Family Relationships Fiction

Emmett Atwater thought Babel's game sounded easy. Get points. Get paid. Go home. But it didn't take long for him to learn that Babel's competition was full of broken promises, none darker or more damaging than the last one. Now Emmett and the rest of the Genesis spaceship survivors must rally and forge their own path through a new world. Their mission from Babel is simple: extract nyxia, the most valuable material in the universe, and play nice with the indigenous Adamite population. But Emmett and the others quickly realize they are caught between two powerful forces.

Two sisters, one farm. A family is split when their father leaves their shared inheritance entirely to Helen, his younger daughter. Despite baking award-winning pies at the local nursing home, her older sister, Edith, struggles to make what most people would call a living. So she can't help wondering what her life would have been like with even a portion of the farm money her sister kept for herself.

Ariana Ruiz wants to be noticed. But as an autistic girl who never talks, she goes largely ignored by her peers—despite her bold fashion choices. So when cute, popular Luis starts to pay attention to her, Ari finally feels seen. Luis’s attention soon turns to something more, and they have sex at a party—while Ari didn’t say no, she definitely didn’t say yes. Before she has a chance to process what happened and decide if she even has the right to be mad at Luis, the rumor mill begins churning.

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.

It is spring. A young woman, left by her husband, starts a new life in a Tokyo apartment. Territory of Light follows her over the course of a year as she struggles to bring up her two-year-old daughter alone. Her new home is filled with light streaming through the windows, so bright she has to squint, but she finds herself plummeting deeper into darkness, becoming unstable, untethered. As the months come and go and the seasons turn, she must confront what she has lost and what she will become.

After escaping the trauma of the Umbrella Lady’s home, 13-year-old Saffron Faith Anders is determined to find the father who abandoned her all those years ago. But when she finds him in a nearby town, Saffron is shocked to discover that he has married a woman he clearly had been involved with before her mother’s death. Worse, her father insists Saffron pretend to be his niece so he can continue to con his new wife’s family. Desperate for her father’s love, she goes along with the farce, but it soon becomes clear that perhaps it is better to face the world alone....

Mann is only 13, yet he has already had to deal with more than most go through in a lifetime. His family is still reeling from the tragic shooting death of his little brother, Jason, each person coping with grief in his or her own way.

Never in her life has Harlow felt as low as she does now. Even a beating from her mother was easier to take then the humiliation she just suffered at the hands of the Summer's siblings. Unable to return home due to a promise made to her foster father, she has to stay on until her commitments have concluded. With her new friends Alex and Shane trying to convince her to stay, and her grandparents and father of the same mind, Harlow's heart is torn in two. But a mysterious phone call and a possible job opportunity may just swing the pendulum to one side.

As 14-year-old Christy leaves her family's Wisconsin farm to spend the summer at her wealthy aunt and uncle's home in Newport Beach, she hopes this will be the best summer of her life. When she meets surfer Todd with his screaming silver blue eyes, she's certain it will be. But when the summer doesn't unfold as Christy had hoped, she wonders if she'll keep her promise to her parents not to do anything she'll regret. Will she do anything to get Todd's attention, to be accepted, to force her summer to give her everything it promised?

Seventeen-year-old Bianca Piper is cynical and loyal, and she doesn’t think she’s the prettiest of her friends by a long shot. She’s also way too smart to fall for the charms of man-slut and slimy school hottie Wesley Rush. In fact, Bianca hates him. And when he nicknames her “the Duff,” she throws her Coke in his face. But things aren’t so great at home right now, and Bianca is desperate for a distraction. She ends up kissing Wesley. Worse, she likes it.

When it comes to drumming, Leah Burke is usually on beat - but real life isn't always so rhythmic. She's an anomaly in her friend group: the only child of a young, single mom, and her life is decidedly less privileged. She loves to draw but is too self-conscious to show it. And even though her mom knows she's bisexual, she hasn't mustered the courage to tell her friends - not even her openly gay BFF, Simon. So Leah really doesn't know what to do when her rock-solid friend group starts to fracture in unexpected ways. With prom and college on the horizon, tensions are running high.

For Penny Lee high school was a total nonevent. Her friends were okay, her grades were fine, and while she somehow managed to land a boyfriend, he doesn't actually know anything about her. When Penny heads to college in Austin, Texas, to learn how to become a writer, it's 79 miles and a zillion light-years away from everything she can't wait to leave behind.

Jordan Elliott is a fat, nerdy lesbian and the first junior to be named editor in chief of the school newspaper. Okay, that last part hasn’t happened yet, but it will. It’s positive thinking that has gotten Jordan this far. Ever since Mackenzie West, her friend-turned-enemy, humiliated her at the start of freshman year, Jordan has thrown herself into journalism and kept her eyes trained on the future.

Anna Heath is divorced, a single mum and trying desperately to keep her life in order. Despite her friends' best efforts, Anna has stopped looking for love and is determined to give her daughter, Ruthie, a Christmas to remember. Sam Jackman has just been dealt with life altering news, and all he could think to do was run. He's left his American football team back in the US, stuck a pin in a map, and landed in Richmond, London.

Society implies you need alcohol to get through motherhood. The drinking mom culture is a dangerous trend that threatens the well-being of both parents and children. The notion of having to be the “perfect mom” causes us to feel overwhelmed, unworthy, and in constant comparison, which in turn increases the chances we’ll crack open some alcohol and have a drink. Top that off with the challenge of trying to stay sober in a pandemic! It takes a lot of courage to admit that alcohol isn’t serving you, and to make the decision to begin a sober journey.

Jacky Faber, having been called a pirate and had a price put on her head by the King of England, has no choice but to stay out of sight. Hoping for a safe hiding place, she returns to the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls in Boston, but the calm doesn't last long. On a class field trip to Boston Harbor, the girls are abducted and forced into the hold of the Bloodhound, a ship bound for the slave markets on the Barbary Coast where they will be put up on the auction block and sold into Arab harems.

"Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight . . . " So begins the wish that changes everything—for Geppetto, for the Blue Fairy, and for a little puppet named Pinocchio. The Blue Fairy isn't supposed to grant wishes in the small village of Pariva, but something about this one awakens some long-buried flicker within. Perhaps it's the hope she senses beneath the old man's loneliness. Or maybe it's the fact that long ago, before she was the Blue Fairy, she was a young woman named Chiara from this very village, one with a simple wish: to help others find happiness.

Everything fell apart before we were able to pull ourselves together. When tragedy demands my silence, I have no choice but to give it - because losing a life also means saving so many more. I finally have everything I want. Having my best friend back is a dream come true. But everything at Black Falls High comes at a price, and these boys are mine. I’d do anything for them. Even in ruins. In silence. I’ll bring the chaos.

Stevie and Nora had a love. A secret, epic, once-in-a-lifetime kind of love. They also had a plan: to leave their small, ultra-conservative town and families behind after graduation and move to California, where they could finally stop hiding that love. But then Stevie has a terrible fall. And when she comes to, she can remember nothing of the last two years—not California, not coming to terms with her sexuality, not even Nora. Suddenly, Stevie finds herself in a life she doesn’t quite understand.

Desperate to return home to Earth and claim the reward Babel promised, Emmett and the Genesis team join forces with the Imago. Babel's initial attack left their home city in ruins, but that was just part of the Imago's plan. They knew one thing Babel didn't. This world is coming to an end. Eden's two moons are on a collision course no one can prevent. After building eight secret launch stations, the Imago hoped to lure Babel down to their doomed planet as they left it behind. A perfect plan until the Genesis team's escape route was destroyed.