Books with category đź‘Ş Family saga
Displaying books 1-48 of 186 in total

Speak to Me of Home

2025

by Jeanine Cummins

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Jeanine Cummins comes a deeply felt multigenerational family story that asks: What does it mean to call a place home?

On her wedding day in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1968, Rafaela Acuña y Daubón has mild misgivings, but she marries Peter Brennan Jr. anyway, in a blaze of romantic optimism. She has no way of knowing how dramatically her life will change when she uproots her young family to start over in the American Midwest, unleashing a fleet of disappointments. Against the backdrop of her mother’s isolation in St. Louis, Missouri in the 1980s, Rafaela’s daughter, Ruth Brennan, longs only to belong. Eager to fit in, Ruth lets go of her language, habits, and childhood memories of Puerto Rico. It's not until decades later, when Ruth’s own daughter, Daisy, returns to Puerto Rico that her mother and grandmother begin to truly reflect on the choices that have come to define their lives.

When a hurricane ravages the island in 2023, leaving Daisy critically injured, Rafaela and Ruth return to the city where it all began. As they gather at Daisy’s bedside, they’re confronted by the pasts that brought them to this point. We follow them as they come of age, fall in love, take risks, and contend with all the heartbreaks, triumphs, and reversals of fortune — both good and bad — that make up a meaningful life. As old memories come to light, so do buried secrets, leaving everyone in the family wondering exactly where it is that they belong.

A striking, resonant examination of marriage, family, and identity, Speak to Me of Home is ultimately a story of mothers and daughters that asks: how can three women who share geography and genetics have such wildly different ideas of where it is they come from? And more importantly, can they discover the common language to find their way home?

This Motherless Land

2024

by Nikki May

From the acclaimed author of Wahala, a vibrant decolonial retelling of Mansfield Park: Jane Austen meets The Vanishing Half.

Quiet Funke is happy in Nigeria. She loves her art teacher mother, her professor father, and even her annoying little brother (most of the time). But when tragedy strikes, she’s sent to England, a place she knows only from her mother’s stories. To her dismay, she finds the much-lauded estate dilapidated, the food tasteless, the weather grey. Worse still, her mother’s family are cold and distant. With one exception: her cousin Liv.

Free-spirited Liv has always wanted to break free of her joyless family. She becomes fiercely protective of her little cousin, and her warmth and kindness give Funke a place to heal. The two girls grow into adulthood the closest of friends.

But the choices their mothers made haunt Funke and Liv and when a second tragedy occurs their friendship is torn apart. Against the long shadow of their shared family history, each woman will struggle to chart a path forward, separated by country, misunderstanding, and ambition.

Moving between Somerset and Lagos over the course of two decades, This Motherless Land is a sweeping examination of identity, culture, race, and love that asks how we find belonging and whether a family’s generational wrongs can be righted.

Navola

From the New York Times best-selling author of Wind-Up Girl and The Water Knife comes a sweeping literary fantasy about the young scion from a ruling class family who faces rebellion as he ascends to power.

You must be as sharp as a stilettotore's dagger and as subtle as a fish beneath the waters. This is what it is to be Navolese, this is what it is to be di Regulai.

In Navola, a bustling city-state dominated by a handful of influential families, business is power, and power is everything. For generations, the di Regulai family—merchant bankers with a vast empire—has nurtured tendrils that stretch to the farthest reaches of the known world. And though they claim not to be political, their staggering wealth has bought cities and toppled kingdoms. Soon, Davico di Regulai will be expected to take the reins of power from his father and demonstrate his mastery of the games of Navolese diplomacy: knowing who to trust and who to doubt, and how to read what lies hidden behind a smile.

But in Navola, strange and ancient undercurrents lurk behind the gilt and grandeur—like the fossilized dragon eye in the family's possession, a potent symbol of their raw power and a talisman that seems to be summoning Davico to act.

As tensions rise and the events unfold, Davico will be tested to his limits. His fate depends on the eldritch dragon relic and on what lies buried in the heart of his adopted sister, Celia di Balcosi, whose own family was destroyed by Nalova's twisted politics. With echoes of Renaissance Italy, The Godfather, and Game of Thrones, Navola is a stunning feat of world-building and a mesmerizing depiction of drive and will.

Bear

2024

by Julia Phillips

Bear is a mesmerizing novel of two sisters on a Pacific Northwest island whose lives are upended by an unexpected visitor—a tale of family, obsession, and a mysterious creature in the woods, by the celebrated, bestselling author of Disappearing Earth. They were sisters and they would last past the end of time. Sam and her sister, Elena, dream of another life. On the island off the coast of Washington where they were born and raised, they and their mother struggle to survive.

Sam works long days on the ferry that delivers wealthy mainlanders to their vacation homes while Elena bartends at the local golf club, but even together they can't earn enough to get by, stirring their frustration about the limits that shape their existence. Then one night on the boat, Sam spots a bear swimming the dark waters of the channel. Where is it going? What does it want?

When the bear turns up by their home, Sam, terrified, is more convinced than ever that it's time to leave the island. But Elena responds differently to the massive beast. Enchanted by its presence, she throws into doubt the plan to escape and puts their long-held dream in danger. A story about the bonds of sisterhood and the mysteries of the animals that live among us—and within us, Bear is a propulsive, mythical, rich novel from one of the most acclaimed young writers in America.

Husbands and Lovers

Two women—separated by decades and continents, and united by a mysterious family heirloom—discover second chances at love in this sweeping novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Wives.

A sprawling and exciting new novel from Beatriz Williams, the acclaimed author of A Hundred Summers and The Summer Wives.

The Second Coming

A luminous new novel from the best-selling author of City on Fire, The Second Coming plunges us deep into the lives of a teenage girl and her father as they navigate love, grief, addiction, resurrection, and the restless pull of other people.

When 13-year-old Jolie Aspern drops her phone onto the subway tracks in 2011, her estranged dad, Ethan, seems like the furthest thing from her mind. A convicted felon and recovering addict, Ethan has always struggled to see past himself. But then a call from his ex makes him fear their daughter's in deeper trouble than anyone realizes. Believing he's the only one who can save her, he decides to return to New York with a gift: the whole of his life, its hard-won triumphs and harrowing mistakes...

So begins the intimate epic of Jolie and Ethan: child and adult, apart and together, different yet the same. Their journey toward each other will face opposition from grandparents and siblings and friends. It will strain connections with roommates and benefactors and a probation officer desperate to help. It will push Jolie out past her depth with a mysterious admirer, and Ethan in over his head with his first love, Jolie's mom.

But as father and daughter struggle to find their footing, new vistas beckon: from a surf break in mid-'90s Delaware to group therapy during the Great Recession, from an encampment at Occupy Wall Street to a HoJo on Maryland's Eastern Shore, from the heights of the Brooklyn Bridge to horizons seldom seen in fiction. The Second Coming is at once an incandescent feat of storytelling and an exploration of an enduring mystery: Can we ever really outrun the past, stay true to ourselves while still chasing something new? Full of music and pathos and passion—full of blues—this beautifully attuned work of fiction renews the extraordinary promise of this writer's boundless and unflagging talents.

This Strange Eventful History

2024

by Claire Messud

An immersive, masterful story of a family born on the wrong side of history, from one of our finest contemporary novelists.

Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state—separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. This Strange Eventful History, told with historical sweep, is above all a family of patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of François and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family’s strangeness; of François’s union with Barbara, a woman so culturally different they can barely comprehend one another; of Chloe, the result of that union, who believes that telling these buried stories will bring them all peace.

Inspired by stories of her own family’s history, Claire Messud animates her characters’ rich interior lives amidst the social and political upheaval of a recently vanished world. As profoundly intimate as it is expansive, This Strange Eventful History is “a tour de force... one of those rare novels which a reader doesn’t merely read but lives through with the characters” (Yiyun Li).

Long Island

Long Island unfolds as an intensely moving narrative of secrecy, misunderstanding, and love. We re-encounter Eilis Lacey, the complex and enigmatic protagonist of Brooklyn, now navigating life twenty years later. Eilis, an Irish native, is intertwined with the life of Tony Fiorello, an Italian American plumber. Together, they have forged a life amidst the sprawling family dynamics of Tony's relatives on Long Island.

The year is 1976, and Eilis, in her forties with two teenage children, finds herself without a support system in this still-foreign land. Her connections to Ireland are palpable and potent, yet she has not revisited her homeland in decades. A startling encounter occurs when an Irishman arrives at her door, claiming his wife is pregnant with Tony's child, and intends to leave the baby with Eilis upon its birth.

The narrative masterfully explores Eilis's response to this shocking revelation. Long Island is a tale of unspoken longings and the perilous silences that pervade Eilis's existence. TĂłibĂ­n's skillful storytelling gives voice to these silences, weaving a poignant story of a woman's solitary struggle within her marriage and the profound connections she reestablishes upon her inevitable return to her origins, rediscovering past ways of life and love once thought lost.

Real Americans

2024

by Rachel Khong

From the award-winning author of Goodbye, Vitamin: How far would you go to shape your own destiny? An exhilarating novel of American identity that spans three generations in one family, and asks: What makes us who we are? And how inevitable are our futures?

Real Americans begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets Matthew. Matthew is everything Lily is not: easygoing and effortlessly attractive, a native East Coaster and, most notably, heir to a vast pharmaceutical empire. Lily couldn't be more different: flat-broke, raised in Tampa, the only child of scientists who fled Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Despite all this, Lily and Matthew fall in love.

In 2021, fifteen-year-old Nick Chen has never felt like he belonged on the isolated Washington island where he lives with his single mother, Lily. He can't shake the sense she's hiding something. When Nick sets out to find his biological father, the journey threatens to raise more questions than answers.

In immersive, moving prose, Rachel Khong weaves a profound tale of class and striving, race and visibility, and family and inheritance—a story of trust, forgiveness, and finally coming home.

Exuberant and explosive, Real Americans is a social novel par excellence that asks: Are we destined, or made, and if so, who gets to do the making? Can our genetic past be overcome?

The Truth About the Devlins

2024

by Lisa Scottoline

Lisa Scottoline, the bestselling author of What Happened to the Bennetts, presents another pulse-pounding domestic thriller about family, justice, and the lies that tear us apart.

TJ Devlin is the charming disappointment in the prominent Devlin family, all of whom are lawyers at their highly successful firm—except him. After a stint in prison and rehab for alcoholism, TJ can't get hired anywhere except at the firm, in a make-work job with the title of investigator.

But one night, TJ's world turns upside down after his older brother John confesses that he just murdered one of the clients, an accountant he'd confronted with proof of embezzlement. It seems impossible coming from John, the firstborn son and Most Valuable Devlin.

TJ plunges into the investigation, seizing the chance to prove his worth and save his brother. But in no time, TJ and John find themselves entangled in a lethal web of deception and murder. TJ will fight to save his family, but what he learns might break them first.

The Morningside

2024

by TĂ©a Obreht

From the critically beloved, New York Times bestselling author of The Tiger's Wife and Inland, TĂ©a Obreht presents a magical novel of mothers and daughters, displacement and belonging, and myths both old and new.

There’s the world you can see. And then there’s the one you can’t. Welcome to The Morningside.

After being expelled from their ancestral home in a not-so-distant-future, Silvia and her mother finally settle at The Morningside, a crumbling luxury tower in a place called Island City where Silvia’s aunt Ena serves as the superintendent. Silvia feels unmoored in her new life because her mother has been so diligently secretive about their family's past, and because the once-vibrant city she lives in is now half-underwater.

Silvia knows almost nothing about the place where she was born and spent her early years, nor does she fully understand why she and her mother had to leave. But in Ena there is an opening: a person willing to give the young girl glimpses into the folktales of her demolished homeland, a place of natural beauty and communal spirit that is lacking in Silvia's lonely and impoverished reality.

Enchanted by Ena’s stories, Silvia begins seeing the world with magical possibilities and becomes obsessed with the mysterious older woman who lives in the penthouse of the Morningside. Bezi Duras is an enigma to everyone in the building: She has her own elevator entrance and leaves only to go out at night and walk her three massive hounds, often not returning until the early morning.

Silvia’s mission to unravel the truth about this woman’s life, and her own haunted past, may end up costing her everything. Startling, inventive, and profoundly moving, The Morningside is a novel about the stories we tell—and the stories we refuse to tell—to make sense of where we came from and who we hope we might become.

Wolf at the Table

2024

by Adam Rapp

The Corrections meets We Need to Talk About Kevin in this harrowing multigenerational saga about a family harboring a serial killer in their midst, from the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award finalist playwright Adam Rapp.

It's August in Elmira, a small town in upstate New York, and the year is 1951. While Myra Lee Larkin, newly 13, reads a copy of The Catcher in the Rye secretly under the counter of the local diner, a young Micky Mantle approaches her table, chats her up, offers her a ride home. That night, none of her family believe it was really the Yankees outfielder. The matter consumes her until later that evening when the entire town's attention is torn away to the grisly triple homicide that occurs just three doors down from the Larkins on their quiet suburban street.

Wolf at the Table unfolds from there, tracing the epic, multigenerational saga of the Larkin family over the next fifty years. Myra and her five younger siblings fan out across the Eastern United States, and yet violence seems to follow them everywhere. Her middle sisters, Lexy and Fiona, struggle with class and power, while Alec, the youngest and only boy, finds his fate more and more tightly wound to that of a prominent serial killer. Myra lands in Chicago, serving as a prison nurse to death row inmates while trying to raise her young son, Ronan, after his father ends up in a psychiatric hospital. All the while, Alec descends into ever-darker brushes with violence, and becomes alienated from the rest of the family, sending his mother cryptic postcards full of ominous portent.

It is only the threat of a final confrontation that pulls back the curtain on the myth the family tells itself about its successes, its propriety, and its adherence to good Irish Catholic values. Spanning more than five decades of one family's pursuit of the American dream, Wolf at the Table explores our consistent proximity to violence and its effect over time. Adam Rapp writes with a gorgeous acuity that cuts straight to the heart of each character, and he reveals the devastating reality just beneath the veneer of good society.

Redwood Court

A breathtaking debut about one unforgettable Southern Black family, seen through the eyes of its youngest daughter as she comes of age in the 1990s.

Mika, you sit at our feet all these hours and days, hearing us tell our tales. You have all these stories inside all the stories everyone in our family knows and all the stories everyone in our family tells. You write ’em in your books and show everyone who we are.

So begins award-winning poet DéLana R. A. Dameron’s debut novel, Redwood Court. The baby of the family, Mika Tabor spends much of her time in the care of loved ones, listening to their stories and witnessing their struggles. On Redwood Court, the cul-de-sac in the all-Black working-class suburb of Columbia, South Carolina, where her grandparents live, Mika learns important lessons from the people who raise her: her exhausted parents, who work long hours at multiple jobs while still making sure their kids experience the adventure of family vacations; her older sister, who in a house filled with Motown would rather listen to Alanis Morrisette; her retired grandparents, children of Jim Crow, who realized their own vision of success when they bought their house on the Court in the 1960s, imagining it filled with future generations; and the many neighbors who hold tight to the community they’ve built, committed to fostering joy and love in an America so insistent on seeing Black people stumble and fall.

With visceral clarity and powerful prose, Dameron reveals the devastation of being made to feel invisible and the transformative power of being seen. Redwood Court is a celebration of extraordinary, ordinary people striving to achieve their own American dreams.

Broughtupsy

2024

by Christina Cooke

Broughtupsy is an enthralling debut novel that captures the cinematic yet intimate journey of a young Jamaican woman, AkĂşa, as she grapples with grief and the elusive concept of home.

Tired of feeling unmoored, twenty-year-old Akúa travels from Canada to Jamaica to seek a connection with her estranged sister Tamika following the death of their younger brother Bryson from sickle cell anemia—the same disease that claimed their mother ten years earlier. Akúa's mission is to spread Bryson's ashes and rekindle familial bonds.

During two pivotal weeks, the sisters revisit childhood haunts, revealing the chasm between them and the cultural distance Akúa has traversed. Struggling with her identity, she repeatedly questions, "Am I Jamaican?" Beneath these doubts simmer anger and abandonment issues, manifesting in the unasked question, "Why didn’t you stay with me?"

As AkĂşa disperses her brother's ashes around Kingston, she encounters Jayda, a bold stripper who introduces her to an alternate side of the city. Their growing closeness forces AkĂşa to face the harsh realities of being gay in a devoutly religious family and the broader implications of being a gay woman in Jamaica.

Broughtupsy weaves a narrative that is part family saga, part coming-of-age story, and part exploration of sexual identity. It is a profound narrative that delves into the complexities of family obligations and the lengths one will go to experience the essence of home.

The Bullet Swallower

A dazzling magical realism western in the vein of Cormac McCarthy meets Gabriel García Márquez, The Bullet Swallower follows a Mexican bandido as he sets off for Texas to save his family, only to encounter a mysterious figure who has come, finally, to collect a cosmic debt generations in the making.

In 1895, Antonio Sonoro is the latest in a long line of ruthless men. He's good with his gun and is drawn to trouble but he's also out of money and out of options. A drought has ravaged the town of Dorado, Mexico, where he lives with his wife and children, and so when he hears about a train laden with gold and other treasures, he sets off for Houston to rob it—with his younger brother Hugo in tow. But when the heist goes awry and Hugo is killed by the Texas Rangers, Antonio finds himself launched into a quest for revenge that endangers not only his life and his family, but his eternal soul.

In 1964, Jaime Sonoro is Mexico's most renowned actor and singer. But his comfortable life is disrupted when he discovers a book that purports to tell the entire history of his family beginning with Cain and Abel. In its ancient pages, Jaime learns about the multitude of horrific crimes committed by his ancestors. And when the same mysterious figure from Antonio's timeline shows up in Mexico City, Jaime realizes that he may be the one who has to pay for his ancestors' crimes, unless he can discover the true story of his grandfather Antonio, the legendary bandido El Tragabalas, The Bullet Swallower.

A family saga that's epic in scope and magical in its blood, and based loosely on the author's own great-grandfather, The Bullet Swallower tackles border politics, intergenerational trauma, and the legacies of racism and colonialism in a lush setting and stunning prose that asks who pays for the sins of our ancestors, and whether it is possible to be better than our forebears.

Behind You Is The Sea

Behind You Is the Sea fearlessly confronts stereotypes about Palestinian culture, weaving a remarkable portrait of life's intricate moments, from joyous weddings to heart-wrenching funerals, from shattered hearts to hidden truths. This is a story that challenges perceptions, offering a heartfelt glimpse into the interior lives of those who call this community home.

An exciting debut novel that gives voice to the diverse residents of a Palestinian American community in Baltimore—from young activists in conflict with their traditional parents to the poor who clean for the rich—lives which intersect across divides of class, generation, and religion.

Funny and touching, Behind You Is the Sea brings us into the homes and lives of three main families—the Baladis, the Salamehs, and the Ammars—Palestinian immigrants who've all found a different welcome in America. Their various fates and struggles cause their community dynamic to sizzle and sometimes explode: The wealthy Ammar family employs young Maysoon Baladi, whose own family struggles financially, to clean up after their spoiled teenagers. Meanwhile, Marcus Salameh confronts his father in an effort to protect his younger sister for "dishonoring" their name. Only a trip to Palestine, where Marcus experiences an unexpected and dramatic transformation, can bridge this seemingly unbridgeable divide between the two generations.

Behind You Is the Sea faces stereotypes about Palestinian culture head-on and, shifting perspectives to weave a complex social fabric replete with weddings, funerals, broken hearts, and devastating secrets.

The Book of Fire

2024

by Christy Lefteri

In present-day Greece, deep in an ancient forest, lives a family: Irini, a musician, who teaches children to read and play music; her husband, Tasso, who paints pictures of the forest, his greatest muse; and Chara, their young daughter, whose name means joy. On the fateful day that will forever alter the trajectory of their lives, flames chase fleeing birds across the sky. The wildfire that will consume their home, and their lives as they know it, races toward them.

Months later, as the village tries to rebuild, Irini stumbles upon the man who started the fire, a land speculator who had intended only a small, controlled burn to clear forestland to build on but instead ignited a catastrophe. He is dying, although the cause is unclear, and in her anger at all he took from them, Irini makes a split-second decision that will haunt her.

As the local police investigate the suspicious death, Tasso mourns his father, who has not been seen since before the fire. Tasso's hands were burnt in the flames, leaving him unable to paint, and he struggles to cope with the overwhelming loss of his artistic voice and his beloved forest. Only his young daughter, who wants to repair the damage that's been done, gives him hope for the future.

Gorgeously written, sweeping in scope and intimate in tone, The Book of Fire is a masterful work about the search for meaning in the wake of tragedy, as well as the universal ties that bind people together, and to the land that they call home.

The Storm We Made

2024

by Vanessa Chan

A spellbinding, sweeping novel about a Malayan mother who becomes an unlikely spy for the invading Japanese forces during WWII—and the shocking consequences that rain upon her community and family.

Malaya, 1945. Cecily Alcantara's family is in terrible danger: her fifteen-year-old son, Abel, has disappeared, and her youngest daughter, Jasmin, is confined in a basement to prevent being pressed into service at the comfort stations. Her eldest daughter Jujube, who works at a tea house frequented by drunk Japanese soldiers, becomes angrier by the day.

Cecily knows two things: that this is all her fault; and that her family must never learn the truth.

A decade prior, Cecily had been desperate to be more than a housewife to a low-level bureaucrat in British-colonized Malaya. A chance meeting with the charismatic General Fuijwara lured her into a life of espionage, pursuing dreams of an 'Asia for Asians.' Instead, Cecily helped usher in an even more brutal occupation by the Japanese. Ten years later as the war reaches its apex, her actions have caught up with her. Now her family is on the brink of destruction—and she will do anything to save them.

Spanning years of pain and triumph, told from the perspectives of four unforgettable characters, The Storm We Made is a dazzling saga about the horrors of war; the fraught relationships between the colonized and their oppressors, and the ambiguity of right and wrong when survival is at stake.

Absolution

2023

by Alice McDermott

Absolution is a captivating tale that delves deep into the complexities of forgiveness, redemption, and the human condition. Crafted with Alice Mc Dermott's signature eloquence and insight, the novel takes readers on a profound journey through the lives of its characters as they seek solace and understanding in a world that often seems unforgiving.

In a narrative that weaves past and present, Absolution challenges the reader to confront their own notions of guilt and absolution, while offering a powerful exploration of love, loss, and the possibility of healing. Mc Dermott masterfully creates a poignant story that resonates with the heart and mind, making it an unforgettable reading experience.

The Postcard

2023

by Anne Berest

The Postcard is a moving novel from the bestselling author Anne Berest. In January 2003, the Berest family receive a mysterious, unsigned postcard. On one side was an image of the Opéra Garnier; on the other, the names of their relatives who were killed in Auschwitz: Ephraïm, Emma, Noémie, and Jacques.

Years later, Anne sought to find the truth behind this postcard. She journeys 100 years into the past, tracing the lives of her ancestors from their flight from Russia following the revolution, their journey to Latvia, Palestine, and Paris, the war and its aftermath. What emerges is a thrilling and sweeping tale based on true events that shatters her certainties about her family, her country, and herself.

At once a gripping investigation into family secrets, a poignant tale of mothers and daughters, and an enthralling portrait of 20th-century Parisian intellectual and artistic life, The Postcard tells the story of a family devastated by the Holocaust and yet somehow restored by love and the power of storytelling.

The Unsettled

2023

by Ayana Mathis

From the best-selling author of The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, comes a searing multi-generational novel set in the 1980s in racially and politically turbulent Philadelphia and in the tiny town of Bonaparte, Alabama, about a mother fighting for her sanity and survival.

From the moment Ava Carson and her ten-year-old son, Toussaint, arrive at the Glenn Avenue family shelter in Philadelphia 1985, Ava is already plotting a way out. She is repulsed by the shelter's squalid conditions: their cockroach-infested room, the barely edible food, and the shifty night security guard. She is determined to rescue her son from the perils and indignities of that place, and to save herself from the complicated past that led them there.

Ava has been estranged from her own mother, Dutchess, since she left her Alabama home as a young woman barely out of her teens. Despite their estrangement and the thousand miles between them, mother and daughter are deeply entwined, but Ava can't forgive her sharp-tongued, larger than life mother whose intractability and bouts of debilitating despair brought young Ava to the outer reaches of neglect and hunger. Ava wants to love her son differently, better.

But when Toussaint’s father, Cass, reappears, she is swept off course by his charisma, and the intoxicating power of his radical vision to destroy systems of racial injustice and bring about a bold new way of communal living. Meanwhile, in Alabama, Dutchess struggles to keep Bonaparte, once a beacon of Black freedom and self-determination, in the hands of its last five Black residents—families whose lives have been rooted in this stretch of land for generations—and away from rapidly encroaching white developers. She fights against the erasure of Bonaparte's venerable history and the loss of the land itself, which she has so arduously preserved as Ava's inheritance.

As Ava becomes more enmeshed with Cass, Toussaint senses the danger simmering all around him—his well-intentioned but erratic mother; the intense, volatile figure of his father who drives his fledgling Philadelphia community toward ever increasing violence and instability. He begins to dream of Dutchess and Bonaparte, his home and birthright, if only he can find his way there.

Brilliant, explosive, vitally important new work from one of America’s most fiercely talented storytellers.

The Wren

2023

by Anne Enright

An incandescent novel from one of our greatest living novelists (The Times) about the inheritance of trauma, wonder, and love across three generations of women.

Nell McDaragh never knew her grandfather, the famed Irish poet Phil McDaragh. But his love poems seem to speak directly to her. Restless, full of verve and wit, twenty-two-year-old Nell leaves her mother Carmel's home to find her voice as a writer and live a life of her choosing. Carmel, too, knows the magic of her Daddo's poetry—and the broken promises within its verses. When Phil abandons the family, Carmel struggles to reconcile "the poet" with the man whose desertion scars Carmel, her sister, and their cancer-ridden mother.

The Wren, the Wren brings to life three generations of women who contend with inheritances—of abandonment and of sustaining love that is "more than a strand of DNA, but a rope thrown from the past, a fat twisted rope, full of blood." In sharp prose studded with crystalline poetry, Anne Enright masterfully braids a family story of longing, betrayal, and hope.

Terrace Story

2023

by Hilary Leichter

From the author of the acclaimed novel Temporary, an intimate exploration of time, a fable about love, an epic daydream for a broken-hearted world.

Annie, Edward, and their young daughter, Rose, live in a cramped apartment. One night, without warning, they find a beautiful terrace hidden in their closet. It wasn't there before, and it seems to only appear when their friend Stephanie visits. A city dweller's dream come true! But every extra bit of space has a hidden cost, and the terrace sets off a seismic chain of events, forever changing the shape of their tiny home, and the shape of the world.

Terrace Story follows the characters who suffer these repercussions and reverberations: the little family of three, their future now deeply uncertain, and those who orbit their fragile universe. The distance and love between these characters expands limitlessly, across generations. How far can the mind travel when it's looking for something that is gone? Where do we put our loneliness, longing, and desire? What do we do with the emotions that seem to stretch beyond the body, beyond the boundaries of life and death?

Based on the National Magazine Award-winning story, Hilary Leichter's profound second novel asks how we nurture love when death looms over every moment. From one of our most innovative and daring writers, Terrace Story is an astounding meditation on loss, a reverie about extinction, and a map for where to go next.

Banyan Moon

2023

by Thao Thai

Spanning decades and continents, from 1960s Vietnam to the wild swamplands of the Florida coast, Banyan Moon is a stunning and deeply moving story of mothers and daughters, the things we inherit, and the lives we choose to make out of that inheritance.

When Ann Tran gets the call that her beloved grandmother, Minh, has passed away, her life is already at a crossroads. Ann has built a seemingly perfect life. She lives in a beautiful lake house and has a charming professor boyfriend, but it all crumbles away with one positive pregnancy test. With both her relationship and carefully planned future now in question, Ann returns home to Florida to face her estranged mother, Hu'o'ng. Under the same roof for the first time in years, mother and daughter must face the simmering questions of their past, while trying to rebuild their relationship.

Running parallel to this is Minh's story, as she goes from a lovestruck teenager living in the shadow of the Vietnam War to a determined young mother immigrating to America in search of a better life. And when Ann makes a shocking discovery in the Banyan House's attic, long-buried secrets come to light as it becomes clear how decisions Minh made in her youth affected the rest of her life and her family.

The Bee Sting

2023

by Paul Murray

The Bee Sting, by Paul Murray, is an exuberantly entertaining novel that delves into the lives of the Barnes family as they navigate a world on the brink of collapse. At the heart of their misfortunes is Dickie, whose once-thriving car business is now failing, leading him to obsessively build an apocalypse-proof bunker. His wife, Imelda, sells her jewelry on eBay and flirts with the idea of an affair, while their teenage daughter, Cass, is on a path of self-destruction. The youngest, PJ, contemplates running away from home.

The narrative poses a poignant question: if you could rewrite this family's story, how far back would you need to go? Could it be Imelda's wedding day, marred by a bee sting? A car accident preceding Cass's birth? Or even further back, to a summer day with Dickie and his father? The Bee Sting is both a portrait of post-crash Ireland and a tragicomic family saga, offering a dazzling exploration of the challenges in striving to be good in a world that's falling apart.

The Covenant of Water

The Covenant of Water is a stunning and magisterial new epic that weaves together love, faith, and medicine, set against the richly textured backdrop of Kerala, India. Spanning from the year 1900 to 1977, this narrative follows three generations of a family grappling with a peculiar curse: in every generation, at least one person succumbs to drowning in a land where water is omnipresent.

The saga begins with the story of a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala's ancient Christian community, who, grieving the loss of her father, embarks on a boat journey to meet her much-older husband for the first time. This young girl, destined to become the matriarch known as Big Ammachi, bears witness to the sweeping changes of her time, experiencing both the heights of joy and the depths of sorrow, with her unwavering faith and love as her guiding lights.

Through a tapestry of vivid medical encounters, moments of unexpected humor, and profound human connections, Abraham Verghese brings to life a bygone era of India. The Covenant of Water stands as a tribute to the progress in medicine, to the enduring human spirit, and to the sacrifices of previous generations, all for the benefit of those living in the present. It is a literary masterpiece that captures the fleeting nature of time and the indelible mark of history on our lives.

The Skin and Its Girl

2023

by Sarah Cypher

A young, queer Palestinian American woman pieces together her great-aunt’s secrets in this sweeping debut, confronting questions of sexual identity, exile, and lineage.


In a Pacific Northwest hospital far from the Rummani family’s ancestral home in Palestine, the heart of a stillborn baby begins to beat and her skin turns vibrantly, permanently cobalt blue. On the same day, the Rummanis’ centuries-old soap factory in Nablus is destroyed in an air strike. The family matriarch and keeper of their lore, Aunt Nuha, believes that the blue girl embodies their sacred history, harkening back to a time when the Rummanis were among the wealthiest soap-makers and their blue soap was a symbol of a legendary love.


Decades later, Betty returns to Aunt Nuha’s gravestone, faced with a difficult decision: Should she stay in the only country she’s ever known, or should she follow her heart and the woman she loves, perpetuating her family’s cycle of exile? Betty finds her answer in partially translated notebooks that reveal her aunt’s complex life and struggle with her own sexuality, which Nuha hid to help the family immigrate to the United States. But, as Betty soon discovers, her aunt hid much more than that.


The Skin and Its Girl is a searing, poetic tale about desire and identity, and a provocative exploration of how we let stories divide, unite, and define us—and wield even the power to restore a broken family. Sarah Cypher is that rare debut novelist who writes with the mastery and flair of a seasoned storyteller.

Hello Beautiful

2023

by Ann Napolitano

An emotionally layered and engrossing story that asks: Can love make a broken person whole?

William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him. So it's a relief when his skill on the basketball court earns him a scholarship to college, far away from his childhood home. He soon meets Julia Padavano, a spirited and ambitious young woman who surprises William with her appreciation of his quiet steadiness. With Julia comes her family; she is inseparable from her three younger sisters: Sylvie, the dreamer, is happiest with her nose in a book and imagines a future different from the expected path of wife and mother; Cecelia, the family's artist; and Emeline, who patiently takes care of all of them. Happily, the Padavanos fold Julia's new boyfriend into their loving, chaotic household.

But then darkness from William's past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia's carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters' unshakeable loyalty to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most?

Vibrating with tenderness, Hello Beautiful is a gorgeous, profoundly moving portrait of what's possible when we choose to love someone not in spite of who they are, but because of it.

Age of Vice

2023

by Deepti Kapoor

This is the age of vice, where money, pleasure, and power are everything, and the family ties that bind can also kill.

New Delhi, 3 a.m. A speeding Mercedes jumps the curb and in the blink of an eye, five people are dead. It's a rich man's car, but when the dust settles there is no rich man at all, just a shell-shocked servant who cannot explain the strange series of events that led to this crime. Nor can he foresee the dark drama that is about to unfold.

Deftly shifting through time and perspective in contemporary India, Age of Vice is an epic, action-packed story propelled by the seductive wealth, startling corruption, and bloodthirsty violence of the Wadia family — loved by some, loathed by others, feared by all.

In the shadow of lavish estates, extravagant parties, predatory business deals and calculated political influence, three lives become dangerously intertwined: Ajay is the watchful servant, born into poverty, who rises through the family's ranks. Sunny is the playboy heir who dreams of outshining his father, whatever the cost. And Neda is the curious journalist caught between morality and desire. Against a sweeping plot fueled by loss, pleasure, greed, yearning, violence and revenge, will these characters' connections become a path to escape, or a trigger of further destruction?

Equal parts crime thriller and family saga, transporting readers from the dusty villages of Uttar Pradesh to the urban energy of New Delhi, Age of Vice is an intoxicating novel of gangsters and lovers, false friendships, forbidden romance, and the consequences of corruption. It is binge-worthy entertainment at its literary best.

Everything She Ever Wanted

2022

by Ann Rule

Was she a sweet southern charmer? Or a cold-blooded killer?

For their wedding portrait, petite Pat Taylor and handsome Tom Allanson posed as Rhett and Scarlett. Both came from fine Southern families and dreamed of the Tara-like plantation where they would grow roses, raise horses, and move in the genteel circles of Atlanta society.

Less than two months later, their dream exploded in terror and murder: their beautiful home mysteriously burned to the ground, and Tom was convicted of the brutal slaying of his mother and father.

Pat's only brother had died in a puzzling suicide, her grandparents-in-law were poisoned with arsenic, and no one—from her wealthy employers to her own children—was safe when Pat Allanson didn't get her way.

It took Georgia lawmen more than two decades to stop her for good—if indeed they have.

In this fascinating account, Ann Rule delivers a tour de force: a whirlwind of misguided love, denial, guilt, and passions out of control; a series of brilliantly manipulated crimes; the bizarre and horrifying tale of two families brought to ruin; and, at the center of it all, the heartless, supremely selfish sociopath whose evil hid behind soft words and gentle manners, but who destroyed—without mercy—those who loved her.

Our Share of Night

Our Share of Night is a haunting journey through grief, legacy, and the supernatural. After a woman's mysterious death, her husband and son are drawn into a chilling confrontation with her demonic family. As they embark on a road trip to her ancestral home, they face a family known as the Order, who commit unspeakable acts in pursuit of immortality.

The novel traverses time, from London in the swinging 1960s to Argentina's military dictatorship, weaving a tale of love, longing, and the occult. With queer subplots and themes, it is a masterwork from Mariana Enriquez, one of Latin America's most original novelists.

Shrines of Gaiety

2022

by Kate Atkinson

London 1926. Roaring Twenties.
Corruption. Seduction. Debts due.

In a country still recovering from the Great War, London is the focus for a delirious nightlife. In Soho clubs, peers of the realm rub shoulders with starlets, foreign dignitaries with gangsters, and girls sell dances for a shilling a time.

There, Nellie Coker is a ruthless ruler, ambitious for her six children. Niven is the eldest, his enigmatic character forged in the harsh Somme. But success breeds enemies. Nellie faces threats from without and within. Beneath the gaiety lies a dark underbelly, where one may be all too easily lost.

The Forsyte Saga

2021

by John Galsworthy

The Forsyte Saga was the title originally destined for that part of it which is called The Man of Property; and to adopt it for the collected chronicles of the Forsyte family has indulged the Forsytean tenacity that is in all of us. The word Saga might be objected to on the ground that it connotes the heroic and that there is little heroism in these pages. But it is used with a suitable irony; and, after all, this long tale, though it may deal with folk in frock coats, furbelows, and a gilt-edged period, is not devoid of the essential heat of conflict. Discounting for the gigantic stature and blood-thirstiness of old days, as they have come down to us in fairy-tale and legend, the folk of the old Sagas were Forsytes, assuredly, in their possessive instincts, and as little proof against the inroads of beauty and passion as Swithin, Soames, or even Young Jolyon. And if heroic figures, in days that never were, seem to startle out from their surroundings in fashion unbecoming to a Forsyte of the Victorian era, we may be sure that tribal instinct was even then the prime force, and that family and the sense of home and property counted as they do to this day, for all the recent efforts to talk them out.

In Our Bones

Lauren’s happy childhood on a farm in Minnesota is shattered after an assault during her teen years, and she retreats into her own world as America falls apart. Hers was the last generation to grow up before the economic collapse that followed the Corona pandemic.

Amidst roiling climate chaos, the government has been taken over by extremists, incompetents, and con-men who tear the country apart while clinging to power. Lauren is swept up in the madness when she falls for the wrong man. She’s looking for love and safety, but Bryan becomes distant and abusive as he obsesses over White Sharia and deepens his ties to the racist patriot militia group.

Lauren worries about the safety of her sister and nephew, who is mixed-race. Will Lauren escape from Bryan and keep her nephew safe from danger? In a world where values are tested and morality is unsettlingly murky, Lauren must break free from the constraints in her mind to protect her family.

Heart of a Warrior Angel

2019

by Lali A. Love

Award winning Author Lali A. Love provides a supernatural thriller of metaphysical and visionary fantasy with her own revolutionary philosophy and unique narrative skills to produce this emotionally invoking, heart-wrenching and gripping tale of a family's rise from poverty, oppression and abuse.

Lilac Noble must face the traumatic experiences of her childhood before she can conquer the dark entities that have wreaked havoc on her family. On this epic journey, Lilac undergoes the destructive process of spiritual enlightenment in order to lift the veil of darkness and shame that has obscured her youth. As Lilac unlocks painful memories of abuse, suppressed in her subconscious from years of fear-based conditioning, she uncovers menacing secrets feeding the evil within her generational bloodline. In an attempt to vanquish the sinister energies, Lilac finds the courage to discover her inner truth, vulnerability, and authenticity, as she awakens her divine light and overcomes her debilitating fears of the past.

Lilac's unconditional love for her family guides her through her process of healing and transformation, fuelling her instinct for survival and her burning desire to illuminate the world. Spanning two continents and three generations, this inspirational novel portrays the best and worst of humanity and shows how the "tiniest spark of light can overcome the darkness of any magnitude," through forgiveness, compassion, and the most powerful force in the universe – Love.

Cold Waters

2019

by Debbie Herbert

From USA Today bestselling author Debbie Herbert comes a thrilling story of murder and madness set in the darkest corner of Alabama.

Everyone thinks fourteen-year-old Violet is a murderer. After a summer-night swim with her best friend, Ainsley, Violet is found confused, wandering in the forest—and Ainsley’s never seen again. But without a body, murder charges won’t stick, so Violet is sent away.

After more than a decade in a psychiatric ward, Violet returns to her broken-down hometown of Normal, Alabama, to claim her dead mother’s inheritance and help her overworked sister care for their unstable, alcoholic father. Violet, still haunted by that night eleven years ago, endures horrific flashbacks and twisted hallucinations while townsfolk spit accusations—and for all she knows, they’re right.

As the summer heats up, details of Ainsley’s fate appear like a beast’s wild eyes, watching in the darkness, and grim revelations about Violet’s family threaten to devour her. Already on the edge of madness, Violet must fight to keep her sanity long enough for the terrible truth to burst from the cold, dark waters.

The Forgotten Hours

2019

by Katrin Schumann

In this evocative debut novel, Katrin Schumann weaves a riveting story of past and present—and how love can lead us astray.

At twenty-four, Katie Gregory feels like life is looking up: she’s snagged a great job in New York City and is falling for a captivating artist—and memories of her traumatic past are finally fading. Katie’s life fell apart almost a decade earlier, during an idyllic summer at her family’s cabin on Eagle Lake when her best friend accused her father of sexual assault. Throughout his trial and imprisonment, Katie insisted on his innocence, dodging reporters and clinging to memories of the man she adores.

Now he’s getting out. Yet when Katie returns to the shuttered lakeside cabin, details of that fateful night resurface: the chill of the lake, the heat of first love, the terrible sting of jealousy. And as old memories collide with new realities, they call into question everything she thinks she knows about family, friends, and, ultimately, herself.

Now, Katie’s choices will be put to the test with life-altering consequences.

The Kiss Thief

2019

by L.J. Shen

They say your first kiss should be earned. Mine was stolen by a devil in a masquerade mask under the black Chicago sky.

They say the vows you take on your wedding day are sacred. Mine were broken before we left church.

They say your heart only beats for one man. Mine split and bled for two rivals who fought for it until the bitter end.

I was promised to Angelo Bandini, the heir to one of the most powerful families in the Chicago Outfit. Then taken by Senator Wolfe Keaton, who held my father’s sins over his head to force me into marriage.

They say that all great love stories have a happy ending. I, Francesca Rossi, found myself erasing and rewriting mine until the very last chapter.

One kiss. Two men. Three lives. Entwined together. And somewhere between these two men, I had to find my forever.

Drum Beats, Heart Beats (Dancing Soul Trilogy, #3)

2018

by Maria Nhambu

In this final volume of The Dancing Soul Trilogy, we join an ever insightful and passionate Nhambu as she traverses diverse cultures and continents and negotiates a complex and shifting web of mixed identities—African immigrant and African American—through marriage, parenthood, and the search for the father she has never known. Through trauma and triumph, love and betrayal, the “Drum Beats” and “Heart Beats” of her native Africa lead her on an ultimate journey of transcendence that will enthrall and inspire readers around the world.

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

2018

by J.D. Salinger

The author writes: The two long pieces in this book originally came out in The New Yorker - RAISE HIGH THE ROOF BEAM, CARPENTERS in 1955, SEYMOUR - An Introduction in 1959. Whatever their differences in mood or effect, they are both very much concerned with Seymour Glass, who is the main character in my still-uncompleted series about the Glass family. It struck me that they had better be collected together, if not deliberately paired off, in something of a hurry, if I mean them to avoid unduly or undesirably close contact with new material in the series. There is only my word for it, granted, but I have several new Glass stories coming along - waxing, dilating - each in its own way, but I suspect the less said about them, in mixed company, the better. Oddly, the joys and satisfactions of working on the Glass family peculiarly increase and deepen for me with the years. I can't say why, though. Not, at least, outside the casino proper of my fiction.

Aednan

Aednan marks the American debut of Sweden's esteemed literary figure Linnea Axelsson with an epic, multigenerational novel-in-verse that delves deep into the lives of two Sámi families. This groundbreaking work explores their enduring bond through a century marked by migration, violence, and the scars of colonial trauma.

This sweeping Scandinavian epic, reminiscent of classics such as Halldór Laxness’s Independent People and Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter, begins in the 1910s. We follow Ristin and her family as they migrate their reindeer herd to summer pastures. Amidst this journey, a tragedy strikes, etching a path of sorrow that echoes throughout the novel.

In the 1970s, we meet Lise, a member of a new Sámi generation confronting her identity and legacy. Her reflections on a childhood marred by forced separation from her family and the loss of her ancestral language at a Nomad School paint a vivid picture of the struggles faced by her people.

The narrative then carries us to the 2010s, introducing Sandra, Lise’s daughter. Sandra stands as a symbol of Indigenous resilience, an activist demanding justice in a landmark land rights trial during a time when the Sámi language teeters on the brink of extinction.

Through the interwoven voices of characters spanning generations, Axelsson crafts a poignant family saga centered around the fallout of colonial settlement. Ædnan serves as a testament to the tenacity of language, even when adopted, to encapsulate memories of what has been lost. The verse of one character to another resonates beyond mortality: "I was the weight / in the stone you brought / back from the coast // to place on / my grave," and the haunting call, "There will be rain / there will be rain."

Jade City

2017

by Fonda Lee

Jade City is an epic tale of family, honor, and those who live and die by the ancient laws of jade and blood. Set in the bustling metropolis of Kekon, jade is the most precious commodity, enhancing the abilities of the honorable Green Bone warriors. The Kaul family has long used it to protect the island from invasion. But as a new generation vies for power, they face not only their rivals but also a changing world.

When a revolutionary drug allows anyone to wield jade's power, the city's delicate balance is shattered, leading to a violent clan war that will determine the fate of all Green Bones. Fonda Lee crafts a narrative that is as gripping as it is immersive, inviting readers into a world where the lines between right and wrong are as complex as the city of Kekon itself.

Before We Were Yours

2017

by Lisa Wingate

THE BLOCKBUSTER HIT—Over two million copies sold! A New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Publishers Weekly Bestseller “Poignant, engrossing.”—People • “Lisa Wingate takes an almost unthinkable chapter in our nation’s history and weaves a tale of enduring power.”—Paula McLain Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge—until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents—but they quickly realize the dark truth. At the mercy of the facility’s cruel director, Rill fights to keep her sisters and brother together in a world of danger and uncertainty. Aiken, South Carolina, present day. Born into wealth and privilege, Avery Stafford seems to have it all: a successful career as a federal prosecutor, a handsome fiancé, and a lavish wedding on the horizon. But when Avery returns home to help her father weather a health crisis, a chance encounter leaves her with uncomfortable questions and compels her to take a journey through her family’s long-hidden history, on a path that will ultimately lead either to devastation or to redemption. Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals—in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country—Lisa Wingate’s riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong. Publishers Weekly’s #3 Longest-Running Bestseller of 2017 • Winner of the Southern Book Prize • If All Arkansas Read the Same Book Selection

Pachinko

2017

by Min Jin Lee

There could only be a few winners, and a lot of losers. And yet we played on, because we had hope that we might be the lucky ones.

In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant — and that her lover is married — she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son's powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations.

Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters — strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis — survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.

The Master Butchers Singing Club

2016

by Louise Erdrich

From National Book Award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author Louise Erdrich, comes a profound and enchanting novel: a richly imagined world “where butchers sing like angels.”

Having survived World War I, Fidelis Waldvogel returns to his quiet German village and marries the pregnant widow of his best friend, killed in action. With a suitcase full of sausages and a master butcher's precious knife set, Fidelis sets out for America.

In Argus, North Dakota, he builds a business, a home for his family—which includes Eva and four sons—and a singing club consisting of the best voices in town. When the Old World meets the New—in the person of Delphine Watzka—the great adventure of Fidelis's life begins. Delphine meets Eva and is enchanted. She meets Fidelis, and the ground trembles.

These momentous encounters will determine the course of Delphine's life, and the trajectory of this brilliant novel.

Homegoing

2016

by Yaa Gyasi

Homegoing is a novel of breathtaking sweep and emotional power that traces three hundred years in Ghana and along the way also becomes a truly great American novel. Extraordinary for its exquisite language, its implacable sorrow, its soaring beauty, and for its monumental portrait of the forces that shape families and nations, Homegoing heralds the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.

Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle's dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast's booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. One thread of Homegoing follows Effia's descendants through centuries of warfare in Ghana, as the Fante and Asante nations wrestle with the slave trade and British colonization. The other thread follows Esi and her children into America. From the plantations of the South to the Civil War and the Great Migration, from the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, to the jazz clubs and dope houses of twentieth-century Harlem, right up through the present day, Homegoing makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the soul of a nation.

Generation after generation, Yaa Gyasi's magisterial first novel sets the fate of the individual against the obliterating movements of time, delivering unforgettable characters whose lives were shaped by historical forces beyond their control. Homegoing is a tremendous reading experience, not to be missed, by an astonishingly gifted young writer.

Paper Princess

2016

by Erin Watt

From strip clubs and truck stops to southern coast mansions and prep schools, one girl tries to stay true to herself.

These Royals will ruin you…

Ella Harper is a survivor—a pragmatic optimist. She’s spent her whole life moving from town to town with her flighty mother, struggling to make ends meet and believing that someday she’ll climb out of the gutter. After her mother’s death, Ella is truly alone.

Until Callum Royal appears, plucking Ella out of poverty and tossing her into his posh mansion among his five sons who all hate her. Each Royal boy is more magnetic than the last, but none as captivating as Reed Royal, the boy who is determined to send her back to the slums she came from.

Reed doesn’t want her. He says she doesn’t belong with the Royals. He might be right.

Wealth. Excess. Deception.

It’s like nothing Ella has ever experienced, and if she’s going to survive her time in the Royal palace, she’ll need to learn to issue her own Royal decrees.

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