Contemporary Family Life

Rachel Blum and Andy Landis are eight years old when they meet late one night in an ER waiting room. Born with a congenital heart defect, Rachel is a veteran of hospitals, and she's intrigued by the boy who shows up all alone with a broken arm. He tells her his name. She tells him a story. After Andy's taken back to the emergency room and Rachel's sent back to her bed, they think they'll never see each other again.

An irresistible novel about women, men, and the dogs that own them. Thirty-nine year old Rachel is having a really bad year. After losing her job and breaking up with her boyfriend, Rachel has inherited her late aunt's house, her beloved border collie, and a crowded rescue kennel, despite the fact that she knows almost nothing about dogs. Still, considering her limited options, she gamely takes up the challenge of running the kennel. And as Rachel starts finding new homes for the abandoned strays, it turns out that it might not just be the dogs that need rescuing.

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.

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.

From the author of A Little Hope—a Read with Jenna Bonus Pick—comes an enormously powerful and life-affirming novel about three individuals facing challenges and grappling with loss in his or her own way.

In the oldest part of Stockholm, Bell Everhurst is working as a nanny for an affluent family. Hanna and Max Von Greyerz are parents to seven year-old Linus and five-year old twins Ellinor and Tilde, and Bell has been with the family for more than two years. One early spring morning, as she’s rushing out to take the children to school, she answers the phone - and everything changes. A woman from a clinic she’s never heard of asks her to pass on the message that Hanna’s husband is awake.

When Susannah Nelson turned 18, her parents sent her to school abroad. She said goodbye to her boyfriend, Jake - and never saw him again. She never saw her brother again, either; Doug died in a car accident while she was away. Now, at 50, she finds herself regretting the paths not taken. Returning to her home town, she finds that some paths are dead ends. But some gardens remain beautiful.

From best-selling author Maggie Stiefvater, a gripping tale of darkness, miracles, and family. At the heart of Bicho Raro, Colorado you will find the Soria family, who all have the ability to perform unusual miracles.

Waitress and single mom Jessica “Jessie” Mann is practical to a fault. Even if she had time to date, which she doesn’t, she’d be determined to provide her son with a more secure upbringing than the one she had - and that would mean a husband with big bucks. When Jack Morrison - a sexy-as-sin, seemingly broke customer with a cowboy hat and a seductive grin - tries to flirt with her, she shoots him down.

It’s summer in the city and passions are soaring along with the temperature - for everyone but Mitchell Fisher, who hates all things romance. He relishes his job cutting off the padlocks that couples fasten to the famous “love story” bridge. Only his young daughter, Poppy, knows that behind his prickly veneer, Mitchell still grieves the loss of her mother.

The new novel from best-selling author Paige Toon, author of The Last Piece of My Heart and One Perfect Summer. What happens if you meet the right person at the wrong time? Nell and Van meet as children when their parents fall in love, but soon they are forced worlds apart. Five years later, they find each other. Their bond is rekindled, and new feelings take hold, but once again they have to separate. For the next two decades, fate brings Nell and Van together every five years, as life and circumstance continue to divide them. Will they ever find true happiness?

Thinking no one is reading, a blogger who calls herself LBH writes about her most personal feelings, especially her overwhelming loneliness. She goes from day to day showing a brave face to the world while inside she longs to know how it would feel if one person cared about her. Alex Bartlett cares. He's reading her posts in Daytona Beach, Florida. Nursing his own broken heart and trust issues, he finds himself falling for this sensitive, vulnerable woman whose feelings mirror his own.

Outside the gates of a California prison, Peter Morgan is released after four long years and vows to redeem himself in the eyes of the young daughters he left behind. Simultaneously, Carl Waters, a convicted murderer, is set on the path of freedom with him. That night, three hundred miles south in San Francisco, police detective Ted Lee comes home to a silent house; for twenty-nine years, he has been living for his job, and slowly falling out of love with his wife.

"Il me reste quelques rêves à réaliser et le moment est venu de m'y atteler. Je vous aime très fort. À très bientôt ! Maman." Léna n'en revient pas. Comment sa mère, qui l'a convoquée pour passer Noël dans la maison de son enfance, a-t-elle pu disparaître en ne lui laissant que ce message sibyllin ? La voilà donc coincée dans le petit village de Vallenot au cœur des Alpes de Haute-Provence et condamnée à passer la fête qu'elle hait plus que tout, entourée de sa famille pour le moins... haute en couleur ! Mais les fêtes de famille ont le don de faire rejaillir les secrets enfouis.

Beautiful, strong, and commanding, Damien Stark fills a void in me that no other man can touch. His fierce cravings push me beyond the brink of bliss—and unleash a wild passion that utterly consumes us both.

After losing her husband, writer Abigail Carson has all but given up on life. Having spent the last year cocooned in her Manhattan apartment, Abigail is suddenly forced to find a new home where she can stretch her dwindling savings. Intent on isolation, she moves to a tiny village in Nova Scotia where she'll have no one to interrupt her solitude. Little does Abigail realize that small-town life offers far less privacy than the big city. With neighbors knocking on the door bearing homemade treats and invitations, Abby soon finds herself immersed in the lives of the people of South Haven.

Eric Jerome Dickey strides boldly over the minefield that is modern marriage. The central couple's biggest challenge is timing: He works days; she works nights. Instead of growing together, they're rapidly drifting apart, coexisting on stolen phone calls from work, punctuated by occasional bedroom encounters that leave them both feeling even emptier and more alone. When she finds out about his affair - and starts her own - the delicate fabric of their marriage is torn irrevocably asunder. Or is it?

Brenden McCarthy feels like he’s lost everything. His fiancée. His independence. And his passion for life. All due to one mountain-climbing misstep that cost him his sight. But he’s about to gain the last thing he ever expected: a big-hearted black Labrador named Nelson who’s given one last shot at being a Seeing Eye dog. Both are beyond hope and resigned to live alone. And both are about to experience a bond of friendship that develops when they least expect it.

As the long, mysterious life of a family matriarch begins to wind down, will she take her secrets with her? Or will her past adventures lead to new ones for the next generation? From a bustling Australian city to the beauty and promise of Granada and a captivating culture, one young woman may dare to find out....

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.