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.

Kasey Dawson thought she'd never get over the death of her husband. Nash, with his strong hands and infinite patience, is stirring something she hasn't felt in a long time. Kasey knows the sexy cowboy isn't telling her everything about this past, though. And she refuses to risk heartbreak all over again. But her kids have a plan of their own: Nothing will keep them from having a real family again - even if it takes a little help from Santa himself.

Twelve Years. It’s been twelve years since the last time I heard from the Aldridge family. That one voicemail changes everything - I need the money the late William offers. In exchange, I have to live eighteen months in Baker’s Creek. I’ve survived cancer, the jungle, and the plague. This should be easy compared to all that, right? Or so I think until...I see him.

Georgie McCool knows her marriage is in trouble. That it's been in trouble for a long time. She still loves her husband, Neal, and Neal still loves her, deeply-but that almost seems beside the point now. Maybe that was always beside the point. Two days before they're supposed to visit Neal's family in Omaha for Christmas, Georgie tells Neal that she can't go. She's a TV writer, and something's come up on her show; she has to stay in Los Angeles.

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.

Some kids inherit a family business; Jo Ward inherited a badge. Once voted Most Likely to End Up in Jail, the town wild child has become sheriff - hell-bent on uncovering the truth about her father’s mysterious death. Life is quiet in rustic River Bend, but Jo longs for something beyond her small hometown and the painful memories it holds. All that keeps her sane is the support of her best friends, Melanie and Zoe.

Cora hasn’t spoken to her best friend, Quinn, in a year. Despite living next door to each other, they exist in separate worlds of grief. Cora is still grappling with the death of her beloved sister in a school shooting, and Quinn is carrying the guilt of what her brother did. On the day of Cora’s 12th birthday, Quinn leaves a box on her doorstep with a note. She has decided that the only way to fix things is to go back in time to the moment before her brother changed all their lives forever - and stop him.

In the peaceful Wiltshire valley of Essington St Mary, architect Corin Drayton stumbles upon a ghastly new building development that is set to destroy the tranquil atmosphere and Edwardian features of this quiet neighbourhood. He is horrified. For only recently has he inherited - and spent his life savings on renovating - a home for himself and his newly pregnant wife Lucia in Larch Tree Lane. From the cottages and farms to the local shop, pub and old manor house, residents' lives are set to intertwine, relationships bloom, and both romance and heartache lie ahead.

Haunted by the past, Henrietta throws herself into a new job transcribing other people’s life stories, vowing to stick to the facts and keep emotions at arm’s length. But when she meets the eccentric and terminally ill Annie, she finds herself inextricably drawn in. And when Annie reveals that her sister drowned in unexplained circumstances in 1974, Henrietta’s methodical mind can’t help following the story’s loose ends…

Ever since Ruby was tiny, she has been unique. Her smiles are magically rare, and she likes things done in a very particular way - her blocks are always color-coded, and her toy animals stand in regimented lines. She’s also the daughter of Sara’s dreams - even on days when being a mother to a three-year-old is exhausting. Not everyone understands Ruby like Sara does though. Not Sara’s husband Mike, and certainly not her disapproving mother-in-law, Barbara. So when circumstances force their family to move in with Barbara, Sara knows it’s going to make motherhood even harder.

Brilliant, idealistic Esme Garland moves to Manhattan armed with a pres­tigious scholarship at Columbia University. When Mitchell van Leuven - a New Yorker with the bluest of blue New York blood - captures her heart with his stunning good looks and a penchant for all things erotic, life seems truly glorious...until a thin blue line signals a wrinkle in Esme’s tidy plan. Before she has a chance to tell Mitchell about her pregnancy, he suddenly declares their sex life is as exciting as a cup of tea, and ends it all. When Mitchell recants his criticism, his passion and promises are hard to resist.

For Meridian Wallace - and many other smart, driven women of the 1940s - being ambitious meant being an outlier. Ever since she was a young girl, Meridian had been obsessed with birds, and she was determined to get her PhD, become an ornithologist, and make her mother's sacrifices to send her to college pay off. But she didn't expect to fall in love with her brilliant physics professor, Alden Whetstone. When he's recruited to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to take part in a mysterious wartime project, she reluctantly defers her own plans and joins him.

After her father left, Rachel had to dedicate her life to managing her household: her two younger sisters, her disabled mother, and her three-year-old nephew. When Rachel's not struggling to look after all of them, she makes her living cleaning the houses of wealthy families - including the Wests, where a surprise now awaits her....

The acclaimed author of Firefly Beach and other New York Times best sellers, Luanne Rice, explores the powerful bonds that connect old friends and the joy of life's unexpected second chances. Now, returning once more to the Connecticut beach town at the center of many of her most beloved novels, she touches our hearts with a spellbinding story of a love lost - and saved - by the power of what was always meant to be.…

Scandal hit party girl Lucy Conway needs to leave London fast, so she packs her bags and escapes to the sleepy village of Cranbridge to take care of her beloved Uncle Frank. But the country village isn’t quite as idyllic as she remembers. To make matters worse, her uncle’s pride and joy, The Cranbridge Times, is close to going out of business. Editor-at-large Tom Addison is having a crisis of confidence and needs help if the newspaper is going to survive. With time on her hands, can Lucy work some magic and together save the family newspaper?

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 the eve of what was supposed to be a triumphant "Cancerversary" with her husband Jack to celebrate three years of being cancer-free, Daisy suffers a devastating blow: Her doctor tells her that the cancer is back, but this time it's an aggressive stage four diagnosis. She may have as few as four months left to live. Death is a frightening prospect - but not because she's afraid for herself.

This city girl's about to get a dose of cowboy charm. Emily Baker doesn't rough it - anymore. Born and raised on a farm, she's worked hard to distance herself from that life, thank you very much. But when the seniors at the nursing home where she works beg for a ranch retreat, she caves and heads up to the Longhorn Canyon spread. With one glance at the sexy cowboy who opens the door, she's suddenly thinking a week with him might not be so bad after all.

When they were growing up, Dana, Harper, and Tawny thought of themselves as “sometimes sisters". They connected only during the summer month they’d all spend at their grandmother’s rustic lakeside resort in north Texas. But secrets started building, and ten years have passed since they’ve all been together - in fact, they’ve rarely spoken, and it broke their grandmother’s heart.

Hunter's Moon is the ultimate 'forever' house. Nestled by a river in the Peasebrook valley, it has been the Willoughbys' home for over 50 years, and now estate agent Belinda Baxter is determined to find the perfect family to live there. But the sale of the house unlocks decades of family secrets - and brings Belinda face to face with her own troubled past.