Literary Fiction Family

The disregard of a dying woman's bequest, a girl's attempt to help an impoverished clerk, and the marriage of an idealist and a materialist intersect at an estate called Howards End. There, the lives of three families become entangled. As chance brings them together, societal conventions come into question as does the ownership of Howards End. Through the fate of the estate - as well as the lives of the families who are affiliated with it - Forster creates a brilliant parallel to the fate of English society itself.

At 40, Lena Baker is at a steady and stable moment in life—between wine nights with her two best friends and her wedding just weeks away, she’s happy in love and in friendship—until a confession on her wedding day shifts her world.

When Irene America discovers that her husband, Gil, has been reading her diary, she begins a secret Blue Notebook, stashed securely in a safe deposit box. There she records the truth about her life and her marriage, while turning her Red Diary - hidden where Gil will find it - into a manipulative farce. Alternating between these two records, complemented by unflinching third-person narration, Shadow Tag is an eerily gripping listen.

On a miserable November day in 1967, two women disappear from a working-class town on the Fraser River. The community is thrown into panic, with talk of drifters and murderous husbands. But no one can find a trace of Bette Parsons or Alice McFee. Even the egg seller, Doris Tenpenny, a woman to whom everyone tells their secrets, hears nothing. Ten-year-old Lulu Parsons discovers something, though: a milk-stained note her mother, Bette, left for her father on the kitchen table.

Beverly Lewis' beloved series is about an Amish family in Pennsylvania. The Prodigal, a New York Times best seller, has won over countless fans with its tale of love and redemption. Abram's family is surprised by the prospect of the return of Jonas Mast, a former beau of one of his daughters. Leah cannot believe that Jonas might return from Ohio, and she doesn't know what secrets he'll bring with him.

To be admired by someone we admire - we all yearn for this: the private, electrifying pleasure of being singled out by someone of esteem. But sometimes it can also mean entry to a new kind of life, a bigger world. Greer Kadetsky is a shy college freshman when she meets the woman she hopes will change her life. Faith Frank, dazzlingly persuasive and elegant at 63, has been a central pillar of the women’s movement for decades, a figure who inspires others to influence the world.

At Home Place, the windows are blacked out and food is becoming scarce as a new generation of Cazalets takes up the story. Louise dreams of being a great actress, Clary is an aspiring writer, while Polly, is burdened with knowledge and the need to share it. This is the sequel to "The Light Years".

Clayton Burroughs comes from a long line of outlaws. For generations the Burroughs clan has made their home on Bull Mountain in North Georgia, running shine, pot, and meth over six state lines, virtually untouched by the rule of law. To distance himself from his family's criminal empire, Clayton takes the job of sheriff in a neighboring community to keep what peace he can.

Brenden McCarthy feels like he’s lost everything. His fiancée. His independence. And his passion for life. All due to one mountain-climbing misstep that cost him his sight. But he’s about to gain the last thing he ever expected: a big-hearted black Labrador named Nelson who’s given one last shot at being a Seeing Eye dog. Both are beyond hope and resigned to live alone. And both are about to experience a bond of friendship that develops when they least expect it.

From the American South to the ancient ruins of Rome, and from the horrors of the Holocaust to the lingering trauma of Vietnam, Beach Music sings with life's pain and glory. Jack McCall, an American expatriate in Rome with his young daughter, is trying to find some peace after his wife's suicide. But when his sister-in-law begs him to return home, he finds himself drawn into a painful, intimate search for the one haunting secret in his family's past that can heal his anguished heart.

Meet the Cooke family: Mother and Dad, brother Lowell, sister Fern, and Rosemary, who begins her story in the middle. She has her reasons. “I was raised with a chimpanzee”, she explains. “I tell you Fern was a chimp and already you aren’t thinking of her as my sister. But until Fern’s expulsion...she was my twin, my funhouse mirror, my whirlwind other half and I loved her as a sister”. As a child, Rosemary never stopped talking. Then, something happened, and Rosemary wrapped herself in silence.

Two years after Grace Kelly’s royal wedding, her iconic dress is still all the rage in Paris - and one replica, and the secrets it carries, will inspire three generations of women to forge their own paths in life and in love. Paris, 1958: Rose, a seamstress at a fashionable atelier, has been entrusted with sewing a Grace Kelly-look-alike gown for a wealthy bride-to-be.

Mary Lennox, a spoiled, ill-tempered, and unhealthy child, comes to live with her reclusive uncle in Misselthwaite Manor after the death of her parents. With the help of a robin, Mary finds the door to a secret garden, neglected and hidden for years. When she decides to restore the garden in secret, the story becomes a charming journey into the places of the heart, where faith restores health, flowers refresh the spirit, and the magic of the garden brings happiness to Mary.

Lee Smith is one of today's most critically acclaimed authors writing about contemporary life in the South. In Family Linen, with a remarkable economy of description and dialogue, Smith sketches eccentric, yet familiar characters moving through a family drama that resonates with both tension and humor.

It's New Year's Day, and the residents of a small fishing town are ready to start their lives anew. Leo takes his two young sons out to the lake to write resolutions on paper boats. That same frigid morning, Vera sets out for a walk with her dog along the lake, leaving her husband in bed with a hangover. But she never returns. She places a call to the police saying she's found a boy in the woods, but the call is cut short by a muffled cry. Did one of Leo's sons see Vera? What are they hiding from the police? And why are they so scared of their own father?

I'll Take You There centers on Felix, a film scholar who runs a Monday night movie club in what was once a vaudeville theater. One evening, while setting up a film in the projectionist booth, he's confronted by the ghost of Lois Weber, a trailblazing motion picture director from Hollywood's silent film era. Lois invites Felix to revisit - and in some cases relive - scenes from his past as they are projected onto the cinema's big screen.

Grace has what one might call a 'full and interesting life', which is code for not married and has no kids. Her life is the envy of her straight friends, but all this time she has been waiting in secret for love to hit her so hard that she would run out of breath, like the way a wave in a rough sea bowls you over, slams you into the sand and nearly drowns you.

Eve Fletcher is trying to figure out what comes next. A 46-year-old divorcée whose beloved only child has just left for college, Eve is struggling to adjust to her empty nest when one night her phone lights up with a text message. Sent from an anonymous number, the mysterious sender tells Eve, "U R my MILF!" Over the months that follow, that message comes to obsess Eve. Before long, Eve's online fixations begin to spill over into real life, revealing new romantic possibilities that threaten to upend her quiet suburban existence.

We should have known the end was near. So begins Imbolo Mbue’s powerful second novel, How Beautiful We Were. Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, it tells of a people living in fear amid environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of cleanup and financial reparations to the villagers are made - and ignored. The country’s government, led by a brazen dictator, exists to serve its own interests.

En el Chile del siglo XIX, Aurora del Valle sufre un trauma brutal que borra de su mente los primeros cinco años de su vida. Criada por su ambiciosa abuela, Paulina del Valle, crece en un ambiente privilegiado, libre de muchas de las limitaciones que oprimen a las mujeres de su época pero atormentada por horribles pesadillas. Cuando debe afrontar la traición del hombre al que ama y la soledad, Aurora decide explorar el misterio de su pasado.