Family Drama Fiction

Lena Sharma is a successful San Francisco restaurateur. An immigrant, she’s cultivated an image of conservatism and tradition in her close-knit Indian community. But when Lena’s carefully constructed world begins to crumble, her ties to her daughter, Maya, and son, Sameer - both raised in thoroughly modern California - slip further away.

Isla knows her family kept things from her. When she inherits the cliffside cottage where she spent her childhood, she must face dark shadows of her past—the mother who rejected her in favour of her art, the aunt whose death haunted them both, and the silence that permeated every room. Digging through the belongings of someone she realises she never really knew, Isla finally has the chance to find answers to the secrets her mother spent a lifetime hiding.

Charmaine moves to Coral Island and lands a job working at a local florist shop. It seems as though the entire island has caught wedding fever, with weddings planned every weekend. It's a good opportunity for her to get to know the locals, but what she doesn't expect is to be thrown into the middle of a family drama. Penny and Rowan's wedding is coming up fast, and Penny's working too hard to give it her full attention. Rowan's still figuring out what to do with his life when a suggestion from a friend gives them both an idea.

Jodie and Harper are destined to be on the West End stage side by side. They've lived and worked on that dream all their lives but, in a split second, their world divides. Harper is left disabled after a black taxi ploughs into her and Jodie has to return to her stage career alone. After the accident, the doctors tell Harper she will live, but she'll be a wheelchair user. Jodie vows to never leave her side, but Harper knows that's not what she needs.

Overworked and underpaid, Juanita works a job she hates at the prestigious law firm of Wayne, Rothstein, and Lincoln to provide for her children. When her oldest child, Jalen, begins to feel neglected because his mother cannot afford to buy him the things he wants, constantly works overtime, and is always taking care of his younger brother, he is lured by the streets and a local drug dealer named Drastic.

To escape their griping grown children, husbands, and lovers, and an abundance of grandchildren underfoot, three self-proclaimed "old bags", Dania, Ruth, and Bess, head for a quiet island on the Aegean Sea. They'll spend a year by the water - watching the sunset, eating grilled fish and fresh olives, sipping ouzo. They deserve it, they say. After all those years, the three women will finally have some peace. Except they can't.

Organised. Neat. Lonely. Kathy Simmonds is alone at Christmas this year, after her beloved husband John passed away a few months ago. She keeps her home spick and span, struggling with her grief for a family she has lost or lost touch with. But a chance phone call from Battersea Dogs and Cats Home opens the door to something new. She meets Scruff, a messy Jack Russell with a heart of gold who has been left for dead on the streets of London.

From the beloved bestselling author of Home Safe and The Year of Pleasures, comes a wonderful new novel about women and men reconnecting with one another—and themselves—at their fortieth high school reunion.

In 1931 in Carbon Hill, a small Alabama coal-mining town, nine-year-old Tess Moore watches a woman shove the cover off the family well and toss in a baby without a word. For the Moore family, focused on helping anyone in need during the Great Depression, the apparent murder forces them to face the darker side of their community and question the motivations of family and friends.

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.

Sisters Amanda Foster and Erin Turner have little in common except the childhood bedroom they once shared and the certainty each feels that her way of life is best. Amanda follows the rules - at the school where she works; in her community; and as a picture-perfect daughter, wife, and mother-to-be. Erin follows her heart - in love and otherwise - living a bohemian lifestyle on a shoestring budget and honoring her late father’s memory with a passion for music and her fledgling bath-products business.

Rachel Smedling is not like the other women in her isolated Pennine village: she is taller, stronger, and weaves cloth like a man. Without her, the household would fall apart, for her mother is ailing and her vicious drunkard father seems to hate her so much, he would happily offer money to any man who would wed her. When her mother dies, Rachel is at the mercy of her increasingly violent father. Her only escape is by marrying a kindly man with whom she finds happiness, if not passion, and her life begins to seem complete.

Kylee is ensconsed in the Sky Castle, training with Mem Uku to master the Hollow Tongue and the Ghost Eagle. But political intrigue abounds and court drama seems to seep through the castle's stones like blood from a broken feather. Meanwhile, Brysen is still in the Six Villages, preparing for an attack by the Kartami. The Villages have become Uztar's first line of defense, and refugees are flooding in from the plains.

Chloe Usher has had enough of men. After breaking up with the love of her life, Chloe's friends tell her she needs to get back out there and find another man before it's too late. But after a particularly disastrous date and one too many gins, Chloe has a revelation - she doesn't need a man to make her happy. It's up to her to do it herself. Never one to do things by halves, Chloe decides to make the ultimate commitment to self-love - she'll marry herself!

Gina Gray is just about to move into a small but perfect flat in Bloomsbury and DCI David Scott has come back into her life. But a family crisis brings her daughter and son-in-law to share her flat and, in the rash of hate crimes that follow the Brexit referendum, a young Indian woman is strangled just doors away from Gina’s new home. David Scott wants Gina’s help with an investigation which takes her into the world of barristers’ chambers in Gray’s Inn, a production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, and a clash with her difficult younger daughter.

Caroline Corbett wants nothing to do with her father, Hoff, a man who abandoned her as a young girl and then vanished from her life almost thirty years ago. But when her beloved aunt expresses a dying wish to see him once more, Caroline, despite her failing marriage and other personal troubles, drops everything to look for him.

Helen lives a decent, uncomplicated life. Satisfied in her career, she’s raising three happy teenagers, and her family has the most envied house on the street. Admittedly, she’s growing just a little disenchanted with her marriage to her workaholic husband, Werner. But that’s nothing she can’t fix. For disaffected, young petty criminals Ralf and Brian, it was a scheme to make some cash: a quick home invasion. The targets they’ve chosen are Helen and Werner. Just as planned, Brian disappears into Helen and Werner’s house. And he never comes out again.

When Rosie's best friend has an affair with her husband, the consequences reverberate through the lives of the two families. Relationships are torn apart, friendships shattered, and childish innocence destroyed. Her daughter Daisy's fragile hold on reality begins to unravel when a letter arrives that opens old wounds. Rosie's son Max blames himself for everything that happened. And her ex-husband Nick has his own version of events. As long-repressed memories bubble to the surface, the past has never seemed more present and the truth more uncertain.

Early one summer morning Isabel and her 11-year-old daughter, River, walk across Regent's Park. They come across a rain-soaked man sitting alone on a bench and ask him if he's okay. But he doesn't know. In fact he doesn't know the answer to any of their questions - not even his own name. Urged on by her daughter, Isabel takes the man to the hospital she works at, hoping that will be the end of it. But when the tests show there's nothing physically wrong with him, and yet he still can't remember who he is, she realises she can't walk away.

Ren Ishida is nearly finished with graduate school when he receives news of his sister Keiko's sudden death. She was viciously stabbed one rainy night on her way home, and there are no leads. Ren heads to Akakawa to conclude his sister's affairs, still failing to understand why she chose to abandon the family and Tokyo for this desolate town years ago. Haunted in his dreams by a young girl who is desperately trying to tell him something, Ren struggles to find solace in the void his sister has left behind.