Family Drama Fiction

When mother-of-two Louisa doesn’t return home from work one night, her husband raises the alarm. Investigating the workshop where she ran her mail-order business reveals signs she was taken by force – and DCI Warren Jones is put on the case. As Warren and his team begin to dig into the missing woman’s life, a complex network of relationships emerges. Who is Louisa’s husband talking to on his second, secret phone? What’s the truth about her relationship with the convicted criminal who works next door? And what happened to Louisa’s university housemate a decade ago?

May O'Callaghan has decided that life's too short and she's decided to throw in the towel in her predictable nine-to-five job. Now what? As May fits into her new life we meet her friend Pam and her husband Jack - but why is Pam terrified to tell Jack that she's pregnant? And then there's Denis and Bernard, May's next-door neighbours, going about their business oblivious to the deadly threat that lurks close by. There's Paddy, who lives on his own yet never seems to be at home.

Seven-year-old Chula and her older sister, Cassandra, enjoy carefree lives thanks to their gated community in Bogotá, but the threat of kidnappings, car bombs, and assassinations hover just outside the neighborhood walls, where the godlike drug lord Pablo Escobar continues to elude authorities and capture the attention of the nation. When their mother hires Petrona, a live-in-maid from the city's guerrilla-occupied slum, Chula makes it her mission to understand Petrona's mysterious ways.

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.

Far from the neon glare of the Vegas Strip, attorney Piper Danes walks away from a hotshot law firm to work as a guardian ad litem (GAL). Piper was once a vulnerable youth herself, and a GAL gave her hope when she needed it most. Now she’s committed to paying it forward. Her latest case is unlike any other: fifteen-year-old Sophie Grace is the sole survivor of a gruesome family murder. Teaming up with the formidable Judge Hope Dawson and enigmatic Detective Lazarus Holloway, Piper delves into a world more sinister than she could have imagined.

Ayesha Shetty lost her brother seven years ago, the same time she lost everything else important to her: her dreams, her fierce independence, and the man she loved. Not wanting to see her mother hurt anymore, she put her wild self away and became the dutiful daughter her mother needed and took on her brother’s role in the family business. Now her best friend’s big, fat Indian wedding is a chance to get away from her endless duties at the restaurant and maybe even have some fun (if she remembers how).

When Chef Emily is left at the altar in front of her family and friends, she swears off love and instead throws herself into her new business: a restaurant with a difference. There's only one communal table, designed with the single diner in mind. Now it's two years later, and with her business thriving with regular customers, romance is still the last thing on Emily's mind - until she receives a letter from her ex who is returning home from Canada with a burning question for her....

Ann and Wade have carved out a life for themselves from a rugged landscape in Northern Idaho, where they are bound together by more than love. With her husband's memory fading, Ann attempts to piece together the truth of what happened to Wade's first wife, Jenny, and to their daughters.

If confidence was a women’s size 20, then its name would have to be Aspen St. Andrews. The 31-year-old freelance journalist is living life on her own terms, except in one area. Love. She feels somewhat stuck in an engagement to a man that she once loved and that she decided to cohabitate with. They argue about her career as if it’s a hobby and Aspen is sick of it.

Birmingham detectives Kerri Devlin and Luke Falco arrive at the scene of a double homicide to discover that nothing makes sense. A woman and her child are dead, and though the husband says he killed them, the evidence says otherwise. Why would a man confess to unspeakable murders he didn’t commit? What starts as an open-and-shut case explodes into a web of new leads. Devlin and Falco get to work tracking down every single one - including a disturbing connection between the murders and Falco’s dark past.

In one of her strongest works of fiction yet, Nicole Krauss plunges fearlessly into the struggle to understand what it is to be a man and what it is to be a woman, and the arising tensions that have existed from the very beginning of time. Set in our contemporary moment, and moving across the globe from Switzerland, Japan, and New York City to Tel Aviv, Los Angeles, and South America, the stories in To Be a Man feature male characters as fathers, lovers, friends, children, seducers, and even a lost husband who may never have been a husband at all.

Meet Noh Inji: thirty years old, five wedding rings and counting, and she’s never once been in love. When Inji takes a job at Wedding & Life, the popular matchmaking service, she never imagines her role will be with NM, their secretive marriage division that rents out “field spouses” for a fixed period to their elite clientele. Just like a real marriage, Inji’s assignments involve a wedding, some sex, and a spot of housework. It’s all tailored exactly to the client’s desires—no legal battles, no fights, no emotional baggage.

To the people of Uztar, nothing in their world is more revered than the birds of prey and no one more honored than the falconers who call them to their fists. Brysen strives to be a great falconer - while his twin sister, Kylee, rejects her ancient gifts for the sport and wishes to be free of falconry. She’s nearly made it out, too, but a war is rolling toward their home in the Six Villages, and no bird or falconer will be safe. Together, the twins must journey into the treacherous mountains to trap the Ghost Eagle, the greatest of the Uztari birds and a solitary killer.

It's 1915 when young Bess Ravenhart, recently widowed, leaves her baby son, Frazer, with her mother-in-law, Cora, while she sails from India to Britain to set up a home. But Cora has no intention of returning Frazer to his mother's care. Though Bess makes a new life in Edinburgh and knows the joy - and pain - of motherhood with further children, her heart always aches for the little boy she left behind. When Frazer travels to Scotland 20 years later, it seems Bess' dreams of a reconciliation will come true.

Evan Black embodies my every fantasy. He is brilliant, fierce, and devastatingly handsome. But he is also headstrong, dangerous, and burdened with secrets. My family warned me to stay away, that I could never handle Evan’s dark dealings or scarred past. Maybe I should have listened. Maybe I should have run. But our desire is undeniable, and some temptations you just can’t fight.

On her wedding day in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1968, Rafaela Acuña y Daubón has mild misgivings, but she marries Peter Brennan Jr. anyway in a blaze of romantic optimism. She has no way of knowing how dramatically her life will change when she uproots her young family to start over in the American Midwest, unleashing a fleet of disappointments. In the 1980s, against the backdrop of her mother’s isolation in St. Louis, Missouri, Rafaela’s daughter, Ruth, wants only to belong. Eager to fit in, Ruth lets go of her language, habits, and childhood memories of Puerto Rico. I

When Nova Doubeck is asked to foster two children, she can’t say no. With her own childhood wounds healed by adoptive parents, Nova understands the rewards of a caring guardian—even an impermanent one. But nine-year-old Henry and his seven-year-old sister, Bella, are more than Nova bargained for.

At the age of thirty-nine, Alice Chang suddenly finds herself living in the last place she expected: her mother’s house. But in the face of divorce, eviction, and the recent death of her father, she doesn’t have a choice. Watching as her mother thrives in a new job and meets younger men at the local gym, Alice struggles, reflecting on her parents’ marriage, her relationship with each of them, as she adjusts to being single again for the first time in twenty years. Then she finds her father’s old journal...and uncovers a shocking family secret.

When Paul Hill drowns in a surfing accident, his broken-hearted wife, Lindsey, and their three children are left in huge financial trouble. Once Paul’s life insurance finally comes through, Lindsey impulsively uses the money to buy a charmingly ramshackle motel in Hawai’i, hoping for a fresh start. Teenage Olivia quickly develops a crush on a handsome but monosyllabic skateboarder. Twelve-year-old Carlos reinvents himself as a popular kid named Carl. And Sena, the youngest, will do whatever it takes to protect her beloved motel chickens.

Meet Eve, who has departed from her 30-year career to become a Free Spirit, Sally, who has waved goodbye to her indifferent husband and two grown-up children, and Anastasia: defiantly independent narrow-boat-dweller, suddenly vulnerable as she awaits a life-saving operation. Inexperienced and ill-equipped, Sally and Eve embark upon a journey through the canals of England, guided by the remote and unsympathetic Anastasia.