Family Drama Fiction

Ginny Beale is 18, irreverent, funny, and brave, with a brother she adores and a circle of friends for whom she would do anything. Because of one terrible night, she loses them all - and her adventurous spirit - seemingly forever. While the town cheers on the high school football team, someone sets the school’s auditorium ablaze. Ginny's best friend Gray Marsden's father, a firefighter, dies in the blaze.

Despite having jobs and men that they love, each knows that something is missing: the closeness that once sustained them. Carmen is a successful actress in New York, engaged to be married, but misses her friends. Lena finds solace in her art, teaching in Rhode Island, but still thinks of Kostos and the road she didn’t take. Bridget lives with her longtime boyfriend, Eric, in San Francisco, and though a part of her wants to settle down, a bigger part can’t seem to shed her old restlessness. Then Tibby reaches out to bridge the distance, sending the others plane tickets for a reunion....

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.

In the second book in number one New York Times best selling author Sandra Brown’s beloved Texas! trilogy, listeners meet another son of the troubled Tyler clan - Chase Tyler, a man hardened by life and desperately trying to outrun the sorrows of his past. Chase Tyler has been the object of Marcie Johns’s desire since grade school. But when it came time to settle down, the handsome, laconic cowboy chose another woman to be his bride. Life was good for Chase - until things took an abrupt and tragic turn.

When Chase Stone’s estranged father dies, leaving his multibillion-dollar business to his children, no one is more surprised than him. Growing up outside of the high-stakes world filled with human vultures, Chase and his sister, Alex, are less than enthusiastic about stepping into their father’s shoes. That is until they learn of a half brother they didn’t know existed, and must find to share their inheritance with.

Claire is only seven years old when her college-age sister, Alison, disappears on the last night of their family vacation at a resort on the Caribbean island of Saint X. Several days later, Alison’s body is found in a remote spot on a nearby cay, and two local men - employees at the resort - are arrested. But the evidence is slim, the timeline against it, and the men are soon released. The story turns into national tabloid news, a lurid mystery that will go unsolved. For Claire and her parents, there is only the return home to broken lives.

It’s been three years, two weeks and one day since Kate Shaw’s beloved husband Eddie died, leaving her behind. Three years, two weeks and one day that Kate has been angry – with Eddie, with herself, with life. But today is different. Different because Kate has finally taken the step she’s been avoiding…back into Eddie’s beloved kitchen. Now, what begins as a (disastrous) attempt to make pancakes becomes a culinary journey that is not only a love letter to the man she lost, but also an unexpected means of connection to a community she never knew she had.

When it comes to men, Nealy is very content with her new husband, lawyer Hatch Littletree. When it comes to horses, she is never satisfied. Nobody can measure up to her standards as a trainer, not even her daughter, Emmie, who now runs the family's famous stables, Blue Diamond Farms. But returning to Blue Diamond Farms for a family reunion sends Nealy reeling. Emmie has let the farm slide, and she has picked a small, gutsy colt to send to the Derby - a nice horse but clearly the wrong one.

Lilia Liska has shrewdly outlived three husbands, raised five children, and seen the arrival of 17 grandchildren. Now she has turned her keen attention to the diary of a long-forgotten man named Roland Bouley, with whom she once had a fleeting affair. Increasingly obsessed with Roland's intimate history, Lilia begins to annotate the diary with her own rather different version of events, revealing the surprising, long-held secrets of her past.

On a hilltop in Umbria sits Valetto. Once a thriving village—and a hub of resistance and refuge during World War II—centuries of earthquakes, landslides, and the lure of a better life have left it neglected. Only ten residents remain, including the widows Serafino—three eccentric sisters and their steely centenarian mother—who live quietly in their medieval villa. Then their nephew and grandson, Hugh, a historian, returns. But someone else has arrived before him, laying claim to the cottage where Hugh spent his childhood summers.

The world has changed around 79-year-old librarian Millicent Carmichael, a.k.a. Missy. Though quick to admit that she often found her roles as a housewife and mother less than satisfying, Missy once led a bustling life driven by two children, an accomplished and celebrated husband, and a Classics degree from Cambridge. Now, her husband is gone, her daughter is estranged after a shattering argument, and her son has moved to his wife's native Australia, taking Missy's beloved only grandchild half-a-world away.

Barnett Durang has a secret. No, not THAT secret. His widowed mother has long known he’s gay. The secret is Barnett is getting married. At his mother’s farm. In their small Louisiana town. She just doesn’t know it yet. It’ll be an intimate affair. Just two hundred or so of the most fabulous folks Barnett is shipping in from the “heathen coasts,” as Mom likes to call them, turning her quiet rescue farm for misfit animals into a most unlikely wedding venue.

In the hands of Sophocles, the master dramatist, the anguished tale of a man fated to kill his father and marry his mother retains its power to shock and move beyond any Freudian reference.

Kenny Bond is finally out of prison after doing a long stretch for killing a copper and is determined to get back to life on the straight and narrow. Kenny’s son Donny might lack his father’s edge but his twin grandsons, Beau and Brett - well, they are Bonds through and through. Like him, they won’t let anyone stand in their way.

Attorney Jason Rich has made a fortune off other people’s bad luck. His billboard slogan—“In an accident? Get Rich!”—accosts motorists on highways from Alabama to Florida. As ambulance chasers go, he’s exceptional. But after a recent divorce and a stint in rehab, Jason has hit a rough patch. And things only get worse when his sister, Jana, is accused of her husband’s murder. Even though Jason has no experience trying criminal cases, Jana begs him to represent her.

After the funeral of her mother, Sally, Alice Kent is approached by a man named Angus Tweedy. He claims to be her father and tells her that he served time in prison for marrying Sally bigamously. What does he hope to gain telling her this now, 30 years on? How can her adored dad Ralph not be her true father? And why did her mother betray her so badly? She had accepted Sally's many faults and her reluctance to never speak of the past. But faced with this staggering deception, Alice knows she must uncover the whole truth about her mother. Whatever the cost.

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 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.

After a lifetime of taking care of his impossible but irresistible sister and his cherished niece, Tom is ready to put himself first. An architect specializing in tiny houses, he finally has an opportunity to build his masterpiece—“his last shot at leaving a footprint on the dying planet.” Assuming, that is, he can stick to his resolution to keep the demands of his needy family at bay. Naturally, that’s when his phone rings.

A daring WWII pilot who grew up among the clouds, Juliet Caron’s life was one of courage, adventure - and a love torn apart by war. Every nook of her Cornish cottage is alive with memories just waiting to be discovered. Katherine Henderson has escaped to Cornwall for Christmas, but she soon finds there is more to her holiday cottage than meets the eye. And on the eve of Juliet’s 100th birthday, Katherine is enlisted to make an old lady’s final Christmas wish come true....