Literary Fiction Family

Salim has always known that his father does not want him. Living with his parents and his adored Uncle Amir in a house full of secrets, he is a bookish child, a dreamer haunted by night terrors. It is the 1970s and Zanzibar is changing. Tourists arrive, the island’s white sands obscuring the memory of recent conflict—the longed-for independence from British colonialism swiftly followed by bloody revolution. When his father moves out, retreating into dishevelled introspection, Salim is confused and ashamed. His mother does not discuss the change.

Anne Shirley, the mischievous, carrot-topped waif of Anne of Green Gables, has grown into a lovely young woman who leaves the security of Prince Edward Island to enroll at Redmond College. There, she discovers a professor who believes education is wasted on women, ponders the security offered in marriage proposals, and a host of other questions of young adulthood.

From two-time Giller Prize winner M.G. Vassanji, one of Canada’s finest and most celebrated writers, comes a brilliant new novel that vividly examines the seemingly incongruous worlds of science, religion and desire. Nurul Islam is a world-renowned physicist, professor at Imperial College...

A Belletrist Book Club Pick One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Fall: LA Times, Harper's Bazaar, LitHub, The Millions “Riveting . . . Lightbreakers is a marvel. . . propulsive and unforgettable.”–Washington Post “You will love this genre-busting book. . . A beautiful meditation of...

When the elliptical new drama teacher at Stellar Plains High School chooses for the school play Lysistrata—the comedy by Aristophanes in which women stop having sex with men in order to end a war—a strange spell seems to be cast over the school. Or, at least, over the women. One by one, throughout the high school community, perfectly healthy, normal women and teenage girls turn away from their husbands and boyfriends in the bedroom, for reasons they don’t really understand.

A captivating novel of self-discovery by Agatha Christie, written under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. Agatha Christie, famous for her ingenious crime novels, also wrote about crimes of the heart. Written under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, Christie’s tales of romantic suspense further...

When a dispute over her parents’ will grows bitter, Bergljot is drawn back into the orbit of the family she fled 20 years before. Her mother and father have decided to leave two island summer houses to her sisters, disinheriting the two eldest siblings from the most meaningful part of the estate. To outsiders, it is a quarrel about property and favoritism. But Bergljot, who has borne a horrible secret since childhood, understands the gesture as something very different - a final attempt to suppress the truth and a cruel insult to the grievously injured.

Assembled here are stories new and old, spanning from 1960 to today. Meet the death-defying motorcycle trick riders in the carnival's Devil's Tub, a man who keeps an alligator in his bathtub, a Chinese launder in Coney Island in search of love, a frontiersman who saves himself from a mauling grizzly bear by hiding in a beaver dam, three men from a circus looking for trouble at a rodeo, a washed out boxer trying to hang onto his career, and dozens of others rich characters.

In his three novellas, In Short Measures, Strong Conspirators, and Sally Forth, Michael Ruhlman delves deeply into the nuanced complexity of romantic and sexual love - and the inevitable evolution of the heart over the span of years and decades. Each novella asks questions about the nature of love in terms of loyalty and fidelity - what are one's obligations toward one's spouse, one's family, and one's heart?

On the night of the decade's worst blizzard, a local farm boy discovers the naked body of a beautiful young woman in the snow. Seventeen years later, the Virgin of Small Plains has become a local myth. Strange miracles have visited those who faithfully tend to her grave and Small Plains becomes a haven for those hoping the Virgin will cure them. But soon strange and sinister events unfold. What really happened 17 years ago?

“Haunting, incisive...King is brilliant.” — Elle “An absorbing, insightful story written in cool, polished prose right to the last conflicted line.” —The Washington Post “Spellbinding...You won’t be able to stop reading this book, but when you do finally finish the last delicious...

Longlisted for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award “The World After Alice is a lovely debut novel that glimmers with fine writing and notes of human insight. There's a quiet beauty to Lauren Aliza Green's work, and I am now a fan.” —Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling...

“Hypnotic.” – New York Times “Cinematic.” – USA Today "I gripped the covers of this book as though it might be blown from my hands. . .powerful." - Ron Charles, The Washington Post "A full-throttle page turner."– Miranda Cowley Heller, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The...

For a group of four New York friends, the past decade has been largely defined by marriage and motherhood. Educated and reared to believe that they would conquer the world, they then left prestigious jobs to stay home with their babies. What was meant to be a temporary leave of absence has lasted a decade. Now, at age 40, with the halcyon days of young motherhood behind them and without professions to define them, Amy, Jill, Roberta, and Karen face a life that is not what they were brought up to expect but seems to be the one they have chosen.

For 20 years, Celia Scott has watched her husband, Arthur, hide from the secrets surrounding his sister Eve’s death. As a young man, Arthur fled his small Kansas hometown, moved to Detroit, married Celia, and never looked back. But when the 1967 riots frighten him even more than his past, he convinces Celia to pack up their family and return to the road he grew up on, Bent Road, and that same small town where Eve mysteriously died.

Molly has arrived home from Vassar to reveal that she has an important announcement to make. Her mother, Suzanne, is convinced that Molly’s news is history repeating herself and that she’s about to become a 36-year-old grandmother. Suzanne’s mother, Ava, develops a case of impending great-grandmother fever - that is, when she’s not spying on the new next-door neighbor, Buddy McKinley, who turns out to be a blast from her past.

William McCloskey’s best-selling novel Highliners established him as an authority on the dangers and hardships of the Alaskan fishing industry. Now in an epic sequel, Breakers returns to Kodiak to chart the fortunes of McCloskey’s beloved characters as they make their living from the sea.

When Zikora, a DC lawyer from Nigeria, tells her equally high-powered lover that she’s pregnant, he abandons her. But it’s Zikora’s demanding, self-possessed mother, in town for the birth, who makes Zikora feel like a lonely little girl all over again. Stunned by the speed with which her ideal life fell apart, she turns to reflecting on her mother’s painful past and struggle for dignity. Preparing for motherhood, Zikora begins to see more clearly what her own mother wants for her, for her new baby, and for herself.

“A page turner. . .Brooks is a master at bringing the past alive. . .in her skillful hands the issues of the past echo our own deepest concerns: love and loss, drama and tragedy, chaos and brutality.” – Alice Hoffman, The Washington Post A rich and utterly absorbing novel about the life...

Twenty-five years after Jesus’ Son, a haunting new collection of short stories on mortality and transcendence, from National Book Award winner and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Denis Johnson The Largesse of the Sea Maiden is the long-awaited new story collection from Denis Johnson...