Family Genre

On a sunny afternoon, the middle-aged writer Joe Rose and his wife look up from their picnic in the countryside to see an elderly man desperately trying to anchor his giant helium balloon. Running to help, Joe is joined by other bystanders. But from that fateful day, one of them, Jed Parry, will begin to stalk Joe. Driven by religious zeal and misdirected love, the strange young man will slowly unravel each strand of Joe's life.

Harley Altmyer should be in college drinking Rolling Rock and chasing girls. He should be freed from his closed-minded, stricken coal town, with its lack of jobs and no sense of humor. Instead, he's constantly reminded of just how messed up his life is. With his mother in jail for killing his abusive father, Harley is an orphan with the responsibilities of an adult and the fiery, aggressive libido of a teenager.

For every woman who has ever fantasized about driving past her exit on the highway instead of going home to make dinner, for every woman who has ever dreamed of boarding a train to a place where no one needs constant attention - meet Maribeth Klein, a harried working mother who's so busy taking care of her husband and twins, she doesn't even realize she's had a heart attack. Afterward, surprised to discover that her recuperation seems to be an imposition on those who rely on her, Maribeth does the unthinkable: She packs a bag and leaves.

In these tales of loss and pleasure, lovers and family, a woman learns to conduct an affair, a child of divorce dances with her mother, and a woman with a terminal illness contemplates her exit. Filled with the sharp humor, emotional acuity, and joyful language Moore has become famous for, these nine glittering tales marked the introduction of an extravagantly gifted writer.

A moving novel on the power of friendship in our darkest times, from internationally renowned writer and speaker Elif Shafak. In the pulsating moments after she has been murdered and left in a dumpster outside Istanbul, Tequila Leila enters a state of heightened awareness. Her heart has stopped beating, but her brain is still active - for 10 minutes 38 seconds. While the Turkish sun rises and her friends sleep soundly nearby, she remembers her life - and the lives of others, outcasts like her.

Morgan is determined to prevent her daughter from making the same mistakes she did. By getting pregnant and married way too young, Morgan put her own dreams on hold. Clara doesn’t want to follow in her mother’s footsteps. Her predictable mother doesn’t have a spontaneous bone in her body.

The Nasr family is spread across the globe - Beirut, Brooklyn, Austin, the California desert. A Syrian mother, a Lebanese father, and three American children: all have lived a life of migration. Still, they’ve always had their ancestral home in Beirut - a constant touchstone - and the complicated, messy family love that binds them. But following his father's recent death, Idris, the family's new patriarch, has decided to sell. The decision brings the family to Beirut, where everyone unites against Idris in a fight to save the house.

Liv Ridgely prides herself on being the responsible wrangler of all things family: stay at home mom, caretaker of elderly parents, supporter of husband Oscar's career, savior of her wayward sister. Now, with her son off to college, and her ambitious daughter, Hazel, a year away from following him, it's Liv's turn. She's even established her dream career of bringing beautiful old homes back to life in the most picturesque part of Maine. Until she learns that 16-year-old Hazel is three months pregnant.

An elegant, original, and compelling novel, set against a gaslit backdrop of social and political turbulence in early 20th-century London, Falling Angels draws a picture of family life that exposes the prejudices and flaws of a changing time. Chevalier ( Girl with a Pearl Earring) "shows imaginative skill in two neatly accomplished surprises, and the denouement packs an emotional wallop," says Publishers Weekly.

Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise her children and manage the family apple orchard; the other followed a dream and traveled the world to become a famous photojournalist. But when their beloved father falls ill, Meredith and Nina find themselves together again, standing alongside their cold, disapproving mother, Anya, who even now, offers no comfort to her daughters.

Years after an Easter weekend tragedy devastates a family, they return to the house they grew up in to unearth the many secrets hidden within the nooks and crannies of home.

Vincent Appleton smiles at his daughters, raises a gun, and blows off his head. For the Appleton sisters, life had unraveled many times before. This time it explodes. Eight-year-old Hariet, known to all as Ari, is dispatched to Cape Breton and her Aunt Mary, who is purported to eat little girls. With Ari on the journey is her steadfast companion, Jasper, an imaginary seahorse. But when they arrive in Pleasant Cove, they instead find refuge with Mary and her partner Nia.

Kezia Cooper Hobson, recently widowed, arrives in New York from San Francisco. Determined to make a fresh start, she has just completed the sale of her Pacific Heights home, not to mention her husband's venture capital firm, and in doing so, is also freed from her responsibility as a board member of the company. Bringing with her only a few personal treasures, she is excited to move into the blank slate of a beautiful midtown penthouse, in the city that she has always loved. It is also where her two adult daughters now live.

From the opening story, "Willing" - about a second-rate movie actress in her 30s who has moved back to Chicago, where she makes a seedy motel room her home and becomes involved with a mechanic who has not the least idea of who she is as a human being - Birds of America unfolds a startlingly brilliant series of portraits of the unhinged, the lost, the unsettled of our America. Lorrie Moore explores the personal and the universal, the idiosyncratic and the mundane, with all the wit, brio, and verve that have made her one of the best storytellers of our time.

Oscar-winning actress Ardith Law is a Hollywood icon. Radiant at sixty-two, she is the epitome of glamour and a highly respected artist. But her success has come at a price: she has a strained relationship with her daughter, Morgan, who at thirty-eight still blames Ardith for putting her career before being a mother. Morgan is a successful plastic surgeon in New York City—and the distance from Ardith's Bel Air mansion is not lost on either of them. Ardith became a single mother when Morgan was seven, after her unfaithful husband died in a helicopter accident.

The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under—but Dickie is spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife, Imelda, is selling off her jewelry on eBay and half-heartedly dodging the attention of fast-talking cattle farmer Big Mike, while their teenage daughter, Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge drink her way through her final exams. As for twelve-year-old PJ, he’s on the brink of running away.

Anna McNichol knows how to take charge. Raised by a single mother, she’s worked to ensure her three children have every advantage she didn’t. And while her marriage has its problems, she values commitment and believes in "till death do us part." Now an empty nester, she’s at the peak of her career and ready to seize the opportunity to focus on her future.

Someone is shooting horses, and Sadie is determined to find out who it is. That is until she begins to suspect that Mark, her boyfriend, may be involved. Will Sadie discover the truth? Will it be too hard to bear?

In a windswept British seaside town, single mum Alice Lake finds a man sitting on the beach outside her house. He has no name and no idea how he got there. Against her better judgment, she invites him inside. Meanwhile, in a suburb of London, 21-year-old Lily Monrose has been married for only three weeks. When her husband fails to come home from work one night, she is left alone in a place where she knows no one and with the police telling her that her husband never existed.

Carly Smith came by her trust issues honestly. A victim of sex trafficking, she's been at the mercy of merciless men, ignored by law enforcement officers who should have helped her, and seemingly rejected by her family. She can't even trust herself to do the right thing. Though she escaped her captors and is working hard on building a new life, the past continues to haunt her when she discovers that the man she couldn't bring herself to report to the police for fear of reliving her captivity is still out there, luring vulnerable girls under the guise of being a modeling agent.