Family Life Fiction

Fifteen-year-old Ellie Mack was the perfect daughter. She was beloved by her parents, friends, and teachers. She and her boyfriend made a teenage golden couple. She was days away from an idyllic summer vacation, with her whole life ahead of her. And then she was gone. Now her mother, Laurel Mack, is trying to put her life back together.

In the spring of 1942, young Elzbieta Rabinek is aware of the swiftly growing discord just beyond the courtyard of her comfortable Warsaw home. She has no fondness for the Germans who patrol her streets and impose their curfews, but has never given much thought to what goes on behind the walls that contain her Jewish neighbors. She knows all too well about German brutality - and that it's the reason she must conceal her true identity. But in befriending Sara, Elzbieta makes a discovery that propels her into a dangerous world of deception and heroism.

When a simple mix-up leaves their father Joe’s estate to Eden, their long-absent mother, Clare and Aaron decide it’s finally time to track Eden down. But it’s been over thirty years since she left their remote outback mining town, and they’ve never heard from her again. Aaron is dealing with a new marriage that’s currently trapped in immigration limbo, and his teenage daughter Cady is clearly going through a personal crisis of her own.

When she was 9 years old, Melody Browne's house burned down, and it took all of her childhood memories with it. Now she's a single mother of a teenage boy living in Central London. She hasn't seen her parents since she left home at 15, but she doesn't mind. She's better off on her own. She works as a dinner lady at her son's school and has no idea where her humdrum life is heading. But one summer's night, a hypnotist inadvertently unlocks memories of her childhood, and her whole life is turned upside down.

Cassie and Zoe Grossberg were once as dependent on each other as sisters could be, but it’s been two decades since they’ve spoken. As a pop sensation in their early twenties, the sisters experienced the ultimate highs of celebrity, until they were driven apart one terrible night. Now, in their early forties, Zoe is a suburban mom in New Jersey, and Cassie is living alone, off-grid in Alaska. Zoe’s teenage daughter Cherry is desperate to bring the women back together—and unearth the truth behind their estrangement.

After 27 years of marriage and three children, Anna Oh - wife, mother, outsider artist - has fallen in love with Viveca, the wealthy Manhattan art dealer who orchestrated her success. They plan to wed in the Oh family’s hometown of Three Rivers in Connecticut. But the wedding provokes some very mixed reactions and opens a Pandora’s Box of toxic secrets - dark and painful truths that have festered below the surface of the Ohs' lives.

As the child of a Hooters waitress and an ex-pro wrestler, Margo Millet's always known she’d have to make it on her own. So she enrolls at her local junior college, even though she can’t imagine how she’ll ever make a living. She’s still figuring things out and never planned to have an affair with her English professor—and while the affair is brief, it isn’t brief enough to keep her from getting pregnant. Despite everyone’s advice, she decides to keep the baby, mostly out of naiveté and a yearning for something bigger.

Eva - known to all as Lovey - grew up safe and secure in Oxford, Mississippi, surrounded by a rich literary history and her mother's stunning flower gardens. But a shed fire, and the injuries that it caused, seemed to change everything...especially when her older sister, Bitsy, blamed Lovey for the irreparable damage. Bitsy became the cheerleader. The homecoming queen. All the while, Lovey served as the family scapegoat, always bearing the brunt when Bitsy threw blame her way. At 18, Lovey fled to Arizona. In time, she became a successful advertising executive....

Until quite recently, Ben Parker was considered, by many, one of the finest bakers on the Isle of Man. Indeed, his wife was once the first to concur with that accolade, directly attributing his culinary skills to her expanding waistline, in fact. So it was ironic, Ben couldn’t help but consider, that she ran off with the dietician he’d hired at her behest.

Actress Willow Carruthers is living the dream in London, with an Oscar on her shelf, a rock-star husband and two gorgeous children. But Willow isn't coping with her seemingly perfect life. Country girl Kitty Middlemist arrives in London desperate for a job. She has a perfect pedigree on paper but no particular skills in real life. Work is hard to find until Kitty, quite by chance, takes on a job with Willow. As their lives and secrets become intertwined, Willow and Kitty discover there is no such thing as chance - only destiny.

Before Owen Michaels disappears, he smuggles a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her. Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers—Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child. Bailey, who wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother. As Hannah’s increasingly desperate calls to Owen go unanswered, as the FBI arrests Owen’s boss, as a US marshal and federal agents arrive at her Sausalito home unannounced, Hannah quickly realizes her husband isn’t who he said he was.

Sixth grader Greg Heffley doesn't understand his annoying younger brother, obnoxious older one, or well-meaning parents. But he knows enough to record his daily thoughts in a manly journal - not some girly diary. In a unique novel brimming with laugh-out-loud moments, Greg chronicles his first turbulent year of middle school.

Therese Wolley is a mother who has made a promise. She works as a secretary, shops for groceries on Saturdays, and takes care of her two girls. She doesn’t dwell on the fact that her girls are fatherless, mostly because her own father abandoned her before she was born and she has done just fine without him. Even though her older daughter regularly wakes with nightmares and her younger one whispers letters under her breath, she doesn't shift from her resolve that everything will be fine.

Meet Zezé—Brazil’s naughtiest and most loveable boy, his talent for mischief matched only by his great kindness. When he grows up he wants to be a ‘poet with a bow-tie’, but for now he entertains himself playing pranks on the residents of his family’s poor Rio de Janeiro neighbourhood and inventing friends to play with. That is, until he meets a real friend, and his life begins to change.

C'est pas moi, je le jure?! étonne par sa fraîcheur et sa verve, par sa vision du monde de l'enfance, par son imaginaire débridé. À trente-neuf ans, soit l'âge qu'aurait aujourd'hui son petit héros, l'auteur est manifestement resté très près de ses premières années. - Marie-Claude Fortin, Voir

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time.

In The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction, inserting her inimitable voice into an enthralling story of love, adventure and discovery. Spanning much of the 18th and 19th centuries, the novel follows the fortunes of the extraordinary Whittaker family as led by the enterprising Henry Whittaker - a poor-born Englishman who makes a great fortune in the South American quinine trade, eventually becoming the richest man in Philadelphia.

Mia and Cricket have always been close. The gifted daughters of a young single mother, the “Lowe girls” are well-known in the small Maine town they call home. Each sister has a role to fill: the responsible and academically-minded Mia assumes the position of caregiver far too young. While Cricket, a bouncing ball of energy and talent, seems born for soccer stardom. But the cost of achieving athletic greatness comes at a steep price.

In this third and final installment of the Life Begins at Forty-Eight series of short stories, Linda finds herself caring for her mother while trying to plan her own wedding.

Frances is finally about to see her dreams realized as Marcus finally returns from the war. But the threat of her father-in-law and a much-changed Marcus, leave Frances in a perilous situation. Emily’s lie has trapped her in a new future. She lives in a big house and has a job she loves. But it could all come tumbling down around her if her shocking secret is ever revealed? Alice believes Daniel will return home to her, but if he does, will he be the same man he was if he does survive?