Family Drama Fiction

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.

It’s been fifteen years since Gem’s eight-year-old daughter Sara-Jane went missing, snatched with her best friend Abby right outside their school. A frantic search united the community at first, but after Abby was found and brought home, single mother Gem’s dogged persistence only led to accusations that she was stirring up class tensions. Even that she was somehow involved.

Charlotte Coburn has a tragically dark past. But she’s safe now. She lives in a gated community, protected from danger. When teenager Elle knocks at her door looking for shelter during a particularly severe storm, the woman can’t help but think how lucky Elle’s been to have found someone as friendly as her. Except Elle chose her door on purpose...

Ethan Dove’s family has moved to a new home in a safe community, and it’s exactly the fresh start they need. Not only is his marriage to Emma hanging by a thread, but his son, Dylan, and twelve-year-old daughter, Rose, deserve to have a happy childhood. After Rose is bullied by the boys across the road, Ethan is relieved when the woman who lives next door steps in. Fiona Smith has come into their lives at just the right moment, and when she offers to look after Rose during the school holidays, Ethan and Emma can’t believe their luck.

An accomplished photographer and the devoted mom of an adorable little boy, Allie Ross has just moved to an upscale DC suburb, the kind of place where parenting feels like a competitive sport. Allie’s desperate to make a good first impression. Then she’s framed for murder. It all starts at a neighborhood party when a local dad corners Allie and calls her by an old, forgotten nickname from her dark past. The next day, he is found dead.

"I would do anything for you to get well again, baby girl." It’s a promise. Even though I know it means asking her father for help, going back there, risking everything. Whatever the cost, there’s no hesitation in my mind. Because that’s what you do when you’re a mother. You put your child’s life before your own.

The double murder of a married couple in a small Washington town draws FBI forensic linguist Raisa Susanto into an investigation that mirrors a decades-old crime. Twenty-five years ago—to the day—Alex Parker murdered his parents, then took his own life, leaving behind a note admitting everything. Raisa, paired with forensic psychologist Callum Kilkenny, uses her skills to read between the lines. Especially now that paranoid postings on a conspiracy thread suggest that Alex was a victim himself.

The Trevino family hasn’t spent much quality time together lately. But as the summer months arrive, they find themselves all together on Block Island. Amy Trevino, a high school teacher and occasional theater director, has stayed close to her Rhode Island hometown while her famous brother, Timothy, pursued and achieved his Hollywood dreams. When Timothy returns to Block Island to direct a summer play, Amy agrees to be the production manager in an effort to mend rifting family relationships.

Recently divorced Cooper Chance knows he’s officially in a rut when his parents take him barhopping in the hope of resuscitating his love life. At first, he’s skeptical. How could a gritty dive bar possibly solve his problems? But then he runs into Nora McHale. Nora isn’t at the bar looking for love. She’s there to unwind after yet another exhausting day at her bakery. And even if she were hoping to meet someone, it sure wouldn’t be Cooper - her best friend’s ex-husband.

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.

From the outside looking in, Sibley Sawyer has a perfect life. As a successful attorney, she’s worked hard to get to the top of her game--but when her personal and professional lives implode, Sibley looks for a way to turn the page. Unable to shake the tragic circumstances that caused her to flee her rural Midwestern hometown, Sibley wants nothing more than to reunite with her estranged mother, Deborah, and bury their past tensions. But as she reenters the life she left behind, she realizes her mother isn’t the same person she remembers, and she’s not the same daughter either.

For me, family is a curse. My father and brother made my life hell. My mother’s untimely death still keeps me up at night. Now that my brother, Donovan, has been killed in an accident, I can forget the past. The last remnant is the childhood home I’ve inherited—and which I intend to burn to the ground. The only obstacle? Anneliese Nielsen, Donovan’s fiancée.

Grayson Caballero sees the glass half-empty. Born with a life-threatening heart defect, he’s been living on borrowed time. The uncertainty of tomorrow makes him push people away, helping Grayson to avoid any real commitment. Then he meets Reid Sullivan and falls madly in love. The two work together at the Wold Collective, Grayson as a project manager and Reid in HR. They even live in the same apartment complex. But Grayson continues to keep his distance, despite their obvious attraction. And Reid’s not interested in waiting around.

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.

After decades of pushing away traumatic memories from childhood, Colette De Luca is ready to start a family of her own. It’ll be healthy, a wish come true, with a man she believes is the love of her life. Thankfully, she thought ahead when she was younger and froze her eggs for this very moment. Greta O’Brien, a wealthy hedge-fund manager, is forced to confront the making of her own family when tragedy strikes her twin teenage sons.

Reverend Sabre Winfrey, shepherd of the Seven Seals Baptist Church, believes in God, his own privilege, and enterprise. Besides the barbershop and radio station he owns, he has an iron hand on every aspect of Dominion, Mississippi, society. He and his wife, Priscilla, have five boys; the youngest, Emanuel, is called Wonderboy—no one sings prettier, runs as fast, or turns as many heads. After a surprising encounter with a stranger, Wonderboy finds himself confronted by questions he’d never imagined, and his response will send shockwaves through the entire community.

April, May, June, and July Barber don’t have much in common anymore. An upcoming family wedding will place the four siblings in the same room for the first time in years. But shortly before, when April spots their father, who went missing while serving overseas a decade ago, their reunion becomes entirely more complicated. While the siblings’ search for the truth about their father forces them back into each other’s lives, it also intensifies their private dramas.

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.

Riley doesn’t want her mom to know that she’s been seeing her newly discovered family, the Corisi clan. Riley’s biological father made her mother’s life hell, and even though he’s dead, her fear of anyone who shares his last name lives on. After attending two funerals, Gavin’s father has decided Gavin needs a wife and children to be happy. Rather than inheriting his family’s company, Gavin now must earn his way back into his father’s good graces by producing a fiancée.

With the horrors of the Nazi regime becoming more apparent by the day, Maureen Ritter decides to remain in Paris. There, she meets a disturbed young man, who will change the course of history and set the match to a firestorm that will engulf the innocent Jews still in Germany. Fiona Ritter’s devotion to the Führer will be tested when the nightmare of Kristallnacht consumes Berlin. The foundations she built her life upon these last six years will be shaken, as she witnesses the horrific violence and destruction wrought that fateful night.