New England Fiction

I just found out I have an identical twin. Wasn’t looking for one. Would have preferred to not have one, but here we are. We have nothing in common. I was adopted by a successful businessman who raised me to see life as a game and gave me the skills to win it. Him? He is about to lose his family’s farm. You heard me—farm. Lucky for him, I’m a firm believer that when it comes to family, no one goes to battle alone. I’m in. I’ve switched lives with him and will use every business trick I know to save his farm.

After losing her beloved family’s Cape Cod inn right after culinary school, chef Lana Kelly converts her late father’s old fish market next door into a successful restaurant. However, over the years, she’s kept her eye on the inn with dreams to expand. She also hopes she can acquire the property for her grandad, so he’ll know it’s back in the family before his dementia causes the memory to vanish for good. When the inn goes up for sale, she rushes to put in an offer, only to have it denied immediately.

Meet the Laments—the affably dysfunctional globetrotting family at the center of George Hagen’s exuberant debut novel. Howard is an engineer who dreams of irrigating the Sahara and lives by the motto “Laments move!” His wife Julia is a fiery spirit who must balance her husband’s oddly peripatetic nature with unexpected aspirations of her own. And Will is the “waif with a paper-thin heart” who is given to Howard and Julia in return for their own child who has been lost in a bizarre maternity ward mishap.

Monkeys is the remarkable story of a decade in the life of the Vincents, a colorful Irish Catholic family from the Boston suburbs. On the surface, they seem happy with their vivacious mother Rosie at the helm. But underneath, the Vincents struggle to maintain the appearance of wealth and stability while dealing with the effects of their father’s alcoholism. When a sudden accident strikes, their love for one another is tested like never before.

Getting dumped was not how Lara wanted to start her day. Toss in an increase in her rent and an unsustainable job and things might not be able to get much worse. However, after a trip to Bellaluna's, she scores a new job working for Mayor Jack Hanson - planning the Halloween parade. But as the two work to create the most memorable Halloween celebration Moonbright has ever seen, old feelings are stirred up.

There's more trouble on the farm, but Duck has nothing to do with it, for once. This time the trouble is a four-ounce puff of fluff who just won't go to sleep, and whose play-with-me peeps are keeping the whole barnyard awake with him. How do you get a baby duck to hit the hay? Poor Farmer Brown will find out - and Duck might just find himself in trouble after all.