Contemporary Family Life Women Fiction

The "queen of the summer novel" explores the power of community, family, and honesty-and proves that even from the ashes of sorrow new love can take flight (Kirkus Reviews). A warm June evening, a local tradition: the students of Nantucket High have gathered for a bonfire on the beach. What...

While her humanitarian husband Liam has been digging wells in Africa, Mara Jacobs has been struggling. She knows she's supposed to feel a warm glow that her husband is nine time zones away, caring for widows and orphans. But the reality is that she is exhausted. Then Liam's three-year absence turns into something more, changing everything and plunging her into a sunless grief. As Mara struggles to find her footing, she discovers that even when hope is tenuous, faith is fragile, and the future is unknown, we can be sure we are not forgotten...or unloved.

Single mom Heather Donovan’s dreams of home and family are tantalizingly within reach when she settles in Chesapeake Shores. The welcoming arms of the boisterous, loving O’Brien clan embrace her and her son. But accepting their support seems to further alienate her son’s father, Connor O’Brien. His parents’ divorce and his career as a high-powered divorce attorney have left him jaded about marriage. Then everything changes. Will the possibility of a future without Heather make Connor look at love and his career differently?

When Toots Loudenberry relocated to Los Angeles to be near her daughter, Abby, she expected to bump into the occasional celebrity. She just never expected them to be dead. Meanwhile, Toots, Sophie, and Mavis are concerned that the prestigious Dr. Sameer’s budding romance with Ida may have something to do with his ailing bank balance. And Abby’s attempted makeover of the celebrity magazine The Informer into the most talked-about tabloid in town could end more than just her career.

Lucy Houston and Mickey Chandler probably shouldn't have fallen in love, let alone gotten married. They're both plagued with faulty genes - he has bipolar disorder and she has a ravaging family history of breast cancer. But when their paths cross on the night of Lucy's 21st birthday, sparks fly, and there's no denying their chemistry. Cautious every step of the way, they are determined to make their relationship work-and they put it all in writing. Mickey promises to take his medication. Lucy promises not to blame him for what is beyond his control. He promises honesty.

Margot Simpson was raised to believe that you don’t run for cover the moment it rains. You don’t slide divorce papers across the kitchen island, especially when you have a teenage son. You roll up your sleeves, toss your hair in a bun, and dance in the downpour. When Margot abandoned her singing career on Broadway to follow the man of her dreams to Burlington, Vermont, she never looked back. She embraced her new role as a wife, mother, and homemaker with an artist’s passion.

"Author Laurie Gelman delivers her second in the Class Mom series in a style no less enthusiastic than her first narration." — AudioFile Magazine In the eagerly anticipated follow-up to Laurie Gelman’s "irreverent and hilarious" (The New York Post) hit Class Mom, brash, lovable Jen Dixon is...

Meri is newly married, pregnant, and standing on the cusp of her life as a wife and mother, recognizing with some terror the gap between reality and expectation. Delia Naughton, wife of the two-term liberal senator Tom Naughton, is Meri's new neighbor in the adjacent New England town house. Delia's husband's chronic infidelity has been an open secret in Washington circles, but despite the complexity of their relationship, the bond between them remains strong.

Sixty-two-year-old Arianna arrives in the South of France for a two-week artists' workshop full of anticipation but burdened by guilt. Back home in Toronto, she has been living with the devastating diagnosis of her husband's dementia and the heartbreak of watching the man she has loved for decades slip away before her eyes. What does her future hold without Ben? Before her is a blank canvas.

Outside the gates of a California prison, Peter Morgan is released after four long years and vows to redeem himself in the eyes of the young daughters he left behind. Simultaneously, Carl Waters, a convicted murderer, is set on the path of freedom with him. That night, three hundred miles south in San Francisco, police detective Ted Lee comes home to a silent house; for twenty-nine years, he has been living for his job, and slowly falling out of love with his wife.

For Meridian Wallace - and many other smart, driven women of the 1940s - being ambitious meant being an outlier. Ever since she was a young girl, Meridian had been obsessed with birds, and she was determined to get her PhD, become an ornithologist, and make her mother's sacrifices to send her to college pay off. But she didn't expect to fall in love with her brilliant physics professor, Alden Whetstone. When he's recruited to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to take part in a mysterious wartime project, she reluctantly defers her own plans and joins him.

Teresa “Toots” Loudenberry has a knack for finding adventure, even when she’s not looking for it. But ever since Sophie convinced her friends to start holding regular séances, life in Los Angeles is getting a little too dramatic even for Toots’s tastes. When Ida receives a message from the beyond suggesting that her late husband was murdered, a spooked Toots decides it’s time the Godmothers left LA for her hometown of Charleston. Meanwhile, Mavis has been acting suspiciously....

Haunted by the past, Henrietta throws herself into a new job transcribing other people’s life stories, vowing to stick to the facts and keep emotions at arm’s length. But when she meets the eccentric and terminally ill Annie, she finds herself inextricably drawn in. And when Annie reveals that her sister drowned in unexplained circumstances in 1974, Henrietta’s methodical mind can’t help following the story’s loose ends…

Secrets told in the church ladies' room are supposed to stay in the ladies' room. But that doesn't mean that what Trudy overhears there during her great-aunt Gertrude's funeral won't change the rest of her life. Trudy has a daughter in the middle of a major rebellion, a two-timing husband who has been cheating for their entire married life, and a mother with Alzheimer's residing in the local nursing home.

No one drives in New York City. Everyone knows that, including California transplant Rachel Price. But that doesn't stop her from driving into the city. From Connecticut. Every single morning. Rain or shine...or snow. When she runs the charismatic and good-looking Jason Fairchild off the road, their immediate spark is met with bad timing. There is also one tiny little detail: Jason is her boss. And a woman as intelligent and dedicated to her career as Rachel knows not to date her boss.

Things are going according to plan for Serena. She's smart, confident, and just got a kick-ass new job at a top advertising firm in Washington, DC. Even before her younger sister gets married in a big, traditional wedding, Serena knows her own dreams don't include marriage or children. But with her mother constantly encouraging her to be more like her sister, Serena can't understand why her parents refuse to recognize that she and her sister want completely different experiences out of life.

When Lacey O'Neill finally learns the shattering truth about the mother she's spent a decade emulating, the foundation of her life begins to crumble. Then her close childhood friend dies, leaving her teenage daughter, Mackenzie, in Lacey's care, and Lacey unwillingly finds herself in the role of mother.

What would you do if the love of your life had no memory of you? A man tries to win back the love of his life after an accident has her in a coma in this emotional, romantic drama from J. L. Perry writing as Jodi Perry. The 19th of January, 1996.... I'll never forget it. It was the day we met. I was seven and she was six. It was the day she moved in next door, and the same day I developed my first crush on a girl. Then tragedy struck. Nineteen days after our wedding day, she was in an accident that would change our lives forever.

After five years of marriage, Cass Coyne has lost some of her boundless confidence. Her husband sees their ups and downs as normal challenges in a healthy relationship, but Cass lies awake at night wondering what you do when you need a break from your marriage. It comes as a shock to Jonathan when Cass persuades him to try a marital "intermission": a six-month separation during which they'll decide if the comfortable life they've built together is still the one they both want.

When Charlotte and Philip meet, the pair form a deep and instant connection. Soon they’re settled in the Florida Keys with plans to marry. But just as they should be getting closer, Charlotte feels Philip slipping away. Second-guessing their love is something Charlotte never imagined, but with Philip’s excessive absences, she finds herself yearning for more. When she meets Ben, she ignores the pull, but the supportive single dad is there for her in ways she never knew she desired.