Family Drama Fiction

Working at a little shop on Main Street in a small town is exactly the break that executive Merry Anna Foster needs following her divorce. She’s made a bet with her ex-husband that she can live on the amount of money she’s giving him in alimony. If she can do it, then Kevin will have to stop complaining and leave her alone. But after three months of this new life, will she even want to leave Antler Creek?

After a tumultuous marriage, Mary Wilson is happy in her uncomplicated life, focusing on her twelve-year-old son. She’s always been content with her little family - but then she finds an old postcard that throws her whole past into question... When an invitation arrives for her high school reunion, Mary jumps at the chance of a distraction from the shock discovery, and meeting her old classmate April feels like a gift. Despite barely remembering April, Mary throws herself into the new friendship and finds her previously quiet social life reinvigorated.

To the outside world, beloved advice columnist Lane Meckler has all the answers. What no one knows is that she also has a secret: her life is a disaster, and it's just gotten worse. Her husband, whom she was planning to leave, has died in a freak accident. Her six-year-old son, Henry, has stopped speaking to everyone but her. Lane's solution? Move. Growing up, that was what her family did best.

It was Charlie who chose Lily from among all the cats in the shelter. He didn't frown, the way other humans did, when he saw her injured back leg, the legacy of a cruel previous owner. Instead, Charlie insisted on rescuing her. Now Lily wants to do the same for Charlie. She's the only one who's seen the bruises on Charlie's body. If she knew who was hurting him, she'd scratch their eyes out. But she can't fix this by herself. Lily needs to get the rest of the family to focus on Charlie - not easy when they're wrapped up in their own problems.

Thirty-five-year-old Jenny and her 62-year-old mother Norma have always seen the world differently. Estranged for years, everything changes when Jenny learns of Norma’s dire state and rushes to New York City to make a startling discovery: her mother is sick and homeless. Living in a women’s shelter slated to be shut down by developer Albert “Doc” Brenner, Norma is leading the charge in stopping him. When Jenny learns that Norma is dying of cancer, she gives her mother something that she’s always wanted. Will it be enough? Can mother and daughter put their differences aside before time runs out?

Mona is married to Jack, younger brother to Denny Springer, lead singer for the greatest rock-and-roll band in the world. Jack happens to sing, too, of course, not that anyone in the world notices very much. After Denny attends the family Easter dinner in London for the first time in decades, Mona invites Denny to join her and her family for the summer at a rental house in coastal Connecticut. She tells Denny it'll be a chance for him to finally bond with Jack, from whom Denny has been estranged for 20 years. Denny initially laughs at the idea...but then shows up on their doorstep.

In the middle of the night, Evie is torn away from her beloved home and close-knit community as her family run away to the south. Her father's luck has finally run out, but what should mark a hopeful new beginning is just the start of young Evie’s troubles. With the weight of her family's future on her shoulders, Evie has no one to turn to. Her mother, worn down by life, runs off with a new man, and with her grandmother's sight failing, it's left to Evie to earn their keep and run the house. Holding her family together is only made harder when tragedy strikes at its heart.

At only ten years old, Katherine Forrester has already experienced her fair share of upheaval. It has been three years since she last saw her mother, a concert pianist whose career was cut short by a terrible accident. After a brief reunion, tragedy strikes once more, forcing Katherine from the familiarity of New York City to a foreign Swiss boarding school. Far from home, she struggles with the challenges of growing up. Stifled by her daily routine and the pettiness of her classmates, Katherine’s piano lessons with a gifted young teacher provide an anchor in the storm.

When Cady Davenport's husband-to-be hits the road for the upcoming presidential election, Cady realizes she’s on her own - and that her dream life might not be all she’d imagined. Until she finds herself thrust straight into the heart of the most influential inner circle in Washington, DC: the campaign widows. As friends, they’re an unlikely group - a fabulous Georgetown doyenne; a speechwriter turned mommy blogger; an artsy website editor; and a First Lady hopeful who’s not convinced she wants the job. But they share one undeniable bond: their spouses are all out on the trail during a hotly contested election season.

This "richly appointed and generously portrayed" ( Kirkus Reviews) debut novel tells the story of a WASPy, old-Boston family coming face-to-face with an America much larger than the one it was born in. Caroline Dunlap has written off the insular world of the Boston deb parties, golf club luaus, and WASP weddings that she grew up with. But when she reluctantly returns home after her college graduation, she finds that not everything is quite as predictable, or protected, as she had imagined.

Swedish sisters Astrid, Lena, and Sandra have struggled to get along since childhood, but when Lena is diagnosed with ovarian cancer, they are each thrown into crisis together.

The author of the highly acclaimed The Fates Will Find Their Way returns with a novel about a far-flung family reunited for one weekend by their father's death. Five minutes before her flight is set to take off, Kate Pulaski, failed screenwriter and newly failed wife with scarcely a hundred dollars to her name, learns that her estranged father has killed himself. More shocked than saddened by the news, she gives in to her siblings' request that she join them, along with her many half-siblings and most of her father's five former wives, in Atlanta, their birthplace.

On the night of a massive hurricane, three estranged siblings learn that their father is dying. For the first time in years, they convene at their childhood home in Upstate New York, where the storm has downed power lines, flooded houses, and destroyed the family's antique store. The Westfalls are no strangers to dysfunction. But never have their lives felt so out of control.

Actuary Penny Sinclair has a head for business, and she always makes rational decisions. Knowing that 60 percent of spouses cheat and 50 percent of marriages end in divorce, she wasn't too surprised when her husband had an affair. (That he did so with a woman their daughter's age? Well, that part did sting a bit.) She just made sure she got everything in the divorce, including their lovely old Victorian house. And as soon as her younger daughter has her hipster-fabulous wedding in the backyard, she's trading it in for a condo in downtown Chicago....

"I am always with you. I will always be here." This was the promise Ella’s mother betrayed thirty years ago when she walked into the sea, leaving her five-year-old daughter alone in the world. Ella’s been angry ever since, building up a wall to protect herself. But that all changes the day she opens a newspaper and finds those ten little words printed in a classified ad. Ella refuses to believe her mother could still be alive - that would mean she did want to live, just not with her daughter. So she throws herself into finding out exactly what happened all those years ago.

It’s been three years since Claire Kite lost her husband, David, an aspiring novelist, in a tragic car accident. Claire finally finds the courage to move on; then she discovers among the remnants of her shattered world her husband’s last manuscript. It’s intimate, stirring - and unfinished. An idea comes to her.... What if she can find someone to give David’s novel the ending it deserves?

Tiny McAllister never thought she’d get married. Not because she didn’t want to, but because she didn’t think girls from Connecticut married other girls. Yet here she is with Caroline, the love of her life, at their destination wedding on the Bermuda coast. In attendance - their respective families and a few choice friends. The conflict-phobic Tiny hopes for a beautiful weekend with her bride-to-be. But as the weekend unfolds, it starts to feel like there’s a skeleton in every closet of the resort.

Grace first met Mimi when she blew into their sons’ toddler playgroup like a warm bay breeze that loosened Grace’s tight spaces. Despite differing approaches to life and parenting, the fast friends raised their kids together while cementing a sisterlike bond that neither believed could be broken. But when a string of ill-fated decisions results in a teen party with a tragic outcome for Grace’s son, the friendship is ripped apart and an already-splintered community explodes.

Cassie Wright never saw it coming. As owner of Wright Glassworks, the foremost company in a thriving New England town, Cassie's life was quiet, focused on her work and home until a tragic accident turns her carefully ordered world upside down. For there is a surviving child to think about, and Cassie must take in one-year-old Gwen, who has no one else to care for her. As the years pass, Cassie will raise Gwen as her own, and a little girl who lost everything will flourish in a world of privilege and opportunity.

When she was thirteen years old, Samantha Newsom’s family was murdered and their Catskills farmhouse set ablaze in an unsolved crime that left nothing behind but ashes. Twenty-two years later, Sam is pulled back to her hometown of Carney, New York, under the shadows of the grim tragedy she’s never forgotten or forgiven. Authorities mishandled the evidence, false rumors were seeded about her family, suspects yielded nothing, and the case went cold. Not anymore. Investigator Travis Meacham has been assigned to the case, and he has news for Sam....