Family Drama Fiction

Aaaaaaaaghhhhhhh! Dene screamed at the TV. A commercial for ice-cream had just come on and it starred those twins Evie and Cameron Billingham. We've never spoken to them but we just know they're vomitus. If you walked into an audition and the terrible twins were there, you could forget about it! The first book in an entertaining series of short novels about four girls who attend The Shooting Star drama school.

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.

Actuary Penny Sinclair has a head for business, and she always makes rational decisions. Knowing that 60 percent of spouses cheat and 50 percent of marriages end in divorce, she wasn't too surprised when her husband had an affair. (That he did so with a woman their daughter's age? Well, that part did sting a bit.) She just made sure she got everything in the divorce, including their lovely old Victorian house. And as soon as her younger daughter has her hipster-fabulous wedding in the backyard, she's trading it in for a condo in downtown Chicago....

From the author of the New York Times best sellers The Saving Graces and Circle of Three comes the poignant story of two women struggling to come to grips with the past that haunts them both.

In the riverside town of Bedford, four students can hear the haunting voice of a woman singing. The beautiful melody is coming from their neighbour, a recluse who never opens her door to anyone or leaves her home in daylight. They have no way of knowing that the woman next door, Madeleine Delaney, is driven by a dangerous memory that for over 20 years has controlled her meagre existence.

When her husband hears God's call to become a preacher, Rachel Jackson Adams is distressed - she grew up a preacher's daughter, and knows how difficult life under the microscope can be for a reverend's family. But hot-headed Rachel has toned down her wild ways, and for the sake of her marriage and her two children, she is now the reluctant first lady of Zion Hill, unafraid to rock the boat with her unconventional ideas for revitalizing the church.

"I am always with you. I will always be here." This was the promise Ella’s mother betrayed thirty years ago when she walked into the sea, leaving her five-year-old daughter alone in the world. Ella’s been angry ever since, building up a wall to protect herself. But that all changes the day she opens a newspaper and finds those ten little words printed in a classified ad. Ella refuses to believe her mother could still be alive - that would mean she did want to live, just not with her daughter. So she throws herself into finding out exactly what happened all those years ago.

Annie Taft’s wedding is four days away, and it will be one of the grandest anyone can remember in her small South Carolina town. Preparations are in order. Friends and family are gathering in anticipation. Everything is going according to plan. Except that Annie herself has vanished. Did she have second thoughts? Or has something much worse happened to the bride-to-be?

For eleven-year-old Esme, ballet is everything - until her four-year-old sister, Lily, vanishes without a trace and nothing is certain anymore. People Esme has known her whole life suddenly become suspects, each new one hitting closer to home than the last. Unable to cope, Esme escapes the nightmare that is her new reality when she receives an invitation to join an elite ballet academy in San Francisco. Desperate to leave behind her chaotic, broken family and the mystery surrounding Lily’s disappearance, Esme accepts.

It’s been twenty-six years since the accident, but Helen still lives on autopilot, going through the motions of work and motherhood. Her one wish is for her daughter Julia to settle down with her own family - so Helen can let go. Julia has dealt with her mother’s emotional distance by looking for love in all the wrong places. But when her latest choice drives away her best friend, Claire, Julia realises she’s on her own.

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.

Grace first met Mimi when she blew into their sons’ toddler playgroup like a warm bay breeze that loosened Grace’s tight spaces. Despite differing approaches to life and parenting, the fast friends raised their kids together while cementing a sisterlike bond that neither believed could be broken. But when a string of ill-fated decisions results in a teen party with a tragic outcome for Grace’s son, the friendship is ripped apart and an already-splintered community explodes.

The only life Mae has ever known is on the island, living on the charity of the wealthy Prosper family who control the magic on the island and the spirits who inhabit it. Mae longs for magic of her own and to have a place among the Prosper family, where her best friend, Coco, will see her as an equal, and her crush, Miles, will finally see her. Now that she’s 18, Mae knows her time with the Prospers may soon come to an end.

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.

Llama Llama's tooth is wiggling! Is it time for his first tooth to come out? He's excited, but anxious. Who is this tooth fairy everyone talks about? Mama Llama reassures him; the tooth will come out when it's good and ready. But no one is ready for what happens next.... Suddenly, the tooth is GONE! Where did it go? And will the tooth fairy come at all, now? Anna Dewdney's fun rhyme is full of humor and comfort, and of course, a very happy ending.

The Lo family sticks together. That’s what Honor has been told her whole life while growing up in the glare of the public eye on Lo and Behold, the reality show about her, her four siblings, and their parents. Their show may be off the air, but the Lo family members still live in the spotlight as influencers churning out podcasts, bestselling books, and brand partnerships. So when Honor’s father announces that he’s moving out of their northern California home to rent an apartment in Brooklyn, Honor’s personal upset becomes the internet’s trending B-list celebrity trainwreck.

Lina Henry is a wife and mother who likens herself to a pretty paper doll. She lives in a beautiful home in the Atlanta suburbs. Her husband, David, is a well-to-do investment banker. She’s raised two wonderful teenagers. To the outside world, the Henry family is perfect. What no one knows is that Lina’s paper doll life is being torn apart in a controlling and abusive marriage. Then Lina develops an unexpected friendship with another man, and reconnects with her former best friend. But as David senses his loss of control, he becomes more dangerous.

Nikki and Kyle Sebastian have a loving and healthy marriage. It’s only missing one thing they want—children. When the couple is diagnosed with “unexplained infertility” and endures several failed rounds of IVF, Kyle, for both their sakes, is unwilling to bury them deeper in emotional and financial debt. Desperate to have a baby, Nikki betrays Kyle’s trust in an attempt to try IVF one more time. The choice fractures their once-stable union. Now burdened with suspicion, resentment, and further grief, their little family is falling apart.

Morgan and Devon Gregson Bennett are an interracial creative power couple living happily enough in Brooklyn until a freak accident leaves a little girl orphaned in Los Angeles. Setting aside reservations about the price motherhood will exact on their marriage and careers, Morgan and Devon agree to adopt Vabeh, a bi-racial ethnic-hair-products heiress. Vabeh touches down in New York, wearing last season’s fur and on a mission to quickly distinguish herself from the other bold-faced names at her new school, the tony School for Spoiled Kids.

A one-act play about the search for bog bodies and for the truth about historical child abuse.