Family Life Fiction

The third book in the #1 New York Times best-selling series from Jeff Kinney, The Last Straw is sure to please young readers. Greg Heffley makes a New Year's resolution to help others improve, but his brand of truthful advice doesn't go over well. Plus, Greg's dad thinks military school might be just the attitude adjustment Greg needs.

Almost ten years have passed since Julia Win came back from Burma, her father's native country. Though she is a successful Manhattan lawyer, her private life is at a crossroads; her boyfriend recently left her, she has suffered a miscarriage, and she is, despite her wealth, unhappy with her professional life. Julia is lost and exhausted. One day, in the middle of an important business meeting, she hears a stranger's voice in her head that causes her to leave the office without explanation.

Meri's family has been producing doctors for so many generations that no one remembers why, so when she flunks out of medical school, she runs as far from her parents as she can get. In the small mountain town of Canyon Mines, Colorado, she takes a job at the Inn at Hidden Run B&B. And waits. It's only a matter of time. What she doesn't count on is genealogist Jillian Parisi-Duffy and her father, Nolan, having her back when it takes everything she has not to bolt again but to stay and face the truth that only unfolding her family's history will reveal....

Lindsay and Kerrie Ann are sisters who have known hardship from an early age. Without guidance from their neglectful mother, their only aid came from an unlikely source, a retired exotic dancer by the name of Miss Honi Love. When the girls' mother was sent to prison, Miss Honi tried unsuccessfully to save them from being separated and sent into foster care. Thirty years later, Lindsay is still trying to reconnect with her sister.

It was a typical evening at a mall outside Portland, Maine. Three teenage friends waited for the movie to start. A boy flirted with the girl selling sunglasses. Mothers and children shopped together, and the manager at the video game store tended to customers. Then the shooters arrived. The chaos and carnage lasted only eight minutes before the killers were taken down. But for those who lived through it, the effects would last forever.

Nebula Award-winning duo Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough add another thrilling chapter to their sweeping Petaybee saga with Changelings. Yana and Sean are beside themselves with joy over the arrival of their twins Ronan and Murel. But the children's shape-changing abilities attract unwanted attention from an off-world scientist. Now Yana and Sean will do anything to protect their precocious youths from danger.

When Alexis's little sister Kasey becomes obsessed with an antique doll, Alexis thinks she is just being her usual weird self. Things get weirder, though, when their house starts changing. Doors open and close by themselves; water boils on the unlit stove; and an unplugged air conditioner blasts cold air.

Mackenzie Blue is a star! Or she will be...as soon as she gets the part of an aspiring singer on a new TV pilot! But juggling auditions and the rest of her life turns out to be harder than Zee thought. Zee's friends are helping her hold everything together. But Zee doesn't like having to bail on plans--and her friends--to run to another audition. Is being a star worth it?

Dan West wonders which is more important to him: Helping his long-time friend win back his business after being accused of stealing money from the company, or coaching his 11-year-old son’s soccer team trying to win an improbable championship. Money and prestige don’t motivate Dan. Rather, family, work and coaching soccer are the underpinnings of his life. He revels in the simple joys like hanging out with his wife Jill, mentoring a young lawyer at his firm, and watching the boys connect on three passes before drilling the ball into the back of the net.

Fifteen-year-old Christopher Boone has Asperger's Syndrome, a condition similar to autism. He doesn't like to be touched or meet new people, he cannot make small talk, and he hates the colors brown and yellow. He is a math whiz with a very logical brain who loves solving puzzles that have definite answers.

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.

Lucrezia Tornabuoni, brought up in the Palazzo Medici alongside Cosimo's children, always expected to marry his charismatic younger son, Giovanni. But now in later life, she finds herself imprisoned in a loveless marriage with the gout-ridden elder son, Piero. Like Cosimo, she sees the future salvation of the family in the hands of her own son, Lorenzo the Magnificent, but how can she be sure he inherits the mantle before Piero ruins everything?

Children and adults alike will delight in this heart-warming tale of a precocious girl who discovers, to her dismay, that her parents are about to have a baby. Anastasia's hilarious lists of her likes and dislikes - sprinkled throughout the story - offer a lighthearted counterpoint to poignant moments that reveal the worries and fears of a fourth grader.

Deep in the heart of Appalachia stands a crooked farmhouse miles from any road. The Morrows keep to themselves, and it's served them well so far. When girls go missing off the side of the highway, the cops don't knock on their door. Which is a good thing, seeing what's buried in the Morrows' backyard. But 19-year-old Michael Morrow isn't like the rest of his family. He doesn't take pleasure in the screams that echo through the trees.

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.

Kylie Jean wants to win the Spelling Bee.

Kylie Jean is her big brother's biggest fan when he's on the field.

Maleeka Madison is a dark skinned African-American girl. She feels uncomfortable and wishes she had lighter skin. When her teacher, Miss Saunders, who suffers from a rare skin condition, shows that there is more to people than the color of their skin, Maleeka learns to appreciate and accept who she truly is.

To escape the stress of the holidays, the Heffleys decide to get out of town and go to a resort instead of celebrating Christmas at home. But what's billed as a stress-free vacation becomes a holiday nightmare.

Meet Zezé—Brazil’s naughtiest and most loveable boy, his talent for mischief matched only by his great kindness. When he grows up he wants to be a ‘poet with a bow-tie’, but for now he entertains himself playing pranks on the residents of his family’s poor Rio de Janeiro neighbourhood and inventing friends to play with. That is, until he meets a real friend, and his life begins to change.