Contemporary Family Life

Maëva s'envole pour Los Angeles où elle a décroché un job de nounou le temps d'un été. Mais ce n'est pas l'attrait du voyage ou un hypothétique amour pour les enfants qui la motive. Non, Maëva tente un coup de poker qui risque bien de la détruire... ou de la sauver. Abandonnée par son père à l'âge de 11 ans au lendemain des obsèques de sa mère, elle n'a jamais renoncé à retrouver sa trace. Et cette photo accompagnant l'annonce lui révèle la cruelle vérité : son père a reconstruit une famille loin d'elle, mais surtout sans elle.

Sixteen-year-old A. J. Smith, born and raised in backwoods Tennessee, loves nothing more than repairing broken cars with her father and hanging out with her brothers and their friends. Not far away, in the busy city of Nashville, Kate Kelly is always dressed in the latest fashion, wearing clothes from her mother's boutique and jetting around the world with her father. When A. J. starts going to the school Kate attends, they instantly dislike each other....

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.

National best-selling author Lauraine Snelling brings a small mountain town to thrilling life when a natural disaster threatens to destroy lives. US Border Patrol agent Ben James' life is in tatters. A tragic accident stole the love of his life and he never finished grieving. Turning to the bottle for support, he lost sight of what was important. While making his last patrol run before a storm rolls in, Ben's canine partner Bo finds an abandoned baby hidden in the woods. As Ben rushes the child to the only clinic in the area, the storm strikes with unexpected fury.

Seventeen-year-old Maddie is left reeling after the unexpected passing of her beloved father. No one has any idea why he betrayed them all so spectacularly, but that’s exactly what his death feels like: a betrayal. With their world shattered, Maddie’s grieving mother sends her to spend a few months with her grandparents, thinking a change of scenery will do her good. Susan and Frank, Maddie’s grandparents, are heartbroken over the loss of their son, but they welcome Maddie as an addition to their long-empty nest.

The Garretts are everything the Reeds are not: loud, numerous, messy, affectionate. And every day from her balcony perch, 17-year-old Samantha Reed wishes she was one of them...until one summer evening, Jase Garrett climbs her terrace and changes everything. As the two fall fiercely in love, Jase's family makes Samantha one of their own. Then in an instant, the bottom drops out of her world and she is suddenly faced with an impossible decision. Which perfect family will save her? Or is it time she saved herself?

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.

Jason Manning is content with his life as a bachelor, a slob and a sports fan. Then a precocious teen named Carrie Weston decides to play matchmaker, introducing him to her mother. To his relief, Charlotte is as uninterested in marriage as he is. But Jason’s feelings start to change once he gets to know his Bride on the Loose. James Wilkens was almost a Manning groom—because he almost married one of the Manning sisters. With that broken engagement behind him, he spends New Year’s Eve in Las Vegas...where he meets Summer Lawton.

In 1965 Manhattan, patrons flock to Masha’s to savor its brisket bourguignon and impeccable service and to admire its dashing owner and head chef Peter Rashkin, the most eligible bachelor in town. But Peter does not care for the parade of eligible women who come to the restaurant hoping to catch his eye. Running Masha’s consumes him, as does his terrible guilt over surviving the horrors of the Nazi death camp while his wife, Masha - the restaurant’s namesake - and two young daughters perished. Then exquisitely beautiful June Bouquet, an up-and-coming young model, appears at the restaurant, piercing Peter’s guard.

Adrift in the wake of her father's death, a failed marriage, and multiple miscarriages, Libby McKenzie feels truly alone. Though her new life as a wedding photographer provides a semblance of purpose, it's also a distraction from her profound pain. When asked to photograph a wedding at the historic Woodmont estate, Libby meets the owner, Elaine Grant. Hoping to open Woodmont to the public, Elaine has employed young widower Colton Reese to help restore the grounds and asks Libby to photograph the process.

Leigh is the mother of high-achieving, popular high school senior Kara. Their relationship is already strained for reasons Leigh does not fully understand when, in a moment of carelessness, Kara makes a mistake that ends in tragedy, the effects of which not only divide Leigh's family, but polarize the entire community.

In it she reminds him of her love and makes one final request. An impossible request — I want you to marry again. She tells him he shouldn’t spend the years he has left grieving her. And to that end she’s chosen three women she asks him to consider. First on Hannah’s list is her cousin, Winter Adams, a trained chef who owns a café on Seattle’s Blossom Street. The second is Leanne Lancaster, Hannah’s oncology nurse. But the third name is one he’s not familiar with - Macy Roth.

Josie and Frank Moore are happy...at least Josie thinks they are. As parents of two young girls in the Chicago suburbs, their days can be both busy and monotonous, and sometimes Josie wonders how she became a harried fortysomething mother rather than the driven career woman she once was.

Melissa had clung to the thin thread of hope given by the adoption agency that someday her newborn son might want to connect with her. When his eighteenth birthday arrived, she called the agency to simply update her contact information, not expecting a response.

Since opening the Rose Harbor Inn, Jo Marie Rose has grown close to her handyman, Mark Taylor. Jo Marie and Mark are good friends - and are becoming something more - yet he still won't reveal anything about his past. When Mark tells her that he's moving out of town, Jo Marie is baffled. Just when she is starting to open herself up again to love, she feels once more that she is losing the man she cares about. And as she discovers the secret behind Mark's decision to leave, she welcomes two visitors also seeking their own answers.

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.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Russo's skillful use of dialogue perfectly suits the audio medium. A wonderfully fun and perceptive novel in the traditions of Thornton Wilder and Anne Tyler, The Risk Pool is set in Mohawk, New York, where Ned Hall is doing his best to grow up, even though neither of his estranged parents can properly be called an adult.

When Rachel Mowbray left behind her family farm in North Yorkshire at eighteen, she never planned on returning. But when her ex-childhood sweetheart calls and insists she returns due to her father's declining health, she travels north. Every moment home reminds Rachel why she left—her sister Harriet is both hostile and cold, her father barely communicates with anyone, and the house feels stuck in time. Plus, her old neighbor and ex, sheep farmer Ben Mackey, still has the power to make her pulse race…a decidedly unwelcome realization!

One year after her mother’s death, a woman prepares to celebrate her fortieth birthday. Digging through a trunk in the attic, looking for keepsakes for the occasion, she discovers photographs that call into question everything she believed about her life. The truth is a different story—one of a little girl in danger, a lie, and a mother’s love so fierce it led her to do the unimaginable.

When Marina Moore’s life blows up on national television, she seeks refuge at her grandmother’s beach house called the Coral Cottage. Now in her mid-40s with children in college, Marina is in dire need of her grandmother's gutsy advice to a well-lived life. Marina meets an old friend, Ivy Bay, proprietor of the Seabreeze Inn, who encourages her to share her love of food at the local farmer’s market.