Home Fiction

Benji Krueger loves playing hockey with his friends at his home on Prairie Lake. But Benji's heart is broken when his parents announce that they're having a baby and the family will have to move. To make matters worse, his older sister, Raina, is a skilled hockey player and loves to embarrass Benji on the ice. When Benji learns about a pond hockey tournament by his house, he rallies his friends to take on his sister's team. Will Benji finally defeat his sister on their own home ice and learn to have confidence in his own abilities?

Of especially naughty children, it is sometimes said: “They must have been raised by wolves.” The Incorrigible children actually were. Discovered in the forests of Ashton Place, the Incorrigibles are no ordinary children: Alexander keeps his siblings in line with gentle nips; Cassiopeia has a bark that is (usually) worse than her bite; and Beowulf is alarmingly adept at chasing squirrels.

When eight-year-old Daisy Mason vanishes from her family’s Oxford home during a costume party, Detective Inspector Adam Fawley knows that nine times out of ten, the offender is someone close to home. And Daisy’s family is certainly strange—her mother is obsessed with keeping up appearances, while her father is cold and defensive under questioning. And then there’s Daisy’s little brother, so withdrawn and uncommunicative . . .

In a discontented kingdom, civil war is brewing. To unify the divided people, Conner, a nobleman of the court, devises a cunning plan to find an impersonator of the king's long-lost son and install him as a puppet prince. Four orphans are recruited to compete for the role, including a defiant boy named Sage. Sage knows that Conner's motives are more than questionable, yet his life balances on a sword's point - he must be chosen to play the prince or he will certainly be killed. But Sage's rivals have their own agendas as well.

Piper McCaulley doesn’t know which way is up or down. Her gran, her last remaining family, died two weeks before Christmas, leaving Piper to reevaluate her life. Did she really want to stay chained to the family business just to hang on to this old house? She didn’t care that her great-great-great grandpa had built it with his own hands. How could she make huge life decisions if she’d never even been outside of Alaska?

Since returning from London, the three Incorrigible children and their plucky governess, Miss Penelope Lumley, have been exceedingly busy. Despite their wolfish upbringing, the children have taken up bird-watching, with no unfortunate consequences - yet. And a perplexing gift raises hard questions about how Penelope came to be left at the Swanburne Academy for Poor Bright Females and why her parents never bothered to return for her. But hers is not the only family mystery to solve....

Always Coming Home is Ursula K. Le Guin’s fictional ethnography of the Kesh, a people of the far future living in a post-apocalyptic Napa Valley. Having survived ecological catastrophe brought on by relentless industrialization, the Kesh are a peaceful people who reject governance and the constriction of genders, limit population growth to prevent overcrowding and preserve resources, and maintain a healthy community in which everyone works to contribute to its well-being. This richly imagined story unfolds through a series of narrated “translations” that illuminate individual lives.

In 1951 South Africa, Sunny Kumar is part of an elite, scientific team developing futuristic AI technology, the likes of which the world has never seen. When there is a security breach at the mining corporation lab where he works, Sunny is forced to run for his life losing his country, the woman he loves, and himself. Trapped in a dangerous, high-stakes rivalry between two powerful nations, he must confront his past to discover the truth and clear his name.

Elsie Lavender and Homer Hickam (the father of the author) were high school classmates in the West Virginia coalfields, graduating just as the Great Depression began. When Homer asked for her hand, Elsie instead headed to Orlando, where she sparked with a dancing actor named Buddy Ebsen (yes, that Buddy Ebsen). But when Buddy headed for New York, Elsie's dreams of a life with him were crushed, and eventually she found herself back in the coalfields, married to Homer.

With nowhere else to go, Harriet Colgan has returned to the sleepy village of Cranfield to sell her beloved aunt and uncle’s cottage, the only place she ever called home. When she arrives at Lavender Cottage, Harriet discovers plans to replace the beautiful lavender fields, her uncle’s pride and joy, with an industrial warehouse.With time on her hands, she realises she must fight to protect her family’s legacy and the village of Cranfield as well. Workaholic businessman Joe Randall was expecting an easy purchase of the lavender fields.

Nine-year-old Levi King knew he should have left for home sooner; now he's alone in the darkness of vast Caddo Lake, in a boat whose motor just died. A sudden noise distracts him - and all goes dark. Darren Mathews is trying to emerge from another kind of darkness; after the events of his previous investigation, his marriage is in a precarious state of rebuilding, and his career and reputation lie in the hands of his mother, who's never exactly had his best interests at heart. Now she holds the key to his freedom, and she's not above a little maternal blackmail to press her advantage.

Emily Starr had never known what it was to be lonely - until her beloved father died. In this, the first of the Emily novels, young Emily is orphaned and goes to live with her mother's snobbish relatives at New Moon Farm. Sure that she'll never be happy there, Emily endures her stern Aunt Elizabeth and malicious classmates by holding her head high and using her quick wit.

Step into the world of Bear and Mandy Logan, a father-daughter duo bound by loyalty, survival, and a shared past shadowed by danger. From Wall Street Journal bestselling author L.T. Ryan and K.M. Rought, these first three pulse-pounding thrillers take you across small towns and forgotten communities, where mysteries run deep and justice is anything but simple.

Summer is over, and Dad begins his important position at an Indiana hospital. Like it or not, Bloomington is the Baxter Family’s new home. As school starts, everyone finds reasons to be excited about the move. Everyone, that is, except Ashley. Ashley desperately misses the home and friends she left behind. As she realizes her siblings have their struggles, too, she can’t help but wonder if unlikely friends can be the best friends of all? And could time and love from her family be enough to make a house feel like home?

Unless you are a slug, a sea anemone, or mildew, you probably prefer not to be damp. You might also prefer not to listen to this audiobook, in which the Baudelaire siblings descend into the depths of despair, underwater. The horrors they encounter are too numerous to list, and include mushrooms, a mechanical monster, a distressing message from a lost friend, and tap dancing.

Belva Plain captured readers' hearts with her first novel, Evergreen, which Delacorte published more than 30 years ago. It topped the New York Times best-seller list for 41 weeks and aired as an NBC-TV miniseries. In total, more than 20 of her books have been New York Times best sellers. Today 30 million copies of her books are in print.

Like many couples, Michael and Jolene Zarkades have to face the pressures of everyday life—children, careers, bills, chores—even as their twelve-year marriage is falling apart. Then a deployment sends Jolene deep into harm's way and leaves defense attorney Michael at home, unaccustomed to being a single parent to their two girls. As a mother, it agonizes Jolene to leave her family, but as a solider, she has always understood the true meaning of duty. In her letters home, she paints a rose-colored version of her life on the front lines, shielding her family from the truth.

You are presumably looking here for clues to the shocking conclusion of this terminal audiobook, or the ending of the end. The end of the end is the best place to begin the end, because if you listen to the end from the beginning of the beginning of the end to the end of the end of the end, you will arrive at the end of the end of your rope.

Siblings Kate, Michael, and Emma have been in one orphanage after another for the last ten years, passed along like lost baggage. Yet these unwanted children are more remarkable than they could possibly imagine. Ripped from their parents as babies, they are being protected from a horrible evil of devastating power, an evil they know nothing about.

Former New Yorker and interior designer Tara Meehan is eagerly anticipating the grand opening of her architectural salvage shop Renewals in her newly adopted home of Galway. She's in the midst of preparations when heiress Veronica O'Farrell bursts in to announce she's ready for some renewal of her own. To celebrate one year of sobriety, she's invited seven people she wronged in her drinking days to historic Ballynahinch Castle Hotel in neighboring Connemara to make amends in style. But perhaps one among them is not so eager to pardon her past misdeeds.