Family Drama Fiction

There's always time to help out a stranger...isn't there? Supermarket delivery driver Charlie enjoys his new job, because he doesn't have to spend too long with people, who, he's found, are nothing but trouble. But when he's assigned the Hope Row street, he realises there are a lot of lonely people out there - and for some, he's their only interaction. The supermarket boss tells Charlie he's a driver, not a social worker - but Charlie can't abandon the Hope Row residents and he sets about trying to draw them out of their shells and back into the world.

Seventeen-year-old Constance has had a privileged upbringing in Clapham, with staff to attend to her every need. But her parents have always been cold and distant, never showing her love.Craving affection, Constance falls into the arms of Albie Jones, the cook’s grandson. But one fateful encounter leaves her ashamed and pregnant, and she is soon shunned from the family home. Heartbroken and threatened by scandal, Constance is forced to wed Albie and moves to Battersea, where she suffers unforgiving stares and cruel whispers from the neighbours.

Brimming with charm and whimsy, this exquisite novel set in the Tower of London has the transportive qualities and delightful magic of the contemporary classics Chocolat and Amélie. Balthazar Jones has lived in the Tower of London with his loving wife, Hebe, and his 120-year-old pet tortoise for the past eight years. That’s right, he is a Beefeater (they really do live there). It’s no easy job living and working in the tourist attraction in present-day London.

As single mother Leah struggles to get her children ready one morning, the doorbell rings. Standing on the doorstep of their terraced house in Whitley Bay is a well-dressed stranger, Clio, who feels an emotional tie to the house that she can’t explain.

In present day New Orleans, Xuan Trung, former beauty queen turned refugee after the Fall of Saigon, is obsessed with divining her daughters' fates through their Vietnamese zodiac signs. But Trac, Nhi and Trieu diverge completely from their immigrant parents' expectations. Successful lawyer Trac hides her sexuality from her family; Nhi competes as the only woman of color on a Bachelor-esque reality TV show; and Trieu, a budding writer, is determined to learn more about her familial and cultural past.

’Tis the season for mistletoe and holly, Santa . . . and suspense. And the gift that keeps on giving is Ice: premier thriller author Linda Howard’s breathless tale of a man, a woman, and a battle for survival against an unforgiving winter–and an unrelenting killer. Oh what fun it is to listen.

How do you grieve, if your family doesn’t talk about feelings? This is the question the unnamed protagonist of GhostForest considers after her father dies. One of the many Hong Kong “astronaut” fathers, he stays there to work, while the rest of the family immigrated to Canada before the 1997 Handover, when the British returned sovereignty over Hong Kong to China. As she revisits memories of her father through the years, she struggles with unresolved questions and misunderstandings.

When sisters Alex, Sam and Jess are called back to the family lake house in Summerville after the death of their beloved father, they learn that he was hiding a devastating secret. Alex is the one who discovers the stash of love letters hidden away in the shed by the lake where they used to play as children during the long hot summers. She adored her father. But she just has to know who wrote these notes, and she doesn’t want to be talked out of it by her husband or her sisters, who each have their own reasons for avoiding digging deeper.

Savannah was four years old when her twin sister, Georgia, went missing from their small Louisiana town, fracturing their family. Twenty-eight years later, Savannah convinces her estranged older sisters, Rayanne and Sue Ellen, to honor the pact they made as children and retrieve the time capsule they buried in their old backyard. But coming home means confronting old ghosts…and their stubborn grandmother, Meemaw.

A girl dies one late, rainy night a few feet from the back door of her home. The girl, Abeba, was born in Ethiopia. Her adoptive parents, Delvin and Betsy Harvey—conservative, white fundamentalist Christians—are charged with her murder.

When Loretta Ashton dies suddenly, her family is shattered. As a devoted wife and mother, Loretta was their rock—a woman admired by the entire community. But at her funeral, an unexpected guest turns their grief into confusion. A stranger claiming to be Loretta’s sister takes a seat with the family, only to vanish before anyone can confront her. The problem? Loretta was an only child.

It’s been three years since Claire Kite lost her husband, David, an aspiring novelist, in a tragic car accident. Claire finally finds the courage to move on; then she discovers among the remnants of her shattered world her husband’s last manuscript. It’s intimate, stirring - and unfinished. An idea comes to her.... What if she can find someone to give David’s novel the ending it deserves?

Ophelia Dahl has just buried her beloved father when she finds among his personal effects a blindsiding document. The mother Ophelia thought died thirty years ago isn’t dead after all—she abandoned her. But how could she, and where is she now? With some neighborly help, Ophelia’s going to find out. Beau Augustin is an acclaimed author and Ophelia’s childhood bestie turned teenage nemesis, still chafing after all these years.

The weatherworn cottage Clachan has always been Jo Wilding’s sanctuary, a blissful escape from her tumultuous home life. From the first summer Rachel invited her to join the Willoughby family in the wilds of Scotland, she fell in love with the sea air, sandy beach and Tristan, Rachel’s older brother… All these years later, Clachan is where their most important occasions and conversations take place, so when Rachel organises a weekend there, Jo never suspects that this weekend will change everything.

Isobel Johnson has spent her career in Liston Heights sidestepping the community’s high-powered families. But when she receives a threatening voicemail accusing her of anti-Americanism and a liberal agenda, she’s in the spotlight. Meanwhile, Julia Abbott, obsessed with the casting of the school’s winter musical, makes an error in judgment that has far-reaching consequences for her entire family.

When artist Dani Manchester learns she’s slowly losing her vision, she becomes unmoored. Her ex-husband died only months before, leaving Dani and her preteen daughter grief stricken. Suddenly, the life Dani built for her family on the Outer Banks feels like a painful reminder of all they’ve lost. On a whim, Dani sells her waterfront home and buys an old farm inland near the Virginia state line. But Dani’s daughter recoils at the sudden, drastic change. The Outer Banks’ sun-swept beaches, pink dawns, and savage storms are all she’s ever known.

When Susan Tate's 17-year-old daughter, Lily, announces she is pregnant, Susan is stunned. A single mother, she has struggled to do everything right. She sees the pregnancy as an unimaginable tragedy for both Lily and herself.

Boon Hoenes only has three goals in life: to make Posey Adler his wife, to win the Stanley Cup for the second year in a row, and for Shea Adler to like him. The first, he's got on lock. The second, he's well on his way. And the third...well, two out of three ain't bad.

When she was thirteen years old, Samantha Newsom’s family was murdered and their Catskills farmhouse set ablaze in an unsolved crime that left nothing behind but ashes. Twenty-two years later, Sam is pulled back to her hometown of Carney, New York, under the shadows of the grim tragedy she’s never forgotten or forgiven. Authorities mishandled the evidence, false rumors were seeded about her family, suspects yielded nothing, and the case went cold. Not anymore. Investigator Travis Meacham has been assigned to the case, and he has news for Sam....

In the end...we all lose. How well do you think you know the Callahans? Yes, I'm asking you. Because I know you've been watching. The chaos, the violence, the love, and the madness - who could look away? Not me, for sure. My grandmother always told me...where you look is where you go. So I ask again, how well do you think you know the Callahans? Do you really think you understand Melody, Liam, or even Ethan? I have to wonder - will your mind be able to handle it?