Contemporary Family Life

Who you want people to be makes you blind to who they really are. It’s been a year since Billie Flanagan — a Berkeley mom with an enviable life — went on a solo hike in Desolation Wilderness and vanished from the trail. Her body was never found, just a shattered cellphone and a solitary hiking boot. Her husband and teenage daughter have been coping with Billie’s death the best they can: Jonathan drinks as he works on a loving memoir about his marriage; Olive grows remote, from both her father and her friends at the all-girls school she attends.

Une fois n'est pas coutume : la vérité sort de la bouche des parents ! " Ils vécurent heureux et eurent beaucoup d'enfants... " Les contes ne racontent pas la suite. Et pour cause. Être parent n'est pas un chemin bordé de roses ! Qui n'a jamais eu " mal à ses enfants " ? D'où les petites crises de daronnalgie, ces douleurs spécifiques à la parentalité : air pompé, sang d'encre et cheveux blancs, porte-monnaie troué, oubli de soi chronique.

On Big Sawyer island, life is as steady as the routine of the lobstermen who leave with the tide each morning and return with their haul each night. But for 40-year-old New Yorker Julia Bechtel, life and what’s important in it are about to be forever altered when she survives a terrible boat accident en route to the island. Now, in the company of her aunt and daughter, Julia finds herself feeling strangely connected to the tragedy’s other survivors - Noah, a divorced lobsterman, and Kim, a young woman rendered mute since her rescue - and newly outraged at the state of her marriage....

Jerome “Sugar” Barnes learned the art of baking in his grandma’s bakery, also called Sugar, on historic Perdita Street in San Francisco. He supplies baked goods to the Lost and Found Bookshop across the street. When the restaurant that shares his commercial kitchen loses its longtime tenant, a newcomer moves in: Margot Salton, a barbecue master from Texas.

Workaholic, career-obsessed Francesca is fiercely independent and successful in all areas of life except one: family. She struggles to make time for her relationship with her teenage daughter, Allegra, and the two have become practically strangers to each other. When Allegra hangs out with a new crowd and is arrested for drug possession, Francesca gives in to her mother's wish that they take one epic summer vacation to trace their family roots in Italy. What she never expected was to be faced with the choice of a lifetime....

April 5, 2019: In a cozy brownstone in Brooklyn, the veneer of domestic bliss is beginning to crack. Dan and Isabel, husband and wife, are slowly drifting apart—and both, it seems, are a little bit in love with Isabel’s younger brother, Robbie. Robbie, wayward soul of the family, who still lives in the attic loft; Robbie, who, trying to get over his most recent boyfriend, is living vicariously through a glamorous avatar online; Robbie, who now has to move out of the house—and whose departure threatens to break the family apart.

When she’s modeling, Annabel Greene is the picture of perfection - the girl who has everything. But her real life is far from perfect. Her best friend, Sophie, and she are no longer speaking; her older sister’s eating disorder is affecting everything at home. Then she meets Owen. He’s intense, music-obsessed, and dedicated to always telling the truth. And most of all, he’s determined to make Annabel happy....

Lucy Houston and Mickey Chandler probably shouldn't have fallen in love, let alone gotten married. They're both plagued with faulty genes - he has bipolar disorder and she has a ravaging family history of breast cancer. But when their paths cross on the night of Lucy's 21st birthday, sparks fly, and there's no denying their chemistry. Cautious every step of the way, they are determined to make their relationship work-and they put it all in writing. Mickey promises to take his medication. Lucy promises not to blame him for what is beyond his control. He promises honesty.

Max Skinner is a man at the heart of London's financial universe until his employers embark on a little asset-stripping of their own. Himself. Amid the grey London drizzle, there is one potential ray of sunshine: Max's Uncle Harry has left him his estate in his will, an eighteenth-century chateau and vineyard an hour's drive from Avignon.

A delicious, sharp novel about a woman who jets off to France after her perfect marriage collapses, putting the broken pieces of herself back together while rediscovering her own joie de vivre - a lust for life, art, and steamy sex.

Since moving to Cedar Cove, Jo Marie Rose has truly started to feel at home, and her neighbors have become her closest friends. Now it's springtime, and Jo Marie is eager to finish the most recent addition to her inn. In memory of her late husband, Paul, she has designed a beautiful rose garden for the property and enlisted handyman Mark Taylor to help realize it. She and Mark don't always see eye-to-eye - and at times he seems far removed - yet deep down, Jo Marie finds great comfort in his company.

As the snowstorm of the century rages toward Newfoundland, twenty-one-year-old Xavier is beaten and stabbed in a vicious attack. His mother, Jules, must fight her way through the shuttered streets of St John’s to reach the hospital where Xavier lies unconscious. When a video of the attack surfaces, Jules struggles to make sense of what she sees in the footage—and of what she can’t quite make out. While Xavier’s story unfolds, so, too, do the stories that brought him there.

The charming vacation house on the coast of Maine was meant to be a heavenly retreat for Danica Lindsay and her husband Blake, a place where they could mend the wounds of a strained and tired marriage. Instead, she finds herself mostly there alone while Blake's political star is rapidly rising back in Boston. Were it not for the companionship of her new neighbor, gentle and caring Michael Buchanan, Danica would surely be overcome by loneliness and despair.

Laurie is an artist, a collector of experiences. She travels the world with a worn beige duffel bag. “Dr. Liz,” Laurie’s mother, is an elegant perfectionist who travels the world with a matched set of suitcases. When Laurie surprises her mother with a dream vacation, it brings an unexpected sparkle to her eyes.

Perfect for fans of Adam Silvera and Becky Albertalli, Mason Deaver's groundbreaking debut will rip your heart out before showing you how to heal from tragedy and celebrate life in the process. When Ben De Backer comes out to their parents as nonbinary, they're thrown out of their house and forced to move in with their estranged older sister, Hannah, and her husband, Thomas, whom Ben has never even met. Struggling with an anxiety disorder, they come out only to Hannah, Thomas, and their therapist and try to keep a low profile in a new school.

A "heartbreaking, heartwarming" (Heidi McLaughlin, New York Times best-selling author) love story that asks the question: What do you do when your soul mate marries your best friend? If you're Kate Evans, you keep your friend Rachel, bond with her kids, and bury your feelings for her husband. The fact that Shane's in the military and away for long periods helps - but when tragedy strikes, everything changes. After Rachel, pregnant with her fourth child, dies in a car accident and the baby miraculously survives, Kate upends her entire life to share parenting duties.

Your best friend deserves the truth. But it will ruin her life. What would you do? It’s been over twenty years since four very different teenage girls sat on that beach at Goran Haven, and swore to be best friends forever. Their lives went different ways after Emily left. But each remembered that promise. And none truly found friendship like it again. Now, Emily’s back, with a secret she can’t face. She tries to hide away, take time to heal and make some difficult choices, but she runs into one of her old friends, and soon the four are reunited.

The Best of Me: Booktrack Edition adds an immersive musical soundtrack to your audiobook listening experience! Get swept up in a timeless story of lost dreams and redemption, in which former high school sweethearts get a second chance at first love - from the number one New York Times best-selling author of The Notebook.

Two years have done little to ease veterinarian Audra Hughes' grief over her husband's untimely death. Eager for a fresh start, Audra plans to leave Portland for a new job in Philadelphia. Her seven-year-old son, Jack, seems apprehensive about flying - but it's just the beginning of an anxiety that grows to consume him. As Jack's fears continue to surface in recurring and violent nightmares, Audra hardly recognizes the introverted boy he has become.

Pay It Forward, is the moving story of Trevor McKinney, a 12-year-old boy who accepts his social studies teacher’s challenge to come up with a plan to change the world. Trevor’s idea is simple: Do a good deed for three people and ask them to "pay it forward" to three others who need help. He envisions a vast movement of kindness and goodwill spreading beyond his small California town and across the world.