Literary Fiction Family

An unlikely criminal, Andy Durant is robbing gas stations to buy back land once connected to his wife's farm in upstate New York. But when he's shot and killed during a robbery, he leaves his wife, Grady, and their three children to fend for themselves. Moving back to the debt-laden farm, Grady ignites a plan that involves getting in the middle of an adjoining neighbor's marriage. Meanwhile, one by one the whole family is charmed by Royal Provo, a young and charismatic orphan working on the property.

I Am Liu Yuejin, by prize-winning Chinese novelist Liu Zhenyun, is a novel of Beijing that paints a microcosm of contemporary China, dealing with classes at the two extremes: the super rich and the migrant workers who make them rich through deceit and corruption. The protagonist, Liu Yuejin, is a work site cook and small-time thief whose bag is stolen. While searching for it, he stumbles upon another bag, which contains a flash disk that chronicles high-level corruption, and sets off a convoluted chase.

In Trinidad, in 1796, teenage Rosa Rendon quietly but purposefully rebels against typical female roles and behavior. Bright, competitive, and opinionated, Rosa sees no reason she should learn to cook and keep house - it is obvious her talents lie in running the farm she expects to be her birthright, despite her two older siblings. But as her homeland goes from Spanish to British rule, it becomes increasingly unclear whether its free black property owners - Rosa's family among them - will be allowed to keep their assets, their land, and ultimately, their freedom.

This is the real world of modern Karachi as seen through the eyes of a young woman in an elite family. Here are the hidden dramatic realities of the upper class, the undertow of religion, revealing the truth sometimes spoken in hushed whispers, more often swept away by the flourish of silk saris at extravagant dinner parties...or perhaps never mentioned at all.

In the great wave of husband-leaving ushered in by the Sexual Revolution, Molly Held frees herself from her cold, flagrantly unfaithful husband after their final quarrel turns violent. With her five-year-old son, she lights out for an Upper West Side apartment and the new life she hopes to find with Conrad Schwartzberg - the charismatic radical lawyer who has recently become her lover. Having escaped from a desert, she lands in a swamp.

Cy Riemer is the patriarch of a successful and loving Chicago family. But not all is copacetic in Cy's world. The scientific newsletter he publishes is foundering financially, his ex-wife still relies on him for money and intimacy, and he can never seem to find the time or the wherewithal to relax. Much of Cy's stress is caused by the trouble he has with his brilliant and duplicitous son, Jack.

From naughty children to rebellious teenagers, Rosie and Alex have stuck by each other through thick and thin. But just as they're discovering the joys of teenage nights on the town and dating disasters, they're separated. Alex's family moves from Dublin to America, and Alex goes with them. For good. Rosie's lost without him. But on the eve of her departure to join Alex in Boston, Rosie gets news that will change her life forever and keep her at home in Ireland.

With The Sportswriter, in 1986, Richard Ford commenced a cycle of novels that, 10 years later, after Independence Day won both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award, was hailed by The Times of London as "an extraordinary epic [that] is nothing less than the story of the 20th century itself." Now, a decade later, Frank Bascombe returns, with a new lease on life (and real estate), and more acutely in thrall to life's endless complexities than ever before.

Both highly suspenseful and deeply moving, The Deep End of the Ocean imagines every mother's worst nightmare - the disappearance of a child - as it explores a family's struggle to endure, even against extraordinary odds. Filled with compassion, humor, and brilliant observations about the texture of real life, here is a story of rare power, one that will touch listeners' hearts and make them celebrate the emotions that make us all one.

On her 49th birthday, Anna Fergusson, Boston neuroscientist and dedicated introvert, arrives at an unwanted crossroads when the funding for her research lab is cut. With her confidence shattered and her future uncertain, on impulse she rents a cabin for a year on Australia's Great Barrier Reef. However Turtle Island, alive with sea birds and nesting Green turtles, is not the retreat she expected.

Cam McHugh died in a tragic farming accident. He has a message for his son and only his dog can hear him. Halo is no ordinary dog. Not only can she see ghosts, she can talk to them, too. If only she could tell Hunter that death doesn't mean an end to being around the ones we love, maybe she could help him find his voice again. Unfortunately, she may never have the chance. Dognapped by the man who threatens to destroy the only family she has ever known, Halo must escape and find her way home - hundreds of miles away.

Pursuing literary glory, Edward Gunther gives up his job as a copywriter, sells everything he owns, and moves with his wife and three children from Chicago to Venice. But success does not come as quickly or as painlessly as Edward had hoped. During his first month in Italy, he struggles to get his essays published, argues with his wife about the family finances, and embarks on an unsteady affair with Nina Callahan, an American poet who insists on keeping him at arm's length.

In this tale of two lives immutably intertwined, Sister Rachel is a nun in a failing order, a painter with a history of madness, devoted to her dying Mother General. Her brother Phillip is an accountant serving time for embezzlement, a man capable of great violence and anger who has turned his back not simply on the church, but faith as well. They have nothing in common except for a shared childhood tragedy. Or do they?

Until John Wilson met the warm, wise woman who became his fourth wife, the object of his most intense devotion had always been the work of William Shakespeare. From his feat of memorizing Romeo and Juliet and half a dozen other plays as a student to his evangelical zeal as a professor, John's faith in the Bard has shaped his life. But now his mental powers have been diminished by dementia, and his wife has reluctantly moved him to a residential care facility.

Seduced by Slim's stories of the privations of a cross-country trek that ended in the violence of an historic riot and tales of Depression-era work camps, Edie MacDonald has followed him from mine to mine, where he finds work and she cares for their son, Belly, in the thin shelter of canvas tents. Until now. Edie has left Slim behind, passed out in an unheated apartment on the coldest day of the year. Boarding a train with Belly, she travels westward. When the train struggles through a snowstorm and possible calamity, the lens shifts between Belly's perspective and Edie's.

Frustrated 35-year-old plumber Isaac Sullivan believes he has both the intellect and skill to be a surgeon. Forced to take over his father's plumbing business straight out of high school, Isaac's dreams of attending the University of Michigan fell by the wayside. However, the unfortunate setback didn't stop him entirely. For the past decade, he has absorbed every medical textbook and journal available to him. For practical experience, Isaac performs surgeries on the wildlife around his house, preparing for the day he attends Michigan.

The Deer at the River follows an especially intense period in the life of Noah Dubbins, a young carpenter and father of three living in rural New Hampshire. Noah’s life changes drastically when he returns from work one day to find his wife, Ruth, behaving erratically and reenacting the birth of their youngest son. Ruth is committed to a psychiatric hospital and Noah is left to look after their children on his own. In his loneliness, he wrestles with his lust for an old flame and a burgeoning confusion about his sexuality.

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.

In Brooklyn's unforgiving urban jungle, Maggie Moore is torn between answering her own needs and catering to the desirous men who dominate her life. Confronted by her quarrelsome Irish immigrant father, the feckless lover who may become her husband, and others, Maggie must learn to navigate a cycle of loss, separation, and hope as she forges her own path toward happiness.

Los Angeles, California: Clem Jasper is a trust fund kid with a world famous rock musician for a father. When he dies suddenly (playing ping pong) she discovers he's left her a strange legacy: a series of letters that take her on a mysterious road trip around California. Ignoring her aunt's suggestion that she pitch the trip as a reality show, she embarks on her own to discover just what it was that her father meant her to find. What secret could be so powerful that he had to die before telling her?