Books with category 👩‍👧‍👦 Family
Displaying 36 books

Somewhere Beyond the Sea

2024

by TJ Klune

Somewhere Beyond the Sea is the highly anticipated sequel to TJ Klune's The House in the Cerulean Sea, a beloved and best-selling fantasy novel.

Arthur Parnassus has created a good life from the remnants of a difficult past. As the caretaker of an extraordinary orphanage on a remote and unique island, he aspires to become the adoptive father to the six enchanted and powerful children in his care.

Arthur dedicates himself fully, ensuring that the children never endure the neglect and suffering he experienced as an orphan on the same island. He's not alone in his efforts; his life partner, Linus Baker, a former employee of the Department In Charge of Magical Youth, stands with him. Alongside them are the island's sprite, Zoe Chapelwhite, and her girlfriend, Mayor Helen Webb. Together, they will go to any lengths to safeguard the children.

When Arthur is compelled to confront his shadowy history publicly, he leads a battle for a future that his family and all magical beings are entitled to. The arrival of a new magical child, who embraces the term 'monster'—a label Arthur fought to shield his children from—indicates a pivotal moment for their family. They must either unite more robustly than before or risk disintegration.

Return to Marsyas Island for Arthur's tale—a narrative of perseverance and love, about the challenging journey to fight for the life you choose and the effort required to maintain it.

Better

Better is a gutsy, riveting memoir that intimately explores suicide, its legacy in families, and the often cyclical, crooked path of recovery. Arianna Rebolini delves into the profound questions surrounding the choice of death by one's own hands and the struggle to understand the desire to die.

After a decade of therapy and overcoming suicidal depression, Arianna was "better." Her life was seemingly on track with the publication of her first book, a fulfilling job, and the joy of motherhood. Yet, the dark pull of suicide lingered. In a poignant moment, as her young son played, she found herself contemplating the end of her life.

The narrative weaves through Arianna's month-long crisis as a new mother with decades of family history. From her childhood cries for help to the fear of passing the shadow of suicide to her son, Arianna seeks to understand the mechanisms of suicidality. Her journey includes an exploration of the writings of famous individuals who took their own lives, as she searches for insights into the fateful moment of committing to the act of suicide—or the harrowing realization that it cannot be undone.

When her brother faces a similar battle, Arianna confronts the limits of her insights into depression's grip. Better is a harrowing intellectual and emotional odyssey marked by clarity and compassion, a tour through the seductive darkness of death, and a life-affirming testament to the quest for getting better for good.

House of Glass

2024

by Sarah Pekkanen

On the outside they were the golden family with the perfect life. On the inside they built the perfect lie. A young nanny who plunged to her death, or was she pushed? A nine-year-old girl who collects sharp objects and refuses to speak. A lawyer whose job it is to uncover who in the family is a victim and who is a murderer. But how can you find out the truth when everyone here is lying?

Rose Barclay is a nine-year-old girl who witnessed the possible murder of her nanny - in the midst of her parent's bitter divorce - and immediately stopped speaking. Stella Hudson is a best interest attorney, appointed to serve as counsel for children in custody cases. She never accepts clients under thirteen due to her own traumatic childhood, but Stella's mentor, a revered judge, believes Stella is the only one who can help.

From the moment Stella passes through the iron security gate and steps into the gilded, historic DC home of the Barclays, she realizes the case is even more twisted, and the Barclay family far more troubled, than she feared. And there's something eerie about the house itself: It's a plastic house, with not a single bit of glass to be found.

As Stella comes closer to uncovering the secrets the Barclays are desperate to hide, danger wraps around her like a shroud, and her past and present are set on a collision course in ways she never expected. Everyone is a suspect in the nanny's murder. The mother, the father, the grandmother, the nanny's boyfriend. Even Rose. Is the person Stella's supposed to protect the one she may need protection from?

Hum

2024

by Helen Phillips

Hum is an extraordinary novel by the National Book Award–longlisted author Helen Phillips. It tells the story of a wife and mother named May, who, after losing her job to artificial intelligence, undergoes a radical procedure that makes her invisible to surveillance systems.

Set in a city ravaged by climate change and inhabited by intelligent robots known as 'hums,' May's decision to alter her face to escape detection is driven by desperation to clear her family's debt and secure their future. The narrative follows her as she invests in a brief escape to the Botanical Garden, a sanctuary of natural beauty, hoping it will heal her family's reliance on technology.

However, the supposed tranquility is short-lived as her family's safety is compromised, pushing May to rely on a hum with dubious intentions. Hum is a riveting work of speculative fiction, examining themes of marriage, motherhood, and identity against a backdrop of environmental decay and rapid technological progress. It presents a world filled with both dystopian and utopian elements, compelling readers to confront the unsettling realities of our times.

Yr Dead

2024

by Sam Sax

Yr Dead is a queer, Jewish, diasporic bildungsroman told in lyric fragments through the eyes of the character Ezra. The world of the book unfolds as Ezra's life flashes across time and geography during their final act of protest. The novel leaps from memories of childhood, gender identity formation, and political revelation to the inherited memory and historical movements of Ezra's family. This book explores how historical memory shapes our political and emotional present as it exists at the intersections of protest, religion, and desire.

Look in the Mirror

When Nina’s father dies, she is left something in his will: a gleaming dream vacation home in a balmy tropical paradise. Still grieving her father's death, Nina learns she has inherited property in the British Virgin Islands—a vacation home she had no idea existed, until now. The house is extraordinary: state-of-the-art, all glass and marble. How did her sensible father come into enough money for this? Why did he keep it from her? And what else was he hiding?

Once an ambitious medical student, Maria is a nanny for the super-rich. The money’s better and so are the destinations where her work takes her. Just one more gig, and she’ll be set. Finally, she’ll be secure. But when her wards never show, Maria begins to make herself at home, spending her days luxuriating by the pool and in the sauna. There’s just one rule: Don’t go in the basement. But her curiosity just might get the better of her—and soon she’ll wish her only worry was not getting paid.

Someone Like Us

2024

by Dinaw Mengestu

Someone Like Us is a compelling narrative that delves into the life of the son of Ethiopian immigrants, who embarks on a quest to unravel a hidden family history, shedding light on a past fraught with unexpected loss, addiction, and the constant emotional pull towards home.

Having left behind a promising career as a journalist to start anew in Paris, Mamush encounters Helen, a photographer whose unique perspective on the world opens up the possibility of not just love, but also family. Five years down the line, with his marriage to Helen teetering on the edge, Mamush returns to the tight-knit Ethiopian immigrant community in Washington DC that shaped his upbringing. The community is anchored by his unwavering mother and Samuel, a charismatic father figure whose infectious charm and humor mask a more complex and troubling reality.

On the day of Mamush's return to Washington, the shocking news of Samuel's death in his garage reaches him. With Helen and their young son back in Paris, Mamush embarks on an unexpected cross-country journey in America, seeking answers to questions he was always discouraged from asking. In his pursuit of truth, he comes to realize that the key to salvaging his family and returning home may lie in confronting not only the enigma surrounding Samuel's life and demise but also his own haunted memories and the years he spent camouflaging them.

This is an unforgettable and masterful work from Dinaw Mengestu, an author celebrated for his extraordinary talent.

Such Charming Liars

The newest mystery from the author One of Us Is Lying, the Queen of thrillers, Karen M. McManus! When mother-daughter grifters set out on their final job, the heist gets deadly and dangerously personal.

For all of Kat's life, it's just been her and her mother, Jamie—except for the forty-eight hours when Jamie was married and Kat had a stepbrother, Liam. That all ended in an epic divorce, and Kat and Liam haven't spoken since.

Now Jamie is a jewel thief trying to go straight, but she has one last job—at billionaire Ross Sutherland's birthday party. And Kat has figured out a way to tag along. What Kat doesn't know, though, is that there are two surprise guests at the dazzling Sutherland compound that weekend. The last two people she wants to run into. Liam and his father—a serial scammer who has his sights set on Ross Sutherland's youngest daughter.

Kat and Liam are on a collision course to disaster, and when a Sutherland dies, they realize they might actually be in the killer's crosshairs themselves. Somehow Kat and Liam are the new targets, and they can't trust anyone—except each other.

Or can they? Because if there's one thing both Kat and Liam know, it's how to lie. They learned from the best.

Liars

2024

by Sarah Manguso

Liars is a searing exploration of life as a wife, a mother, and an artist, delving into how marriage can often be a facade. Sarah Manguso crafts a narrative that is as much about self-discovery as it is about the disintegration of a relationship.

Jane, an aspiring writer with dreams of a fulfilling creative life, falls in love with John Bridges, a filmmaker. Their mutual desires for love, success, and happiness lead them down the aisle. Jane believes she has captured all she ever wanted, including the joys and challenges of motherhood that follow.

However, as Jane's own career begins to flourish, she finds herself overshadowed by John's ambitions and ego, becoming more of a supporting role in his life rather than an equal partner. The strain on their marriage becomes palpable as Jane struggles to maintain the delicate balance of family life.

Their story reaches a boiling point when John decides to leave, setting Jane on a transformative journey. Liars is a poignant tale that weaves together wit and anger, portraying the intense collapse of a marriage and the indomitable rise of a woman from the ruins.

Like Mother, Like Daughter

From the New York Times best-selling author of Reconstructing Amelia, Like Mother, Like Daughter is a thrilling novel of emotional suspense that questions the damaging fictions we cling to and the hard truths we avoid. Above all, it's a love story between a mother and a daughter, each determined to save the other before it's too late.

When Cleo, a student at NYU, arrives late for dinner at her childhood home in Brooklyn, she finds food burning in the oven and no sign of her mother, Kat. Then Cleo discovers her mom's bloody shoe under the sofa. Something terrible has happened. But what?

The polar opposite of Cleo, whose "out of control" emotions and "unsafe" behavior have created a seemingly unbridgeable rift between mother and daughter, Kat is the essence of Park Slope perfection: a happily married, successful corporate lawyer. Or so Cleo thinks. Kat has been lying. She’s not just a lawyer; she’s her firm’s fixer. She’s damn good at it, too.

Growing up in a dangerous group home taught her how to think fast, stay calm under pressure, and recognize a real threat when she sees one. And in the days leading up her disappearance, Kat has become aware of multiple threats: demands for money from her unfaithful soon-to-be ex-husband; evidence that Cleo has slipped back into a relationship that’s far riskier than she understands; and menacing anonymous messages from her past—all of which she’s kept hidden from Cleo.

The World After Alice

For readers of Seating Arrangements and The Most Fun We Ever Had, The World After Alice is a gorgeous and gripping story of two families brought together to celebrate an unexpected marriage, twelve years after a devastating tragedy upended their lives.

When Morgan and Benji surprise their families with a wedding invitation to Maine, they're aware the news of their clandestine relationship will come as a shock. Twelve years have passed since the stunning loss of sixteen-year-old Alice, Benji's sister and Morgan's best friend, and no one is quite the same. But the young couple decide to plunge headlong into matrimony, marking the first time their fractured families will reunite since Alice's funeral.

As the arriving guests descend upon the tranquil coastal town, they bring with them not only skepticism about the impromptu nuptials but also deep-seated secrets and agendas of their own. Peter, Morgan's father, may be trying to dissuade his daughter from saying "I do," while Linnie, Benji's mother, introduces a new boyfriend with his own tumultuous past. Nick, Benji's father, is scheming to secure a new job before his wife, Caro—formerly his secretary and mistress—discovers he lost his old one. Morgan, too, carries delicate secrets that threaten to jeopardize the happiness she has so longed for. And as for Benji—well, he's just trying to make sure the whole weekend doesn't implode.

As the whirlwind weekend unfolds, old passions reignite, deep wounds resurface, and unearthed secrets threaten to shatter the fragile peace the wedding promises. With each new revelation, the to-be-weds and their complicated families are forced to question just how well they know the ones they hold dear.

Same As It Ever Was

2024

by Claire Lombardo

The New York Times bestselling author of THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD returns with another brilliantly observed family drama in which the enduring, hard-won affection of a long marriage faces imminent derailment from events both past and present.

At fifty-seven, Julia Ames is living an improbably lovely life. Despite her inclination toward self-sabotage and prickly alienation, she has found herself with a husband she loves, two happy children, and a quiet, contented existence in the suburbs. When she bumps into an old friend that she hasn't spoken to in years—a friend who almost ended her marriage decades prior—Julia finds herself reexamining her supposedly happy life. Compounded with a bombshell announcement from her son and her daughter's impending departure for college, this chance meeting threatens to send Julia spinning out of control.

Daunted by a looming empty nest, Julia becomes consumed with her checkered past—and with the chaos of her present. She grapples with a complicated new daughter-in-law, the reappearance of her own estranged mother, and the forbidden allure of rekindling a relationship that was once both her lifeline and her downfall. The novel follows Julia over the course of a few tumultuous months as well as the fifty-plus years that preceded them, from her chaotic childhood in Chicago to her fraught early days of marriage and motherhood. SAME AS IT EVER WAS ultimately examines the complete and complicated trajectory of one woman's life and asks what it takes to form—and keep—a family.

The Next Mrs. Parrish

2024

by Liv Constantine

Daphne and Amber Parrish are thrust back into each other’s lives upon the resurgence of a long-forgotten threat, forcing a vicious game of cat and mouse where everything is on the line, in this thrilling sequel to the million-copy-bestselling Reese’s Book Club pick The Last Mrs. Parrish.

Amber Patterson Parrish has come a long way from being an invisible wallflower. Her hard work and immaculate planning have paid off now that she’s a prominent socialite, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been bumps along the way. Less than a year since her husband Jackson’s tax-evasion scandal, Amber is still at the top of the Bishops Harbor community pecking order, free to do as she wishes while Jackson sits in prison. But that freedom is quickly coming to an end. With Jackson getting released from prison, Amber’s time—and money—is vanishing.

Meanwhile, Daphne Parrish left Bishops Harbor after her divorce from Jackson Parrish, swearing she would never go back. But when one of her daughters runs away from home, desperate to see her father, Daphne agrees to return for the summer to allow him supervised visits. Once out of prison, Jackson swears he’s a changed man, but Daphne knows all too well that he can’t be trusted.

When a ghost from Amber’s past emerges looking for revenge, the three of them find unlikely allies in one another, but who is playing who? When all is said and done, they’ll have to fight tooth and nail for everything they have left in this zero-sum game.

With shocking turns and entertaining characters, The Next Mrs. Parrish will make you rethink everything you thought you knew about duplicity and betrayal.

Tehrangeles

Tehrangeles, a novel by Porochista Khakpour, introduces us to the Milanis: fast-food heiresses, L.A. royalty, and your newest reality TV obsession. Iranian-American multimillionaires Ali and Homa Milani have it all—a McMansion in the hills of Los Angeles, a microwaveable snack empire, and four spirited daughters.

Meet Violet, the big-hearted aspiring model; Roxanna, the chaotic influencer; Mina, the chronically-online overachiever; and Haylee, the impressionable health fanatic. As they stand on the verge of landing their own reality TV show, they must face the reality that their deepest secrets are about to be exposed before the cameras even start rolling.

Each member of the family, including their aloof Persian cat Pari, has something to hide. Yet, the looming scrutiny of fame also threatens to bring the family closer than ever. Tehrangeles is a dramatic, biting yet full of heart tragicomic saga about high-functioning family dysfunction and the ever-present struggle to accept one’s true self.

Fire Exit

2024

by Morgan Talty

Fire Exit is Morgan Talty's debut novel that promises to be utterly consuming. Set against the backdrop of Maine's Penobscot Reservation, it tells the story of Charles Lamosway, who has lived a life filled with secrets and longing from across the river.

Charles has silently observed the life of a family that could have been his own, witnessing the growth of Elizabeth, a child unknowingly connected to him by blood. But the weight of the untold truth looms over him as he cares for his property, his volatile friend Bobby, and his mother Louise, who is losing herself to dementia.

Haunted by his past, including a lost childhood on the reservation, a truncated love affair, and the tragic death of his stepfather, Charles faces the daunting questions he's avoided for so long. As he grapples with the decision to unveil his secret, the novel delves deep into themes of family, legacy, culture, and the debts we owe to each other.

From the award-winning author of Night of the Living Rez, Fire Exit is poised to be a masterful and unforgettable exploration of the ties that bind us and the truths that define us.

Godwin

2024

by Joseph O'Neill

Godwin marks the return of Joseph O'Neill, presenting a story that resonates with the scope of his Pen/Faulkner Award-winning Netherland. This narrative unfolds the odyssey of two brothers, Mark Wolfe and Geoff, as they traverse the globe in search of an African soccer prodigy who has the potential to revolutionize their fortunes.

Mark Wolfe, a technical writer of great intellect yet prone to self-sabotage, resides in Pittsburgh with his wife, Sushila, and their young daughter. His half-brother Geoff, a UK-born struggling soccer agent, lures Mark into a transatlantic quest to locate a mysterious prospect known simply as “Godwin”—a teenager from Africa whom Geoff believes could be the next Messi.

The tale alternates between the perspectives of Mark and his colleague Lakesha Williams, weaving a narrative that is at once a family saga and a global adventure. It delves into the beauty and corruption within soccer, the hazards and hopes of international commerce, and the somber history of cross-continental profit.

Through his distinctive storytelling, Joseph O'Neill probes into the remnants of colonialism against the backdrop of familial affection, the machinations of global capitalism, and the aspirations of the individual.

Accordion Eulogies

2024

by Noe Alvarez

Searching, propulsive, and deeply spiritual, Accordion Eulogies is an odyssey to repair a severed family lineage, told through the surprising history of a musical instrument.

Growing up in Yakima, Washington, Noé Álvarez never knew his grandfather. Stories swirled around this mythologized, larger-than-life figure: That he had abandoned his family, and had possibly done something awful that put a curse on his descendants. About his grandfather, young Noé was sure of only one thing: That he had played the accordion.

Now an adult, reckoning with the legacy of silence surrounding his family’s migration from Mexico, Álvarez resolves both to take up the instrument and to journey into Mexico to discover the grandfather he never knew. Álvarez travels across the US with his accordion, meeting makers and players in cities that range from San Antonio to Boston. He uncovers the story of an instrument that’s been central to classic American genres, but also played a critical role in indigenous Mexican history.

Like the accordion itself, Álvarez feels trapped between his roots in Mexico and the U.S. As he tries to make sense of his place in the world—as a father, a son, a musician—he gets closer to uncovering the mystery of his origins.

The Guncle Abroad

2024

by Steven Rowley

From the nationally bestselling author of The Guncle comes the much-anticipated sequel, in which Patrick O’Hara is called back to his guncle duties…at a big, family wedding in Lake Como, Italy.

Patrick O’Hara is finally in a league of his own…professionally. Inspired by his stint as Grant and Maisie’s caretaker after their mother’s passing, Patrick has "un-stalled" his acting career with the sitcom, Guncle Knows Best. Still, some things have had to take a back seat. Looking down both barrels at fifty, Patrick is single and lonely after breaking things off with Emory. But at least he has family, right?

When his brother Greg announces his big, second wedding in Lake Como, Italy, Patrick feels pulled toward Grant and Maisie and flies to Europe to attend the lavish event, only to butt heads with a newfound Launt (Lesbian Aunt), curb his sister Clara from flirting with guests, and desperately restore himself to the favored relative status in the eyes of the kids, as they struggle to adjust to a new normal. But is it Patrick’s job to save the day? Or is simply celebrating love enough to quell the family chaos?

Gracing the page with his signature blend of humor and heart, Steven Rowley delivers the long-awaited sequel to a beloved story, all about the complicated bonds of family, love, and what it takes to rediscover yourself, even at the ripe age of fifty.

April May June July

2024

by Alison B. Hart

A triumphant family story and sharply observed exploration of privilege, identity, and love in all its forms, following four estranged siblings whose lives collide in the lead-up to a family wedding, when new clues surface about their long-missing father.

April, May, June, and July Barber don’t have much in common anymore. An upcoming family wedding will place the four siblings in the same room for the first time in years. But shortly before, when April spots their father, who went missing while serving overseas a decade ago, their reunion becomes entirely more complicated.

While the siblings’ search for the truth about their father forces them back into each other’s lives, it also intensifies their private dramas. April loves her husband, but seeks excitement outside their marriage. May had big dreams for the future, but she’s still stuck living at home. June is eager to marry her girlfriend, so why does she need a drink at every wedding-related event? And then there’s baby brother July, whose unrequited love for his straight roommate has him more confused than ever.

Confronting the past together, April, May, June, and July will find not only answers about their father, but new romance, hope, and understanding as they learn to embrace the beauty of their shared history.

Lovers and Liars

Three wildly different sisters reunite for a destination wedding at an English castle in this heartfelt and rollicking novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Jetsetters.

Once upon a time, the Peacock sisters were little girls who combed each other's tangled hair. But decades of secrets have led them to separate lives—and to telling lies, to themselves and to one another.

Sylvie is getting married. Again. A librarian and widow who soothes her grief by escaping into books (and shelving them perfectly), Sylvie has caught the attention of an unlikely match: Simon Rampling, a mysterious, wealthy man from Northern England. Sylvie allows herself to imagine a life beside him—one filled with the written word, kindness, and companionship. She's ready to love again... or is she?

Cleo is the golden child. A successful criminal defense lawyer with the perfect boyfriend, she is immediately suspicious of Simon. Is he really who he says he is? Cleo heads to Mumberton Castle with a case of investigative files, telling herself she will expose Simon and save her sister from more heartbreak... but who is she really trying to save?

Emma is living a lie. She can't afford this fancy trip—and she definitely can't tell her husband and sons why. She once dreamt of a line of her own perfumes. Fragrances allowed her to speak in silence. Now, that tendency for silence only worsens her situation. Will she emerge with her dignity and family intact?

When their toxic mother shows up, the sisters assume the roles they fell into to survive their childhood... but they just might find the courage to make new choices.

Set over a spectacularly dramatic weekend, in the grand halls of a sprawling castle estate—amidst floor-to-ceiling libraries, falconry lessons, and medieval meals—Lovers and Liars is the unforgettable story of a family's ability to forgive and to find joy in one another once again.

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 Hypocrite

2024

by Jo Hamya

From a fiercely talented writer poised to be a new generation's Rachel Cusk or Deborah Levy, The Hypocrite is a novel set between the London stage and Sicily, about a daughter who turns her novelist father's fall from grace into a play, and a father who increasingly fears his precocious daughter's voice.

August 2020. Sophia, a young playwright, awaits her father's verdict on her new show. A famous author whose novels haven't aged as gracefully into the modern era as he might hope, he is completely unaware that the play centers around a vacation the two took years earlier to an island off Sicily, where he dictated to her a new book. The play has been met with rave reviews but Sophia's father has studiously avoided reading any of them. But when the house lights dim, he understands that his daughter has laid him bare, used the events of their summer to create an incisive, witty, skewering critique of the attitudes and sexual mores of men of his generation.

Set through one staging of the play, The Hypocrite seamlessly and scorchingly shifts through time and perspective, illuminating an argument between a father and his daughter that, with impeccable nuance, examines the fraught inheritances each generation is left to contend with, and the struggle to nurture empathy in a world changing at lightning-speed.

Darling Girls

2024

by Sally Hepworth

SISTERS, SECRETS, LOVE, AND MURDER... Sally Hepworth’s new novel has it all.

For as long as they can remember, Jessica, Norah, and Alicia have been told how lucky they are. As young girls, they were rescued from family tragedies and raised by a loving foster mother, Miss Fairchild, on an idyllic farming estate and given an elusive second chance at a happy family life.

But their childhood wasn’t the fairy tale everyone thinks it was. Miss Fairchild had rules. Miss Fairchild could be unpredictable. And Miss Fairchild was never, ever to be crossed. In a moment of desperation, the three broke away from Miss Fairchild and thought they were free. Even though they never saw her again, she was always somewhere in the shadows of their minds. When a body is discovered under the home they grew up in, the foster sisters find themselves thrust into the spotlight as key witnesses. Or are they prime suspects?

A thrilling page-turner of sisterhood, secrets, love, and murder by New York Times bestselling author Sally Hepworth.

Daughter of Mine

2024

by Megan Miranda

The new thrilling novel from Megan Miranda, the instant New York Times bestselling author of All the Missing Girls, The Last to Vanish, and The Only Survivors.

When Hazel Sharp, daughter of Mirror Lake's longtime local detective, unexpectedly inherits her childhood home, she's warily drawn back to the town—and people—she left behind almost a decade earlier. But Hazel's not the only relic of the past; a drought has descended on the region, and as the water level in the lake drops, long-hidden secrets begin to emerge...including evidence that may help finally explain the mystery of her mother's disappearance.

There's Going to Be Trouble

2024

by Jen Silverman

A woman is pulled into a love affair with a radical activist, unknowingly echoing her family's dangerous past and risking the foundations of her future in this electrifying novel. The course of your life can change with one split-second decision.

Minnow has always tried to lead the life her single father modeled—private, quiet, hardworking, apolitical. So she is rocked when an instinctive decision to help a student makes her the extremely public face of a scandal in the small town where she teaches. As tensions rise, vandalism and death threats follow, and an overwhelmed Minnow flees to a teaching position in Paris.

There, Minnow falls into an exhilarating and all-consuming relationship with Charles, a young Frenchman whose activism has placed him at odds with his powerful family. As Minnow is pulled into the daring protest Charles and his friends are planning, she unknowingly draws close to repeating a secret tragedy from her family's past. For her father wasn’t always the restrained, conservative man he appears today. There are things he has taken great pains to bury from his family and from the world.

In 1968, Keen is avoiding the Vietnam draft by pursuing a PhD at Harvard. He lives his life in the basement chemistry lab, studiously avoiding the news. But when he unexpectedly falls in love with Olya, a fiery community organizer, he is consumed by her world and loses sight of his own. Learning that his deferment has ended and he’s been drafted, Keen agrees to participate in the latest action that Olya is organizing—one with more dangerous and far-reaching consequences than he could have imagined.

Minnow’s and Keen's intertwining stories take us through the turmoil of the late sixties student movements and into the chaos of the modern world. Exploding with suspense, heart, and intelligence, There's Going to Be Trouble is a story about revolution, legacy, passionate love, and how we live with the consequences of our darkest secrets.

All The World Beside

2024

by Garrard Conley

From the New York Times bestselling author of Boy Erased, an electrifying, deeply moving novel about the love story between two men in Puritan New England.

Cana, Massachusetts: a utopian vision of 18th-century Puritan New England. To the outside world, Reverend Nathaniel Whitfield and his family stand as godly pillars of their small-town community, drawing Christians from across the New World into their fold. One such Christian, physician Arthur Lyman, discovers in the minister's words a love so captivating it transcends language.

As the bond between these two men grows more and more passionate, their families must contend with a tangled web of secrets, lies, and judgments which threaten to destroy them in this world and the next. And when the religious ecstasies of the Great Awakening begin to take hold, igniting a new era of zealotry, Nathaniel and Arthur search for a path out of an impossible situation, imagining a future for themselves which has no name. Their wives and children must do the same, looking beyond the known world for a new kind of wilderness, both physical and spiritual.

Set during the turbulent historical upheavals which shaped America's destiny and following in the tradition of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, All the World Beside reveals the very human lives just beneath the surface of dogmatic belief.

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.

After Annie

2024

by Anna Quindlen

After Annie is a novel that delves into the complexities of family dynamics, emotions, and the intimate secrets of life in a small town. It is a poignant exploration of the themes of loss, love, and the enduring strength that these powerful emotions can imbue in individuals.

The sudden death of Annie Brown leaves an irreplaceable void in the lives of her husband, four young children, and her best friend. Her husband, Bill Brown, finds himself struggling to cope, while Annie's best friend, Annemarie, is drawn back to old, destructive habits in the absence of Annie's supportive presence. It falls upon Annie's daughter, Ali, to take on the mantle of responsibility, striving to maintain a semblance of their former life and confronting the intricate realities of adulthood.

As the year progresses, the memory of Annie remains a towering influence in their lives. Yet, through their shared grief and love, each of them discovers an inner resilience that enables them to grow, change, and ultimately become stronger. The novel celebrates the transformative power of love and the ability to forge ahead in the face of loss.

Authored by Anna Quindlen, a writer renowned for her emotional depth and insightful portrayal of the human condition, After Annie is a testament to how adversity can shape us in unexpected and profound ways. It is a narrative that concludes with a message of hope, reaffirming the capacity for personal growth and the unyielding strength of the human spirit.

In Ascension

In Ascension is an astonishing novel about a young microbiologist, Leigh, who embarks on an investigation of an unfathomable deep vent in the ocean floor. This journey leads her to encompass the full trajectory of the cosmos and the passage of a single human life.

Leigh grew up in Rotterdam, where she was drawn to the waterfront as an escape from her unhappy home life and volatile father. Enchanted by the undersea world of her childhood, she excels in marine biology and travels the globe to study ancient organisms. Upon the discovery of a trench in the Atlantic Ocean, she joins the exploration team, hoping to find evidence of the Earth's first life forms. However, what she finds instead calls into question everything we know about our own beginnings.

Her discovery takes her to the Mojave desert and an ambitious new space agency. As she is drawn deeper into the agency's work, Leigh learns that the Atlantic trench is only one of several related phenomena from across the world, each piece linking up to suggest a pattern beyond human understanding. Faced with the dilemma of leaving behind her declining mother and younger sister, Leigh must make an impossible choice: to remain with her family or to embark on a journey across the breadth of the cosmos.

In Ascension explores the natural world with the wonder and reverence we usually reserve for the stars. It is a compassionate, deeply inquisitive epic that reaches outward to confront the greatest questions of existence and looks inward to illuminate the smallest details of the human heart. It shows how, no matter how far away we might be and how much we have lost hope, we will always attempt to return to the people and places we call home.

Hard Girls

Hard Girls is a razor-sharp crime novel that delves into the complexities of family and the depths of darkness that can haunt a seemingly normal life. Jane Pool is content with her safe, suburban existence, complete with a house, a family, and a mundane job at a local college. However, Jane's past—marked by an enigmatic mother, family secrets, and a life-changing act of violence—continues to haunt her.

When Jane's estranged twin sister, Lila, reaches out with claims of knowing their mother's whereabouts and the reasons behind her long-ago departure, Jane is drawn into a quest for the truth. Together, the sisters embark on a perilous journey that takes them to far-flung corners of the world, challenging their mother's deceptions and confronting the pervasive darkness that has always loomed over their family.

As the stakes rise, Jane risks the life she has carefully built for a past that she has never been able to fully escape. Hard Girls combines elements of a chase novel, an espionage thriller, and domestic suspense to create a compelling and unique narrative experience that is at once propulsive, mysterious, intelligent, and filled with unexpected twists.

House of Flame and Shadow

2024

by Sarah J. Maas

The stunning third book in the sexy, action-packed Crescent City series, following the global bestsellers House of Earth and Blood and House of Sky and Breath.

Bryce Quinlan never expected to see a world other than Midgard, but now that she has, all she wants is to get back. Everything she loves is in Midgard: her family, her friends, her mate. Stranded in a strange new world, she's going to need all her wits about her to get home again. And that's no easy feat when she has no idea who to trust.

Hunt Athalar has found himself in some deep holes in his life, but this one might be the deepest of all. After a few brief months with everything he ever wanted, he's in the Asteri's dungeons again, stripped of his freedom and without a clue as to Bryce's fate. He's desperate to help her, but until he can escape the Asteri's leash, his hands are quite literally tied.

In this sexy, breathtaking sequel to the #1 bestsellers House of Earth and Blood and House of Sky and Breath, Sarah J. Maas's Crescent City series reaches new heights as Bryce and Hunt's world is brought to the brink of collapse—with its future resting on their shoulders.

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 Heiress

2024

by Rachel Hawkins

When Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller Kenmore dies, she's not only North Carolina's richest woman, she's also its most notorious. The victim of a famous kidnapping as a child and a widow four times over, Ruby ruled the tiny town of Tavistock from Ashby House, her family's estate high in the Blue Ridge mountains.

In the aftermath of her death, that estate—along with a nine-figure fortune and the complicated legacy of being a McTavish—pass to her adopted son, Camden.

But to everyone's surprise, Cam wants little to do with the house or the money—and even less to do with the surviving McTavishes. Instead, he rejects his inheritance, settling into a normal life as an English teacher in Colorado and marrying Jules, a woman just as eager to escape her own messy past.

Ten years later, Camden is a McTavish in name only, but a summons in the wake of his uncle's death brings him and Jules back into the family fold at Ashby House. Its views are just as stunning as ever, its rooms just as elegant, but coming home reminds Cam why he was so quick to leave in the first place.

Jules, however, has other ideas, and the more she learns about Cam's estranged family—and the twisted secrets they keep—the more determined she is for her husband to claim everything Ruby once intended for him to have.

But Ruby's plans were always more complicated than they appeared. As Ashby House tightens its grip on Jules and Camden, questions about the infamous heiress come to light. Was there any truth to the persistent rumors following her disappearance as a girl? What really happened to those four husbands, who all died under mysterious circumstances? And why did she adopt Cam in the first place? Soon, Jules and Cam realize that an inheritance can entail far more than what's written in a will—and that the bonds of family stretch far beyond the grave.

Mercury

2024

by Amy Jo Burns

It's 1990 and seventeen-year-old Marley West is blazing into the river valley town of Mercury, Pennsylvania. A perpetual loner, she seeks a place at someone's table and a family of her own. The first thing she sees when she arrives in town is three men standing on a rooftop. Their silhouettes blot out the sun.

The Joseph brothers become Marley's whole world before she can blink. Soon, she is young wife to one, The One Who Got Away to another, and adopted mother to them all. As their own mother fades away and their roofing business crumbles under the weight of their unwieldy father’s inflated ego, Marley steps in to shepherd these unruly men.

Years later, an eerie discovery in the church attic causes old wounds to resurface and suddenly the family's survival hangs in the balance. With Marley as their light, the Joseph brothers must decide whether they can save the family they've always known—or whether together they can build something stronger in its place.

Nonfiction

2024

by Julie Myerson

This is definitely not a ghost story.

But for a while after you’re gone, I see you everywhere. Every ragged young person sitting huddled on a pavement, every stretched-out body under cardboard in a shop doorway. Two parents stand by powerlessly as their only child seems intent on destroying herself.

As the mother—a novelist—attempts to understand her daughter, she finds herself revisiting her own uneasy, unresolved relationship with her mother. Weaving between childhoods past and present, laced with temptation and betrayal, Nonfiction is an unflinching account of a mother, daughter, wife, and author reckoning with the world around her. But can a writer ever be trusted with the truth of her own story?

Clear-eyed, lacerating, and fearless, Julie Myerson’s A Novel explores maternal love as an emotional foundation to both crave and fear. A hauntingly beautiful and deeply moving love letter from a mother to a daughter, this is a tale of damage and addiction, recovery and creativity, compassion and love.

This Plague Of Souls

This Plague of Souls marks the return of Mike McCormack, the Booker-listed author of the literary sensation Solar Bones. In this terse metaphysical thriller, we follow the story of Nealon, a man stepping back into the world after a stint in prison, only to find his home devoid of warmth, light, and the presence of his family. As if existence itself has chosen to ignore or erase him, Nealon is left to grapple with the void.

However, mysterious calls from a stranger claiming to know the fate of his missing loved ones set Nealon on a path of discovery. A meeting is arranged against the backdrop of a looming terrorist attack, where Nealon engages in a conversation riddled with hidden truths and deliberate omissions. This verbal chess match takes him on a journey through his past, his childhood, and into the heart of international crimes committed in the name of revenge against a world deemed beyond redemption.

McCormack weaves a brooding exploration of the ties that bind rural Ireland to the atrocities of the 21st century. This narrative offers a sharp portrayal of a young family's struggle and a relentless probe into our responsibilities towards our kin and the wider world.

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