Family Life Fiction

It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas' house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and slowly, in their care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household—where everything is so well tended to—and this summer must soon come to an end.

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.

Several things about 14-year-old Georgia Nicolson's life are very wrong. Her bedroom smells like her little sister probably peed somewhere, but she can?t find where. Angus, her enormous cat, keeps terrorizing Mrs. Next Door's poodle. Dad's gone off to look for work in New Zealand. And one of her friends has rated Georgia's nose a zero on a scale from 1-10. But what's really driving her crazy is that Sex God Robbie doesn't give her the time of day.

Fresh off a bad breakup with a longtime boyfriend, Nantucket sweetheart Lizbet Keaton is desperately seeking a second act. When she’s named the new general manager of the Hotel Nantucket, a once Gilded Age gem turned abandoned eyesore, she hopes that her local expertise and charismatic staff can win the favor of their new London billionaire owner, Xavier Darling, as well as that of Shelly Carpenter, the wildly popular Instagram tastemaker who can help put them back on the map.

Good with his hands, be it crafting a piece of wood, playing his guitar, or pleasing a lover - he excels at them all. Friendly, flirty, and talented, he's cool under pressure, and hot everywhere else. But he keeps his heart closed, even as his interest and emotions are tested. Olivia Rourke works alongside him at BAM. Talented, private, and intriguing, she touches something inside him he can't deny. He wants to know her. In every possible way. He wants her to know him. Her past tells her to stay clear. Van is everything that she wants, and exactly what she cannot have.

On the eve of her wedding to Nicholas Young, heir to one of the greatest fortunes in Asia, Rachel should be over the moon. She has a flawless Asscher-cut diamond from JAR, a wedding dress she loves more than anything found in the salons of Paris, and a fiancé willing to sacrifice his entire inheritance in order to marry her. But Rachel still mourns the fact that her birthfather, a man she never knew, won't be able to walk her down the aisle.

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.

Michaela, beloved wife and mother of two, lies in a coma. Doctors have told her husband Liam not to expect a recovery, but he maintains hope that love can accomplish what medicine cannot. Day after day, he sits by her bedside, holding her hand, sharing the stories of their life together. Then he discovers the evidence of his wife's secret past - a long hidden first marriage to international movie star Julian True.

Fiona doesn't remember going to sleep. But when she opens her eyes, she discovers her entire world has been altered - her house is abandoned and broken, and the entire neighborhood is barren and dead. Even stranger is the tattoo on her right wrist - a black oval with five marks on either side - that she doesn't remember getting but somehow knows she must cover at any cost. And she's right.

Inspired by a near-mythic event on the wild Florida frontier at the turn of the 20th century, Shadow Country re-imagines the legend of the inspired Everglades sugar planter and notorious outlaw E. J. Watson, who drives himself relentlessly toward his own violent end at the hands of neighbors who mostly admired him, in a killing that obsessed his favorite son.

Willy Wonka's famous chocolate factory is opening at last! But only five lucky children will be allowed inside. And the winners are: Augustus Gloop, an enormously fat boy whose hobby is eating; Veruca Salt, a spoiled-rotten brat whose parents are wrapped around her little finger; Violet Beauregarde, a dim-witted gum-chewer with the fastest jaws around; Mike Teavee, a toy pistol-toting gangster-in-training who is obsessed with television; and Charlie Bucket, our hero, a boy who is honest and kind, brave and true, and good and ready for the wildest time of his life!

The Vanderbeekers have always lived in the brownstone on 141st Street. It's practically another member of the family. So when their reclusive, curmudgeonly landlord decides not to renew their lease, the five siblings have 11 days to do whatever it takes to stay in their beloved home and convince the dreaded Beiderman just how wonderful they are. And all is fair in love and war when it comes to keeping their home. A modern classic in the making reminiscent of the Penderwicks series.

Dannie Kohan lives her life by the numbers. She is nothing like her lifelong best friend - the wild, whimsical, believes-in-fate Bella. Her meticulous planning seems to have paid off after she nails the most important job interview of her career and accepts her boyfriend’s marriage proposal in one fell swoop, falling asleep completely content. But when she awakens, she’s suddenly in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and beside a very different man.

Catherine, a 12-year-old girl with big responsibilities, loves her autistic younger brother David and makes lists of rules she thinks will help him get by. But she often feels that her parents, focused on special care for David, forget that she exists, too.

For decades, Donald J. Sobol’s kid detective Encyclopedia Brown has thrilled amateur sleuths of all ages with his uncanny knack for solving the most difficult mysteries. Sobol was even honored with a special Edgar Award for this timeless series. Ten-year-old Encyclopedia, the son of Idaville’s police chief, investigates all sorts of curious cases for kids around the neighborhood—all for 25 cents a day, plus expenses.

Julie Parker’s kids are her greatest gift. Still, she’s not exactly heartbroken when they ask to skip a big Christmas. Her son, Nick, is taking a belated honeymoon with his bride, Blair, while her daughter, Dana, will purge every reminder of the guy who dumped her. Again. Julie feels practically giddy for one-on-one holiday time with Heath, the (much) younger man she’s secretly dating. But her plans go from cozy to chaotic when Nick and Dana plead for Christmas at the family cabin in memory of their late father, Julie’s ex.

The adventures of Laura Ingalls and her family continue as Pa, Ma, Laura, Mary, Carrie, and little Grace bravely face the hard winter of 1880-81 in their little house in the Dakota Territory. Blizzards cover the little town with snow, cutting off all supplies from the outside. Soon there is almost no food left, so young Almanzo Wilder and a friend make a dangerous trip across the prairie to find some wheat. Finally a joyous Christmas is celebrated in a very unusual way in this most exciting of all the Little House books.

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.

It isn't that Lizzie doesn't want to stay Amish. It's just that there is so much to figure out. Like why can't she let her hair a little looser on top? And why can't she wear shoes with a little bit more of a heel? And will she ever really just know for a fact who she is going to marry, like her next-older sister, Emma, does? And how does it happen that her just-younger sister, Mandy, is going on a date before Lizzie ever has a real one?

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?