a change seems risky. But not as risky as falling for Luke…

Some places are too good to be true. Under a pink moon, there is a perfect little town not found on any map. In that town, there are quiet streets lined with pretty houses, houses that conceal the strangest things. After a couple years of hard traveling, ex-cop Mona Bright inherits her long-dead mother's home in Wink, New Mexico. And the closer Mona gets to her mother's past, the more she understands that the people of Wink are very, very different....

Young Pip Tyler doesn't know who she is. She knows that her real name is Purity, that she's saddled with $130,000 in student debt, that she's squatting with anarchists in Oakland, and that her relationship with her mother - her only family - is hazardous. But she doesn't have a clue who her father is, why her mother chose to live as a recluse with an invented name, or how she'll ever have a normal life.

Focused and unassuming fifth generation cider-maker Sanna Lund has one desire: to live a simple, quiet life on her family's apple orchard in Door County, Wisconsin. Although her business is struggling, Sanna remains fiercely devoted to the orchard, despite her brother's attempts to convince their aging father to sell the land. Single dad Isaac Banks has spent years trying to shield his son, Sebastian, from his troubled mother.

In downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Lou works tirelessly to build her beloved yet struggling French restaurant, Luella's, into a success. She cheerfully balances her demanding business and even more demanding fiancé...until the morning she discovers him in the buff - with an intern.

Lisa Edwards, top London magazine editor, has been fantasizing about promotion to New York. Instead, she's asked to launch a new women's magazine in Dublin. She thinks nothing could be worse - until she meets her new staff. They're friendly, helpful, and enthusiastic - in other words, they wouldn't last two minutes in London!

The Cook, the Crook, and the Real Estate Tycoon, by prize-winning Chinese novelist Liu Zhenyun, is a novel of Beijing that paints a microcosm of contemporary China, dealing with classes at the two extremes: the super rich and the migrant workers who make them rich through deceit and corruption. The protagonist, Liu Yuejin, is a worksite cook and small-time thief whose bag is stolen. In searching for it, he stumbles upon another bag, which contains a flash disk that chronicles high-level corruption.

Douglas Petersen may be mild-mannered, but behind his reserve lies a sense of humor that seduces beautiful Connie into a second date...and eventually into marriage. Now, almost three decades later, they live more or less happily in the London suburbs with their moody seventeen year-old son, Albie. Then Connie tells him she thinks she wants a divorce. The timing couldn’t be worse. Connie has planned a month-long tour of European capitals, a chance to experience the world’s greatest works of art as a family, and she can’t bring herself to cancel. And maybe going ahead is for the best anyway? Douglas is privately convinced that this landmark trip will rekindle the romance in the marriage, and might even help him to bond with Albie. Narrated from Douglas’s endearingly honest, slyly witty, and at times achingly optimistic point of view, Us is the story of a man trying to rescue his relationship with the woman he loves, and learning how to get closer to a son who’s always felt like a stranger.

Glory Boughton, aged 38, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Soon her brother, Jack - the prodigal son of the family, gone for 20 years - comes home too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with tormenting trouble and pain.

In London, the snow is falling and Christmas is just around the corner - but Allegra Fisher barely has time to notice. She's pitching for the biggest deal of her career and can't afford to fail. And when she meets attractive stranger Sam Kemp on the plane to the meeting, she can't afford to lose her focus either. She learned to shut off her emotions long ago and only her sister and best friend Isobel knows why. But when Allegra finds herself up against Sam for the bid, their passion quickly turns sour.

Twenty-one-year-old Jenilee Lane's dreams are as narrow as the sky is wide. She doesn't imagine any good could come out of the tornado that has ripped across the Missouri farmland where she's made her home. But some inner spark compels her to take action. To rescue her elderly neighbor, Eudora Gibson, from the cellar in which she's been trapped. To make her way to the nearby town of Poetry, where the townspeople have begun to gather in the only building left standing. To collect from the devastated landscape fragments of life that lie strewn about in the tornado's wake.

Marguerite Beale, former chef of culinary hot spot Les Parapluies, has been out of the public eye for over a decade. This all changes with a phone call from Marguerite's goddaughter, Renata Knox. Marguerite has not seen Renata since the death of Renata's mother, Candace Harris Knox, fourteen years earlier. And now that Renata is on Nantucket visiting the family of her new fiancé, she takes the opportunity, against her father's wishes, to contact Marguerite in hopes of learning the story of her mother's life—and death.

In I Almost Forgot About You, Dr. Georgia Young's wonderful life--great friends, family, and successful career--aren't enough to keep her from feeling stuck and restless. When she decides to make some major changes in her life, including quitting her job as an optometrist and moving house, she finds herself on a wild journey that may or may not include a second chance at love. Georgia’s bravery reminds us that it’s never too late to become the person you want to be, and that taking chances, with your life and your heart, are always worthwhile.