Divorce Family

When eight-year-old Cappy discovers a whale swimming outside of his bedroom window, it's fair to say he's quite surprised. Given how long he's spent in hospital, Cappy has had plenty of time to read a LOT of books on animals, and he's never heard of a whale that can fly. What with his leukaemia, Cappy's used to not being allowed to do things he wants—like eating sweets, playing with dogs, or roaming too far from his protective family—so he's delighted when the amazing whale not only speaks to him, but asks him to join him for a ride in the sky.

It's a story that Ted Grayson has reported time and time again in his job as a network TV anchor: the public downfall of those at the top. He just never imagined that it would happen to him. After his profanity-laced tirade is caught on camera, his reputation and career are destroyed, leaving him without a script for the first time in years.

A wife struggles to make sense of her husband’s sudden disappearance. A mother mourns her teenage son through the music collection he left behind. A woman shepherds her estranged parents through her brother’s wedding and reflects on the year her family collapsed. A young man comes to grips with the joy—and vulnerability—of fatherhood. And, in the masterly opening novella, two teenagers from very different families forge a sustaining friendship, only to discover the disruptive and unsettling power of sex.

Cape Cod summers are supposed to remain reassuringly the same, but everything falls apart when three sisters and their families come together for their annual summer vacation, and they are carrying more secrets than suitcases. Maggie is the oldest sister. She's hurt that her parents' recent divorce has destroyed the family's comfortable summer routines, and her own kids seem to be growing up at high speed. Is it too late to have another baby?

Set amid the deep, wild woods of the Yukon, First Light tells the story of Daniel Albrecht and Kerry Egan, young lovers leaving a work trip in Alaska to plan their wedding back home in Chicago. Not long into their trip, both engines of their plane catch fire and send them careening into a mountainside in the middle of a terrible snowstorm. Kerry is seriously injured in the accident, and it soon becomes clear that search-and-rescue teams aren't going to find the survivors in time to save her.

Seventeen years ago, two pink stripes on a pregnancy test changed Anne Sullivan’s life. She abandoned her artistic ambitions, married her college sweetheart before graduation, and - like the mother she lost in childhood - devoted herself to her family. To say she didn’t see the divorce coming is an understatement. Now, eager to distance herself from her ex and his lover, she moves with her troubled daughter, Katy, to the quaint bayside town of Potomac Point, where she spent her childhood summers.

Nothing’s been the same since Lucas’s older brother died. After the accident, Lucas’s mom disappeared without any warning, and his dad is struggling to cope. Lucas is pretty much alone—except for the other kids he meets at his middle school’s aftercare program. There’s Cat, the star athlete; Robbie, the goofball; Anna, the popular girl; and Finn, the mysterious new kid. Between games of Sardines, a reverse hide-and-seek, the kids realize that each group member has a secret wish. If they work together, the group might be able to help make each person’s dream come true.

Vickie’s parents divorced when she was only nine years old, wedging her in the middle of a dispute many kids face every day. It still remains one of the toughest times of her life. As she shares parts of herself and other people’s experiences, she hopes you will be better prepared to make good choices for your children. Please Don’t Divorce Me is candidly written as a parent’s guide from a child’s perspective in hopes of fostering a healthy transition and minimizing hurt for what is already a difficult time in a child’s life.

Trench is a self-educated New York City Central Park Carriage Coachman, whose twin son and daughter feed “Mr. Bo Jangles” slices of “Carrots and Apples". Through unusual interactions, Trench’s relationships with characters from the social elite to the oddest of city denizen; to include a successful businesswoman, emotionally challenged war veteran, rollerblade delivery man and librarian, coincide as he takes a journey amid love, injustice, tragedy, and recovery.

When Elsey's husband, Lukas, hands her a brochure for a weeklong mountain retreat, she knows he is really giving her an ultimatum: Go, or we're done. Once a successful painter, now with two young daughters and unable to find a balance between her identities as painter, mother, and, especially, wife, Elsey fills her days worrying, drinking, and descending into desperate unhappiness. So, brochure in hand, she agrees to go and confront the ghosts of her past. There, she meets a group of men and women who will forever alter the way she understands herself.

Gretchen and Steve have been married for a long time. Living in San Francisco, recently separated, with two children and demanding jobs, they’ve started going to a marriage counselor. Unfolding over the course of 10 months and taking place entirely in the marriage counselor’s office, John Jay Osborn’s Listen to the Marriage is the story of a fractured couple in a moment of crisis, and of the person who tries to get them to see each other again.

In the years since his daughter Vanessa moved to America to become a professor of philosophy, Alan Querry has never been to visit. He has been too busy at home in northern England, holding together his business as a successful property developer. His younger daughter, Helen - a music executive in London - hasn’t gone, either, and the two sisters, close but competitive, have never quite recovered from their parents’ bitter divorce and the early death of their mother. But then Vanessa’s new boyfriend sends word that she has fallen into a severe depression and that he’s worried for her safety....

The year is 1988, and America is full of broken homes. Every Other Weekend drops us into the sun-scorched suburbs of Southern California, amid Bret Michaels mania and Cold War hysteria, with Nenny, a wildly precocious, nervous nelly of an eight-year-old, as our guide to the newly rearranged life she finds herself leading after her parents split.

It's not easy being the Queen of Broken Hearts. While Clare has no problem helping the hundreds of men and women who seek her advice to mend their broken hearts, healing her own is another matter entirely. But falling in love again is the last thing she wants.

Teddy is the leading candidate in the race to become the new U.S. senator. But behind his golden public persona lie some darker truths: his daughter has barely spoken to him since his divorce from her mother and he is estranged from his own mother. So when his sister asks Teddy to spend some time with their mother before Alzheimer's steals her mind, Teddy balks. But his campaign manager sees an opportunity for a photo op that will jack up his poll numbers, and Teddy reluctantly agrees to the trip.

When Eve Petworth writes to Jackson Cooper to praise a scene in one of his books, they discover a mutual love of cookery and food. Their friendship blossoms against the backdrop of Jackson's colorful, but ultimately unsatisfying, love life, and Eve's tense relationship with her soon-to-be married daughter. As each of them offers, from behind the veils of semi-anonymity and distance, wise and increasingly affectionate counsel to the other, they both begin to confront their problems and plan a celebratory meeting in Paris - a meeting that Eve fears can never happen.

Co-parenting is critical for successful divorces, and yes, Sam Margulies, an expert mediator of over 4,000 divorces, there are successful, as well as unsuccessful, divorces defined as everyone adapting and moving on productively with their lives. These co-parenting skills and help by each spouse for the other is important to achieve this end. A short must hear audiobook for those with children in a post divorce situation and family members of either couple.

Children are what divorcing spouses say they are most concerned about, but they usually don't act upon that thought. Here, Sam Margulies lays out a plan to protect children from being injured in the divorce process. The first step is to view the client as a family, which includes all members and prospective mates, rather than as plaintiff or defendant. This audiobook is a must listen for divorcing couples with children. It is also a great listen for friends and family of divorcing couples who wish to help the family stay on track.

It's the summer of 1982 in Blacksburg, Virginia - seven years after the suspicious death of a son and sibling - and the Sobel family is hungry. Francie dresses in tennis skirts and ankle socks and weighs her grams of allotted carrots and iceberg lettuce. Her semi-estranged husband, Tate, prefers a packed fridge and hidden doughnuts. Daughters Enid, 10, and Vivvy, almost 13, are subtler versions of their parents, measuring their summer vacation by meals had or meals skipped. But at summer's end, secrets both old and new emerge.

Thirteen-year-old Natalie Gallagher is trying to escape: from her parents' ugly divorce, and from the vicious cyber-bullying of her former best friend. Adrift, confused, she is a girl trying to find her way in a world that seems to either neglect or despise her. Her salvation arrives in an unlikely form: Bridget O'Connell, an Irish maid working for a wealthy Boston family. The catch? Bridget lives only in the pages of a dusty old 1920s diary Natalie unearthed in her mother's basement.