Literary Fiction Family

Fifteen years after graduating from Harvard, five close friends on the cusp of middle age are still pursuing an elusive happiness and wondering if they’ve wasted their youthful opportunities. Jules, already a famous actor when she arrived on campus, is changing in mysterious ways but won’t share what is haunting her. Mariam and Rowan, who married young, are struggling with the demands of family life and starting to regret prioritising meaning over wealth in their careers.

The human “oddities” in the Museum of the Strange are less wondrous than the gawking rubes had been promised. But Alida is something else. The real thing. Traveling Depression-era America from carnival midways to speakeasies, Alida is resigned to an exploited and lonely life on the road as the museum’s golden ticket. Until she’s rescued by two compassionate strangers. Franklin and Loretta Fairchild see in Alida a gifted and uncannily well-read girl in need of a loving touch and a family. With the openhearted couple and their three precociously imaginative children, Alida finds it.

After the murder of her best friend, a librarian’s search for answers leads back to her own dark secrets in this "searing and timely" novel about a woman transformed by war, family, vengeance, and love, from the author of the beloved bestseller The Life We Bury (Kristin Harmel, author of The...

Decades after its original publication, James Agee’s last novel seems, more than ever, an American classic. For in his lyrical, sorrowful account of a man’s death and its impact on his family, Agee painstakingly created a small world of domestic happiness and then showed how quickly and casually it could be destroyed.

An exploration of relationships, marriage, passion, beauty and the price of love. Zoë Howard is 17 when her brother, Russell, introduces her to Stephen Quayle. Aloof and harsh, Stephen is unlike anyone she has ever met, 'a weird, irascible character out of some dense Russian novel'. His sister, Anna, is shy and thoughtful, 'a little orphan'. Zoe and Russell, Stephen and Anna: they may come from different social worlds, but all four will spend their lives moving in and out of each other's shadow.

When Simeon Simcox, a socialist clergyman, leaves his entire fortune not to his family but to the ruthless, social-climbing Tory MP Leslie Titmuss, the Rector's two sons react in very different ways. Henry, novelist and former 'angry young man' turned grumpy old reactionary, decides to fight the will and prove their father was insane. Younger brother Fred, a mild-mannered country doctor, takes a different approach, quietly digging in Simeon's past, only to uncover an entirely unexpected explanation for the legacy.

In 1937, seventeen-year-old Ella’s life changes forever when she is sent to spend the summer on the beautiful Île de Ré and meets the charismatic, creative Christophe. They spend the summer together, exploring the island’s sandy beaches and crystal-clear waters, and, for the first time in her life, Ella feels truly free. But the outbreak of war casts everything in a new light. Ella is forced to return to Scotland, where she volunteers for the war effort alongside the dashing Angus. In this new world, Ella feels herself drifting further and further from who she was on the Île de Ré.

Southern China, 1923. Desperate to secure her future, Mei Ling’s parents arrange a marriage to a widower in California. To enter the country, she must pretend to be her husband’s first wife - a paper wife. On the perilous voyage, Mei Ling takes an orphan girl named Siew under her wing. Dreams of a better life in America give Mei Ling the strength to endure the treacherous journey and detainment on Angel Island. But when she finally reaches San Francisco, she’s met with a surprise. Her husband, Chinn Kai Li, is a houseboy, not the successful merchant he led her to believe.

Sara Stanley is only 14, but she can weave tales that are impossible to resist. In the charming town of Carlisle, children and grown-ups alike flock from miles around to hear her spellbinding narratives. And when Bev King and his younger brother, Felix, arrive for the summer, they, too, are captivated by the Story Girl.

After discovering her mother’s secret life, Cara doesn’t have much faith in marriage. So when the love of her life, Simeon, proposes, she struggles to say "I do." She adores him, but why risk the perfect relationship by signing on a dotted line that could ruin everything? If her parents’ marriage taught her anything, it was that a gold ring doesn’t equal happiness, and she has no desire to follow in their dysfunctional footsteps.

Mary Shields is a moody, acerbic probation officer dealing with some of Glasgow’s worst cases, and her job is on the line. Liam Macdowall was imprisoned for murdering his wife, and he’s published a series of letters to the dead woman, in a book that makes him an unlikely hero - and a poster boy for Men’s Rights activists. Liam is released on licence into Mary’s care, but things are far from simple. Mary develops a poisonous obsession with Liam and his world, and when her son and Liam’s daughter form a relationship, Mary will stop at nothing to impose her own brand of justice.

Anna’s job is simple: prevent the unexpected from happening and do everything better than perfectly. An artist at heart, Anna works a day job as a private assistant for Bambi Von Bizmark, a megarich Upper East Side matriarch who’s about to be honored at the illustrious Opera Ball. Caught between the staid world of great wealth and her unconventional life as an artist, Anna struggles with her true calling. If she’s supposed to be a painter, why is she so much more successful as a personal assistant?

Mr. & Mrs. Bridge is the saga of a clean-cut, "upper-class" couple who increasingly find their post-WWII world and traditional belief systems challenged by a changing society. For Walter Bridge, an ambitious lawyer, and his wife, whose focus is her household, affluence and material comforts create a cocoon of community respectability that cloaks the void within.

A powerful and engrossing tale of extremes and extremists, D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love follows the passionate relationships of two sisters, Gudrun and Ursula Brangwen, with their respective lovers, the ominous Gerald Crich and the charismatic but fragile Rupert Birkin.

“A big, blowzy romp through the rainbow eccentricities of three generations of crazy bayou debutantes.” —Atlanta Journal-Constitution “A very entertaining and, ultimately, deeply moving novel about the complex bonds between mother and daughter.” —Washington Post “Mary McCarthy...

Sunday’s father is dying of cancer. They’ve come home to Malagash, on the north shore of Nova Scotia, so he can die where he grew up. Her mother and her brother are both devastated. But devastated isn’t good enough. Devastated doesn’t fix anything. Sunday has a plan.

What do you say when you know you don’t have forever? Ruth has been Ann’s closest friend for years - her confidante, her solace, her comic relief, her tutor in life’s mysterious ways. So when Ruth becomes ill, Ann is there for her without question. After all, it is Ruth who encouraged Ann to become who she is, Ruth whose rebellious, eccentric spirit provided the perfect counterpoint to Ann’s conventional, safe outlook. And so the friends go on as they always have…gossiping, consoling, and sharing intimate secrets.

Lydia Dawson is living on the Illinois frontier when she hears an unusual doctrine preached by a traveling minister from Ohio. Lydia’s heart is stirred, but she is forbidden by her family to have anything to do with this new-found religion called Mormonism. In Independence, Missouri, Christian Kade is facing mounting persecution because of his membership in the Church of Jesus Christ. How these two courageous people surmount their trials and come to share a triumphant love is the compelling story of riveting series of historical novels, The Kade Family Saga.

Austen’s heroine Elizabeth Bennet deals with the issues of manners, upbringing, morality, education, and marriage in the society of the landed gentry of early 19th-century England. Austen at her wittiest.

The third installment of the John Pickett series of humorous Regency mysteries finds Bow Street Runner Pickett in Scotland investigating a woman found unconscious on the beach - a woman who bears a striking resemblance to the local laird's daughter, a girl missing and presumed dead for the last 15 years. Pickett is surprised to discover that the woman was found by none other than Lady Fieldhurst and her three young nephews - and gratified to learn that her ladyship has registered at the seaside inn as Mrs. Julia Pickett.