Two Brothers is a heartrending story set against the darkening shadow of the Nazis. This novel by bestselling author Ben Elton takes us to Berlin, 1920, where two babies are born. Two brothers, united and indivisible, sharing everything. They are twins in all but blood.
As Germany marches into its Nazi Armageddon, the ties of family, friendship, and love are tested to the very limits of endurance. The brothers are faced with an unimaginable choice. Which one of them will survive?
This is a story about making decisions with horrifying consequences, and the resilience of the human spirit amidst the backdrop of history's darkest hour.
A foundling, an old book of dark fairy tales, a secret garden, an aristocratic family, a love denied, and a mystery. The Forgotten Garden is a captivating, atmospheric and compulsively readable story of the past, secrets, family and memory from the international best-selling author Kate Morton.
Cassandra is lost, alone and grieving. Her much loved grandmother, Nell, has just died and Cassandra, her life already shaken by a tragic accident ten years ago, feels like she has lost everything dear to her. But an unexpected and mysterious bequest from Nell turns Cassandra’s life upside down and ends up challenging everything she thought she knew about herself and her family.
Inheriting a book of dark and intriguing fairytales written by Eliza Makepeace—the Victorian authoress who disappeared mysteriously in the early twentieth century—Cassandra takes her courage in both hands to follow in the footsteps of Nell on a quest to find out the truth about their history, their family and their past; little knowing that in the process, she will also discover a new life for herself.
In 1950s Australia, during the height of the divisive White Australia Policy, Virginia, a young Aboriginal girl, is taken from her home and put to work on an isolated and harsh outback station. Her only solace: the violin, taught to her secretly by the kind-hearted wife of the abusive station owner. However, Virginia's prodigious musical gift cannot save her from years of hardship and racism.
Decades later, her eight-year-old granddaughter Ruby plays the violin with the passion Virginia once possessed. Amidst poverty, domestic violence, and social dysfunction, Ruby escapes her circumstance through her practice with her grandmother's frail, guiding hand. Ruby’s zeal attracts the attention of an enigmatic music professor, and with his help, she embarks on an incredible journey of musical discovery that will culminate in a rare opportunity.
But with two cultural worlds colliding, her gift and her ambition will be threatened by deeply ingrained distrust, family jealousies, and tragic secrets that will define her very identity.
Winter of the World picks up right where the first book left off, as its five interrelated families—American, German, Russian, English, Welsh—enter a time of enormous social, political, and economic turmoil, beginning with the rise of the Third Reich, through the Spanish Civil War and the great dramas of World War II, up to the explosions of the American and Soviet atomic bombs.
Carla von Ulrich, born of German and English parents, finds her life engulfed by the Nazi tide until she commits a deed of great courage and heartbreak. American brothers Woody and Chuck Dewar, each with a secret, take separate paths to momentous events, one in Washington, the other in the bloody jungles of the Pacific. English student Lloyd Williams discovers in the crucible of the Spanish Civil War that he must fight Communism just as hard as Fascism. Daisy Peshkov, a driven American social climber, cares only for popularity and the fast set, until the war transforms her life, not just once but twice, while her cousin Volodya carves out a position in Soviet intelligence that will affect not only this war—but the war to come.
These characters and many others find their lives inextricably entangled as their experiences illuminate the cataclysms that marked the century. From the drawing rooms of the rich to the blood and smoke of battle, their lives intertwine, propelling the reader into dramas of ever-increasing complexity.
On a bitter December day in 1785, Silas Ballantyne arrives at the door of master blacksmith Liege Lee in York, Pennsylvania. Just months from becoming a master blacksmith himself, Silas is determined to finish his apprenticeship and move west. But Liege soon discovers that Silas is a prodigious worker and craftsman and endeavors to keep him in York.
Silas becomes interested in both of Liege's daughters, the gentle and faith-filled Eden and the clever and high-spirited Elspeth. When he chooses one, will the other's jealousy destroy their love?
In this sweeping family saga set in western Pennsylvania, one man's choices in love and work, in friends and enemies, set the stage for generations to come. Love's Reckoning is the first entry in The Ballantyne Legacy, a rich, multi-layered historical quartet from talented writer Laura Frantz, beginning in the late 1700s and following the Ballantyne family through the end of the Civil War.
The mining ship El Cavador is far out from Earth, in the deeps of the Kuiper Belt, beyond Pluto. Other mining ships, and the families that live on them, are few and far between this far out. So when El Cavador's telescopes pick up a fast-moving object coming in-system, it's hard to know what to make of it. It's massive and moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light.
El Cavador has other problems. Their systems are old and failing. The family is getting too big for the ship. There are claim-jumping corporate ships bringing Asteroid Belt tactics to the Kuiper Belt. Worrying about a distant object that might or might not be an alien ship seems not important.
They're wrong. It's the most important thing that has happened to the human race in a million years. The first Formic War is about to begin.
Tommy Zane hates lions, a major obstacle in a family of lion tamers. But Tommy's dreams, and talent, fly higher, up in the rigging with the trapeze. When rising star Mario Santelli offers him flying lessons, it looks like the start of a wonderful new life. To Tommy's surprise, his relationship with Mario deepens even as his skill soars in the rigging.
But life in the 1940s forces them to keep their love a secret, and the stress pushes both Tommy and Mario to a precipice. As Mario flies higher and higher, Tommy begins to wonder if it will always be his role to catch Mario as he falls.
A tremendously moving tale, a rich family saga, a wise and compassionate portrait of a special love in a cruel world.
When God Was a Rabbit is an incredibly exciting debut from an extraordinary new voice in fiction. Spanning four decades, from 1968 onwards, this is the story of a fabulous but flawed family and the slew of ordinary and extraordinary incidents that shape their everyday lives.
It is a story about childhood and growing up, loss of innocence, eccentricity, familial ties and friendships, love and life. Stripped down to its bare bones, it’s about the unbreakable bond between a brother and sister.
From Essex and Cornwall to the streets of New York, from 1968 to the events of 9/11, it follows the evolving bond of love and secrets between Elly and her brother, Joe, and her increasing concern for her best friend, Jenny Penny, who has secrets of her own. Funny, quirky, utterly compelling, and poignant, too, When God Was a Rabbit heralds the start of a remarkable new literary career.
Great Granny Webster is Caroline Blackwood’s masterpiece. Heiress to the Guinness fortune, Blackwood was celebrated as a great beauty and dazzling raconteur long before she made her name as a strikingly original writer.
This macabre, mordantly funny, partly auto-biographical novel reveals the gothic craziness behind the scenes in the great houses of the aristocracy, as witnessed through the unsparing eyes of an orphaned teenage girl. Great Granny Webster herself is a fabulous monster, the chilliest of matriarchs, presiding with steely self-regard over a landscape of ruined lives.
Forced to leave their island kingdom, Sophie FitzOsborne and her eccentric family take shelter in England. Sophie's dreams of making her debut in shimmering ballgowns are finally coming true, but how can she enjoy her new life when they have all lost so much?
Aunt Charlotte is ruthless in her quest to see Sophie and Veronica married off by the end of the Season. Toby is as charming and lazy as ever, Henry is driving her governess to the brink of madness, and the battle of wills between Simon and Veronica continues. Can Sophie keep her family together, when everything seems to be falling apart?
An enticing glimpse into high society, the cut and thrust of politics as nations scramble to avert world war, and the hidden depths of a family in exile, struggling to find their place in the world.
A Legacy of Madness is the story of a loving family coming to grips with its own fragilities. It relays the author's journey to uncover, and ultimately understand, the history of mental illness that led generations of his suburban American family to their demise.
Dede Davis had worried, fussed, and obsessed for the last time. Her heart stopped beating in a fit of anxiety. In the wake of his mother's death, Tom Davis knew one thing: Helplessly self-absorbed and severely obsessive-compulsive, Dede led a tormented life. She spent years bouncing around mental health facilities, nursing homes, and assisted-living facilities, but what really caused her death?
A Legacy of Madness portrays Tom Davis's captivating discoveries of mental illness throughout generations of his family. Investigating his mother's history led to that of Davis's grandfather, a top administrator at one of the largest psychiatric hospitals in the country; his great-grandfather who died of self-inflicted gas asphyxiation during the Depression; and his great-great-grandmother who, with her eldest son, completed suicide one tragic day.
Ultimately, four generations of family members showed clear signs of depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and alcoholism—often mistreated illnesses that test one's ability to cope.
Through this intimate memoir, we join Davis on a personal odyssey to ensure that he and his siblings, the fifth generation, recover their family legacy by not only surviving their own mental health disorders but by getting the help they need to lead healthy, balanced lives. In the end, we witness Davis's powerful transition as he makes peace with the past and heals through forgiveness and compassion for his family—and himself.
Would you sacrifice your future... for an uncertain past?
Gabriella and Evangelia Betarrini are just two normal American teenagers. Normal--except for the fact that they time travel to fourteenth-century Italy, where they've lived in castles, become swept up in historic battles, and fallen in love with handsome knights willing to do anything to keep them alive.
They've returned with their mother to the present to save their father before his tragic death, and now the family travels back to the place that holds the girls' hearts: medieval Italy. But remaining there means facing great risk as the battle for territory wages on and the Black Plague looms. Will the Betarrinis truly be willing to risk it all? Or in facing death head-on, will they discover life as it was always meant to be lived?
From the internationally bestselling author of Kane and Abel and A Prisoner of Birth comes Only Time Will Tell, the first in an ambitious new series that tells the story of one family across generations, across oceans, from heartbreak to triumph.
The epic tale of Harry Clifton’s life begins in 1920, with the words “I was told that my father was killed in the war.” A dock worker in Bristol, Harry never knew his father, but he learns about life on the docks from his uncle, who expects Harry to join him at the shipyard once he’s left school. But then an unexpected gift wins him a scholarship to an exclusive boys’ school, and his life will never be the same again.
As he enters into adulthood, Harry finally learns how his father really died, but the awful truth only leads him to question: was he even his father? Is he the son of Arthur Clifton, a stevedore who spent his whole life on the docks, or the firstborn son of a scion of West Country society, whose family owns a shipping line?
This introductory novel in Archer’s ambitious series The Clifton Chronicles includes a cast of colorful characters and takes us from the ravages of the Great War to the outbreak of the Second World War, when Harry must decide whether to take up a place at Oxford or join the navy and go to war with Hitler’s Germany.
From the docks of working-class England to the bustling streets of 1940 New York City, Only Time Will Tell takes readers on a journey through to future volumes, which will bring to life one hundred years of recent history to reveal a family story that neither the reader nor Harry Clifton himself could ever have imagined.
Emma Blaxland-Hunter, a prima ballerina from London, faces a pivotal moment when an injury ends her dancing career. At her mother's urging, she returns to Sydney and discovers that her beloved grandmother, Beattie Blaxland, has left her an unusual inheritance: Wildflower Hill, an old sheep farm in Tasmania.
As Emma begins to sort through the remnants of her grandmother's life, she finds a photograph of Beattie with a mysterious child. This discovery leads Emma on a journey through time, unraveling the secrets of her family's past.
Spanning three generations and set against the backdrop of the Australian wilderness, Wildflower Hill is a story of love, secrets, and the courage to start over. Emma learns from Beattie's life lessons, realizing the importance of keeping her heart open to love and the magic of new beginnings.
This novel is about taking risks, embracing change, and believing in oneself, capturing the essence of what it means to find one's true path.
In her most powerful novel yet, acclaimed author Lisa See returns to the story of sisters Pearl and May from Shanghai Girls, and Pearl’s strong-willed nineteen-year-old daughter, Joy.
Reeling from newly uncovered family secrets, Joy runs away to Shanghai in early 1957 to find her birth father—the artist Z.G. Li, with whom both May and Pearl were once in love. Dazzled by him, and blinded by idealism and defiance, Joy throws herself into the New Society of Red China, heedless of the dangers in the Communist regime.
Devastated by Joy’s flight and terrified for her safety, Pearl is determined to save her daughter, no matter the personal cost. From the crowded city to remote villages, Pearl confronts old demons and almost insurmountable challenges as she follows Joy, hoping for reconciliation.
Yet even as Joy’s and Pearl’s separate journeys converge, one of the most tragic episodes in China’s history threatens their very lives.
Book Three of The Wingfeather Saga
Janner Wingfeather's father was the High King of Anniera. But his father is gone. The kingdom has fallen. The royal family is on the run, and the Fang armies of Gnag the Nameless are close behind.
Janner and his family hope to find refuge in the last safe place in the world: the Green Hollows—a land of warriors feared even by Fangs of Dang. But there's a big problem. Janner's little brother—heir to the throne of Anniera—has grown a tail. And gray fur. Not to mention two pointed ears and long, dangerous fangs.
To the suspicious folk of the Green Hollows, he looks like a monster. But Janner knows better. His brother isn't as scary as he looks. He's perfectly harmless. Or is he?
Join the Wingfeathers on an adventure filled with mystery, betrayal, and sneakery in a land of tasty fruits. There's a monster on the loose and the truth lurks in the shadows.
An Echo in the Bone, the seventh volume in the Outlander saga, continues the extraordinary story of eighteenth-century Scotsman Jamie Fraser and his twentieth-century time-traveling wife, Claire Randall.
Jamie Fraser, former Jacobite and reluctant rebel, is already certain of three things about the American rebellion: The Americans will win, fighting on the side of victory is no guarantee of survival, and he'd rather die than have to face his illegitimate son—a young lieutenant in the British army—across the barrel of a gun.
Claire Randall knows that the Americans will win, too, but not what the ultimate price may be. That price won’t include Jamie's life or his happiness, though—not if she has anything to say about it.
Meanwhile, in the relative safety of the twentieth century, Jamie and Claire's daughter, Brianna, and her husband, Roger MacKenzie, have resettled in a historic Scottish home where, across a chasm of two centuries, the unfolding drama of Brianna's parents' story comes to life through Claire's letters. The fragile pages reveal Claire's love for battle-scarred Jamie Fraser and their flight from North Carolina to the high seas, where they encounter privateers and ocean battles—as Brianna and Roger search for clues not only to Claire's fate but to their own. Because the future of the MacKenzie family in the Highlands is mysteriously, irrevocably, and intimately entwined with life and death in war-torn colonial America.
Weaving a brilliant latticework of family legend, loss, and love, Téa Obreht, the youngest of The New Yorker’s twenty best American fiction writers under forty, has spun a timeless novel that will establish her as one of the most vibrant, original authors of her generation.
In a Balkan country mending from war, Natalia, a young doctor, is compelled to unravel the mysterious circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather’s recent death. Searching for clues, she turns to his worn copy of The Jungle Book and the stories he told her of his encounters over the years with “the deathless man.” But most extraordinary of all is the story her grandfather never told her—the legend of the tiger’s wife.
Katherine wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t found the letter... Katherine Arthur's mother arrives on her doorstep, dying, forcing her to relive a past she wanted to forget.
When Katherine was young, the Arthur family had been affluent city dwellers until shame sent them running for the prairie, into the unknown. Taking her family, including young Katherine, to live off the land was the last thing Jeanie Arthur had wanted, but she would do her best to make a go of it. For Jeanie's husband Frank, it had been a world of opportunity. Dreaming, lazy Frank.
But, it was a society of uncertainty—a domain of natural disasters, temptation, hatred, even death. Ten-year-old Katherine had loved her mother fiercely, put her trust in her completely, but when there was no other choice, and Jeanie resorted to extreme measures on the prairie to save her family, she tore Katherine’s world apart.
Now, seventeen years later, and far from the homestead, Katherine has found the truth – she has discovered the last letter. After years of anger, can Katherine find it in her heart to understand why her mother made the decisions that changed them all? Can she forgive and finally begin to heal before it’s too late?
For Carrie, Chris and Cathy, the attic was a dark horror that would not leave their minds, even while they built bright, promising new lives. Of course, mother had to pretend they didn't exist. And Grandmother was convinced they had the devil in them. But that wasn't their fault. Was it? Cathy knew what to do. She knew it was time to put what she knew to the test. To show her mother and grandmother that the pain and terror of the attic could not be forgotten... Show them. Show them—once and for all.
Winter, 1916: In St Petersburg, Russia on the brink of revolution. Outside the Smolny Institute for Noble Young Ladies, an English governess is waiting for her young charge to be released from school. But so are the Tsar’s secret police…
Beautiful and headstrong, Sashenka Zeitlin is just sixteen. As her mother parties with Rasputin and her dissolute friends, Sashenka slips into the frozen night to play her part in a dangerous game of conspiracy and seduction.
Twenty years on, Sashenka has a powerful husband with whom she has two children. Around her, people are disappearing, but her own family is safe. But she's about to embark on a forbidden love affair which will have devastating consequences.
Sashenka's story lies hidden for half a century, until a young historian goes deep into Stalin's private archives and uncovers a heart-breaking tale of passion and betrayal, savage cruelty, and unexpected heroism - and one woman forced to make an unbearable choice.
The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it—from garden seeds to Scripture—is calamitously transformed on African soil.
What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.
The Widow Makers is set in the picturesque yet harsh quarrylands of North Wales, amidst the majestic Snowdonia Mountains, ancient castles, and the opulent Penrhyn Castle. This tale blends fact and fiction to trace the lives of two very different families in the 19th century.
After a pit disaster in Manchester, Joe Standish moves his wife, Emily, and their tiny son, Tommy, to North Wales, where he embarks on the perilous life of a quarryman. Their home life is filled with happiness, marred only by Tommy's growing wilfulness.
As Tommy matures, his intelligence becomes apparent, catching the attention of Bertram Bellamy, the quarry owner. Bertram offers to educate Tommy alongside his own son. As Tommy transitions into adulthood, his life is split between his working-class family and his wealthy benefactor at the grand Plas Mawr mansion.
Unbeknownst to Bertram, a destructive force lurks behind Tommy's charm and charisma, ultimately shaping the destiny and destruction of the Bellamy family.
The Invisible Bridge is a grand love story and an epic tale of three brothers whose lives are torn apart by war.
Paris, 1937. Andras Lévi, a Hungarian Jewish architecture student, arrives from Budapest with a scholarship, a single suitcase, and a mysterious letter he has promised to deliver to C. Morgenstern on the rue de Sévigné. As he becomes involved with the letter’s recipient, his elder brother takes up medical studies in Modena, and their younger brother leaves school for the stage. Meanwhile, Europe’s unfolding tragedy sends each of their lives into terrifying uncertainty.
From the Hungarian village of Konyár to the grand opera houses of Budapest and Paris, from the lonely chill of Andras’s garret to the enduring passion he discovers on the rue de Sévigné, from the despair of a Carpathian winter to an unimaginable life in forced labor camps and beyond, The Invisible Bridge tells the unforgettable story of brothers bound by history and love, of a marriage tested by disaster, of a Jewish family’s struggle against annihilation, and of the dangerous power of art in a time of war.
Epic prelude to the classic spy trilogy, GAME, SET and MATCH, that follows the fortunes of a German dynasty during two world wars. Winter takes us into a large and complex family drama, into the lives of two German brothers - both born close upon the turn of the century, both so caught up in the currents of history that their story is one with the story of their country, from the Kaiser's heyday through Hitler's rise and fall.
A novel that rings powerfully true, a rich and remarkable portrait of Germany in the first half of the twentieth century. In his portrait of a Berlin family during the turbulent years of the first half of the century, Len Deighton has created a compelling study of the rise of Nazi Germany.
With its meticulous research, rich detail and brilliantly drawn cast of characters, Winter is a superbly realized achievement.
Somer's life is everything she imagined it would be — she's newly married and has started her career as a physician in San Francisco — until she makes the devastating discovery she never will be able to have children.
The same year in India, a poor mother makes the heartbreaking choice to save her newborn daughter's life by giving her away. It is a decision that will haunt Kavita for the rest of her life, and cause a ripple effect that travels across the world and back again.
Asha, adopted out of a Mumbai orphanage, is the child that binds the destinies of these two women. We follow both families, invisibly connected until Asha's journey of self-discovery leads her back to India.
Compulsively readable and deeply touching, Secret Daughter is a story of the unforeseen ways in which our choices and families affect our lives, and the indelible power of love in all its many forms.
With King Olin imprisoned and Prince Kendrick slain, the royal twins Barrick and Briony have been forced to flee their homeland. Both families and nations can hide dark and terrible secrets.
Even if Barrick and Briony survive learning the astonishing truths at the heart of their own family and of Southmarch itself, they must find a way to reclaim their kingdom and rescue their home—from traitors, tyrants, a god-king, and even the angry gods themselves.
A masterpiece of historical fiction and "a journey of extraordinary riches" (New York Times Book Review), War and Remembrance stands as perhaps the great novel of America's "Greatest Generation." These two classic works capture the tide of world events even as they unfold the compelling tale of a single American family drawn into the very center of the war's maelstrom.
The multimillion-copy bestsellers that capture all the drama, romance, heroism, and tragedy of the Second World War -- and that constitute Wouk's crowning achievement -- are available for the first time in trade paperback.
Cutting for Stone is a sweeping, emotionally riveting first novel that spans continents and generations, telling the enthralling family saga of Africa and America, doctors and patients, exile and home.
Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics—their passion for the same woman—that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him—nearly destroying him—Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.
An unforgettable journey into one man’s remarkable life, and an epic story about the power, intimacy, and curious beauty of the work of healing others.
Named for a flower whose blood-red sap possesses the power both to heal and poison, Bloodroot is a stunning fiction debut about the legacies—of magic and madness, faith and secrets, passion and loss—that haunt one family across the generations, from the Great Depression to today.
The novel is told in a kaleidoscope of seamlessly woven voices and centers around an incendiary romance that consumes everyone in its path: Myra Lamb, a wild young girl with mysterious, haint blue eyes who grows up on remote Bloodroot Mountain; her grandmother Byrdie Lamb, who protects Myra fiercely and passes down “the touch” that bewitches people and animals alike; the neighbor boy who longs for Myra yet is destined never to have her; the twin children Myra is forced to abandon but who never forget their mother’s deep love; and John Odom, the man who tries to tame Myra and meets with shocking, violent disaster.
Against the backdrop of a beautiful but often unforgiving country, these lives come together—only to be torn apart—as a dark, riveting mystery unfolds. With grace and unflinching verisimilitude, Amy Greene brings her native Appalachia—and the faith and fury of its people—to rich and vivid life. Here is a spellbinding tour de force that announces a dazzlingly fresh, natural-born storyteller in our midst.
Spanning the 20th century, the story of Roses takes place in a small East Texas town against the backdrop of the powerful timber and cotton industries, industries controlled by the scions of the town's founding families.
Cotton tycoon Mary Toliver and timber magnate Percy Warwick should have married but unwisely did not, and now must deal with the deceit, secrets, and tragedies of their choice and the loss of what might have been—not just for themselves but for their children, and children's children.
With expert, unabashed, big-canvas storytelling, Roses covers a hundred years, three generations of Texans, and the explosive combination of passion for work and longing for love.
Jeannette Walls's memoir The Glass Castle was nothing short of spectacular. Now, in Half Broke Horses, she brings us the story of her grandmother, told in a first-person voice that is authentic, irresistible, and triumphant. "Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did." So begins the story of Lily Casey Smith, Jeannette Walls's no nonsense, resourceful, and spectacularly compelling grandmother. By age six, Lily was helping her father break horses. At fifteen, she left home to teach in a frontier town -- riding five hundred miles on her pony, alone, to get to her job. She learned to drive a car and fly a plane. And, with her husband Jim, she ran a vast ranch in Arizona. She raised two children, one of whom is Jeannette's memorable mother, Rosemary Smith Walls, unforgettably portrayed in The Glass Castle. Lily survived tornadoes, droughts, floods, the Great Depression, and the most heartbreaking personal tragedy. She bristled at prejudice of all kinds -- against women, Native Americans, and anyone else who didn't fit the mold. Rosemary Smith Walls always told Jeannette that she was like her grandmother, and in this true-life novel, Jeannette Walls channels that kindred spirit. Half Broke Horses is Laura Ingalls Wilder for adults, as riveting and dramatic as Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa or Beryl Markham's West with the Night. Destined to become a classic, it will transfix audiences everywhere.
The Children's Book is a spellbinding novel, at once sweeping and intimate, from the Booker Prize–winning author of Possession, that spans the Victorian era through the World War I years, centering around a famous children’s book author and the passions, betrayals, and secrets that tear apart the people she loves.
When Olive Wellwood’s oldest son discovers a runaway named Philip sketching in the basement of the new Victoria and Albert Museum—a talented working-class boy who could be a character out of one of Olive’s magical tales—she takes him into the storybook world of her family and friends. But the joyful bacchanals Olive hosts at her rambling country house—and the separate, private books she writes for each of her seven children—conceal more treachery and darkness than Philip has ever imagined.
As these lives—of adults and children alike—unfold, lies are revealed, hearts are broken, and the damaging truth about the Wellwoods slowly emerges. However, their personal struggles and hidden desires will soon be eclipsed by far greater forces, as the tides turn across Europe and a golden era comes to an end.
Taking us from the cliff-lined shores of England to Paris, Munich, and the trenches of the Somme, The Children’s Book is a deeply affecting story of a singular family, played out against the great, rippling tides of the day. It is a masterly literary achievement by one of our most essential writers.
Seventeen-year-old Veronica 'Ronnie' Miller's life was turned upside-down when her parents divorced and her father moved from New York City to Wilmington, North Carolina. Three years later, she remains angry and alienated from her parents, especially her father... until her mother decides it would be in everyone's best interest if she spent the summer in Wilmington with him.
Ronnie's father, a former concert pianist and teacher, is living a quiet life in the beach town, immersed in creating a work of art that will become the centerpiece of a local church. The tale that unfolds is an unforgettable story about love in its myriad forms - first love, the love between parents and children - that demonstrates, as only a Nicholas Sparks novel can, the many ways that deeply felt relationships can break our hearts... and heal them.
Galore is an intricate family saga and love story spanning two centuries. It is set in the improbable medievalesque world of rural Newfoundland, a place so remote and isolated that it seems almost too harrowing and extravagant to be real.
The novel begins with a fantastical event—a whale beaches itself on the shore of Paradise Deep, and inside, the townspeople find a man, silent and reeking of fish, but remarkably alive. This mysterious man, christened Judah, becomes the center of a whirlwind of intrigue and speculation. Is he a man or a beast? A blessing or a curse? A miracle or a demon?
As Judah becomes a part of the town's fabric, the lives of Paradise Deep’s residents unfold. The self-appointed patriarch, King-me Sellers, has a long-standing feud with the inscrutable Devine’s Widow. Her granddaughter, Mary Tryphena, finds herself inexplicably connected to Judah throughout her life.
Michael Crummey brings to life a realm where the line between the everyday and the otherworldly is impossible to discern. The novel is alive with singular characters and offers an uncommon insight into the complexities of human nature.
Galore is a testament to the power of stories to shape and sustain us, a narrative that is both sprawling and intimate, stark and fantastical.
Wally Lamb's two previous novels, She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, struck a chord with readers. They responded to the intensely introspective nature of the books, and to their lively narrative styles and biting humor. One critic called Wally Lamb a "modern-day Dostoyevsky," whose characters struggle not only with their respective pasts, but with a "mocking, sadistic God" in whom they don't believe but to whom they turn, nevertheless, in times of trouble (New York Times).
In his new novel, The Hour I First Believed, Lamb travels well beyond his earlier work and embodies in his fiction myth, psychology, family history stretching back many generations, and the questions of faith that lie at the heart of everyday life. The result is an extraordinary tour de force, at once a meditation on the human condition and an unflinching yet compassionate evocation of character.
When forty-seven-year-old high school teacher Caelum Quirk and his younger wife, Maureen, a school nurse, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, Caelum returns home to Three Rivers, Connecticut, to be with his aunt who has just had a stroke. But Maureen finds herself in the school library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed, as two vengeful students go on a carefully premeditated, murderous rampage. Miraculously she survives, but at a cost: she is unable to recover from the trauma. Caelum and Maureen flee Colorado and return to an illusion of safety at the Quirk family farm in Three Rivers. But the effects of chaos are not so easily put right, and further tragedy ensues.
While Maureen fights to regain her sanity, Caelum discovers a cache of old diaries, letters, and newspaper clippings in an upstairs bedroom of his family's house. The colorful and intriguing story they recount spans five generations of Quirk family ancestors, from the Civil War era to Caelum's own troubled childhood. Piece by piece, Caelum reconstructs the lives of the women and men whose legacy he bears. Unimaginable secrets emerge; long-buried fear, anger, guilt, and grief rise to the surface. As Caelum grapples with unexpected and confounding revelations from the past, he also struggles to fashion a future out of the ashes of tragedy. His personal quest for meaning and faith becomes a mythic journey that is at the same time quintessentially contemporary—and American.
The Hour I First Believed is a profound and heart-rending work of fiction. Wally Lamb proves himself a virtuoso storyteller, assembling a variety of voices and an ensemble of characters rich enough to evoke all of humanity.
The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder is a captivating tale of family and friendship, tragedy and triumph, loss and love. This enchanting novel follows the life of Calla Lily Ponder, a young girl growing up in the small town of La Luna, Louisiana.
Guided by the mystical Moon Lady, a protective feminine force, Calla Lily thrives in her hometown until the end of her first love pushes her to the vibrant Crescent City. There, she discovers her unique gift of "healing hands," a power that allows her to change lives and alleviate pain.
Join Calla Lily on her journey as she attends a prestigious beauty academy in New Orleans, with dreams of opening her own salon. Experience the adventures, new friendships, and the inevitable setbacks that come with life in the Big Easy.
Filled with Southern charm and sassy wisdom, this novel is a heartwarming exploration of the power of home and the magic of everyday life.
Dorothea Benton Frank returns to the enchanted landscape of South Carolina's Lowcountry, made famous in her beloved New York Times bestseller Sullivan's Island, to tell the story of the next generation of Hamiltons and Hayes.
Return to Sullivan's Island captures the essence of the Lowcountry, a place where the shimmering blue waters of the Atlantic meet white clapboards and silver tin roofs, surrounded by a confessional porch that has seen and heard the stories of generations.
Newly graduated from college and an aspiring writer, Beth Hayes craves independence and has a world to conquer. But her dreams of travel, graduate study, and writing the great American novel are postponed. With her family moving and her mother, Susan, leaving for Paris, Beth is elected to house-sit the Island Gamble.
Buoyed by sentimental memories of growing up on this tiny sandbar, Beth vows to discover the wisdom the Lowcountry holds. Just as she vows to avoid the delusional world of white picket fences, minivans, and eternal love, she meets Max Mitchell, and her plans begin to unravel.
As Beth navigates her journey, she finds unexpected friends in her wise Aunt Sophie, Cecily Singleton, and Woody Morrison, all while uncovering the island's secrets. In this magical place that loves you so much it wants to claim you, Beth learns that betrayal and tragedy are best handled with loyal family and friends.
The sinfully sexy MacKade brothers are back! New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts's reader favorites are once again breaking the hearts of women everywhere.
Sheriff Devin MacKade watched — patiently, painfully — as the woman he secretly cherished suffered through a less-than-perfect marriage. Now pretty Cassie Connor was free...but vulnerable. Devin knew he'd have to tread slowly, all the while wondering if The Heart of Devin MacKade could ever claim the woman he loved.
The youngest MacKade, Shane, was a man of the land, so the last woman he expected to catch his eye was a Ph.D.-toting academic. But Rebecca Knight had caught much more than that. One beautiful lady didn't mean The Fall of Shane MacKade from bachelorhood was a sure thing. But it was definitely a possibility...
The Story Sisters charts the lives of three sisters–Elv, Claire, and Meg. Each has a fate she must meet alone: one on a country road, one in the streets of Paris, and one in the corridors of her own imagination.
Inhabiting their world are a charismatic man who cannot tell the truth, a neighbor who is not who he appears to be, a clumsy boy in Paris who falls in love and stays there, a detective who finds his heart’s desire, and a demon who will not let go.
What does a mother do when one of her children goes astray? How does she save one daughter without sacrificing the others? How deep can love go, and how far can it take you? These are the questions this luminous novel asks.
At once a coming-of-age tale, a family saga, and a love story of sensual longing, The Story Sisters sifts through the miraculous and the mundane as the girls become women and their choices haunt them, change them and, finally, redeem them.
Set in the rural Midlands of England, The Rainbow (1915) revolves around three generations of the Brangwens, a strong, vigorous family, deeply involved with the land. When Tom Brangwen marries a Polish widow, Lydia Lensky, and adopts her daughter Anna as his own, he is unprepared for the conflict and passion that erupts between them. All are seeking individual fulfilment, but it is Ursula, Anna's spirited daughter, who, in search for self-knowledge, rejects the conventional role of womanhood.
This visionary novel, considered to be one of Lawrence’s finest, explores the complex sexual and psychological relationships between men and women in an increasingly industrialized world.
Young Elizabeth O'Connor is the little sister John Brady always longed for. But she wants much more than that from her spiritual mentor. As she blossoms into a beautiful young woman intent on loving John, he must push back the very real attraction he feels for her. His past just won't let him go there.
Unfortunately, Lizzie won't let him go anywhere else--until she discovers he is not all that he seems. Can true love survive such revelations?
Full of romance and relationships that readers have come to love, A Passion Denied is the final book in the popular Daughters of Boston series.
Beneath the majestic towers of the Alhambra, Granada's cobbled streets resonate with music and secrets. Sonia Cameron knows nothing of the city's shocking past; she is here to dance. But in a quiet café, a chance conversation and an intriguing collection of old photographs draw her into the extraordinary tale of Spain's devastating civil war.
Seventy years earlier, the cafĂ© is home to the close-knit RamĂrez family. In 1936, an army coup led by Franco shatters the country's fragile peace, and in the heart of Granada, the family witnesses the worst atrocities of conflict. Divided by politics and tragedy, everyone must take a side, fighting a personal battle as Spain rips itself apart.
Captivating and deeply moving, Victoria Hislop's second novel is as inspiring as her international bestselling debut, The Island.
When Willow is born with severe osteogenesis imperfecta, her parents are devastated. She will suffer hundreds of broken bones as she grows, enduring a lifetime of pain. Every expectant parent will tell you that they don't want a perfect baby, just a healthy one. Charlotte and Sean O'Keefe would have asked for a healthy baby, too, if they'd been given the choice.
Instead, their lives are made up of sleepless nights, mounting bills, the pitying stares of "luckier" parents, and maybe worst of all, the what-ifs. What if their child had been born healthy? But it's all worth it because Willow is, funny as it seems, perfect. She's smart as a whip, on her way to being as pretty as her mother, kind, brave, and for a five-year-old, an unexpectedly deep source of wisdom. Willow is Willow, in sickness and in health.
Everything changes, though, after a series of events forces Charlotte and her husband to confront the most serious what-ifs of all. What if Charlotte had known earlier of Willow's illness? What if things could have been different? What if their beloved Willow had never been born? To do Willow justice, Charlotte must ask herself these questions and one more. What constitutes a valuable life?
An old man lies dying, propped up in his living room and surrounded by his children and grandchildren. George Washington Crosby drifts in and out of consciousness, back to the wonder and pain of his impoverished childhood in Maine. As the clock repairer’s time winds down, his memories intertwine with those of his father, an epileptic, itinerant peddler, and his grandfather, a Methodist preacher beset by madness.
At once heartbreaking and life affirming, Tinkers is an elegiac meditation on love, loss, illness, faith, and the fierce beauty of nature.
Settler Elizabeth Bonner must cross the frozen wilderness of New York State in the winter of 1794 in a desperate bid to save her husband from being hanged as an American spy. This thrilling narrative is the exciting sequel to Into the Wilderness.
Elizabeth and Nathaniel Bonner have settled into their life together at the edge of the New-York wilderness when Elizabeth gives birth to healthy twins. But soon, events in Canada draw Nathaniel far away from his new family. Word reaches them that Nathaniel's father has been arrested by crown officials in British Canada. Nathaniel reluctantly leaves Hidden Wolf Mountain to set out for the distant city, determined to see his father freed. Instead, Nathaniel is imprisoned and finds himself in imminent danger of being hanged as an American spy.
In a desperate bid to save her husband, Elizabeth bundles her infants and sets out on the long trek to Montreal. Accompanied by her stepdaughter, Hannah, their wise friend Curiosity Freeman, and Runs-from-Bears, a Mohawk warrior and lifelong friend of Nathaniel's, Elizabeth journeys through the snowy wilderness and across treacherous waterways. But she soon discovers that freeing Nathaniel will take every ounce of her courage and inventiveness. It is a struggle that threatens her with the loss of what she loves most: her children.
Torn apart, the Bonners must embark on yet another perilous voyage...this time all the way across the ocean to the heart of Scotland, where a destiny they could never have imagined awaits them.
A sweeping epic of romance and adventure, Dawn on a Distant Shore establishes Sara Donati as one of today's most gifted storytellers. With well-drawn characters and an evocative love story intricately woven into the rich history of the past, this extraordinary novel will enthrall readers and sweep them away to another time and place.
Set in Boston at the end of the First World War, New York Times best-selling author Dennis Lehane's long-awaited eighth novel unflinchingly captures the political and social unrest of a nation caught at the crossroads between past and future.
The Given Day tells the story of two families—one black, one white—swept up in a maelstrom of revolutionaries and anarchists, immigrants and ward bosses, Brahmins and ordinary citizens, all engaged in a battle for survival and power.
Beat cop Danny Coughlin, the son of one of the city's most beloved and powerful police captains, joins a burgeoning union movement and the hunt for violent radicals. Luther Laurence, on the run after a deadly confrontation with a crime boss in Tulsa, works for the Coughlin family and tries desperately to find his way home to his pregnant wife.
Here, too, are some of the most influential figures of the era—Babe Ruth; Eugene O'Neill; leftist activist Jack Reed; NAACP founder W. E. B. DuBois; Mitchell Palmer, Woodrow Wilson's ruthless Red-chasing attorney general; cunning Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge; and an ambitious young Department of Justice lawyer named John Hoover.
Coursing through some of the pivotal events of the time—including the Spanish Influenza pandemic—and culminating in the Boston Police Strike of 1919, The Given Day explores the crippling violence and irrepressible exuberance of a country at war with, and in the thrall of, itself.
As Danny, Luther, and those around them struggle to define themselves in increasingly turbulent times, they gradually find family in one another and, together, ride a rising storm of hardship, deprivation, and hope that will change all their lives.
A woman steps over the line into the unthinkable in this brilliant, powerful, and unforgettable novel by the author of The Lovely Bones and Lucky.
For years, Helen Knightly has given her life to others: to her haunted mother, her enigmatic father, her husband, and now, her grown children. When she finally crosses a terrible boundary, her life comes rushing in at her in a way she never could have imagined.
Unfolding over the next twenty-four hours, this searing, fast-paced novel explores the complex ties between mothers and daughters, wives and lovers, the meaning of devotion, and the line between love and hate. It is a challenging, moving, gripping story, written with the fluidity and strength of voice that only Alice Sebold can bring to the page.