Literary Life

When the sound of sirens cuts through a cool fall night, the small town of Worthy, Georgia, hurtles from triumph to tragedy. Just hours before, they'd watched the Wildcats score a winning touchdown. Now, they're faced with the deaths of three cheerleaders - their promising lives cut short in a fatal crash. And the boy in the other car - the only one to survive - is believed to be at fault. As rumors begin to fly and accusations spin, allegiances form and long-kept secrets emerge.

Set in a Scottish caravan park during a freak winter - it is snowing in Jerusalem, the Thames is overflowing, and an iceberg separated from the Fjords in Norway is expected to arrive off the coast of Scotland - The Sunlight Pilgrims tells the story of a small Scottish community living through what people have begun to think is the end of times. Bodies are found frozen in the street with their eyes open; midst economic collapse, schooling and health care are run primarily on a voluntary basis.

An irresistible novel about women, men, and the dogs that own them. Thirty-nine year old Rachel is having a really bad year. After losing her job and breaking up with her boyfriend, Rachel has inherited her late aunt's house, her beloved border collie, and a crowded rescue kennel, despite the fact that she knows almost nothing about dogs. Still, considering her limited options, she gamely takes up the challenge of running the kennel. And as Rachel starts finding new homes for the abandoned strays, it turns out that it might not just be the dogs that need rescuing.

Winter in Manhattan...and someone's keeping a secret. The day her husband, Alex, picks up a backpack and goes travelling, Angela Clark promises to stay out of trouble and keep both Louboutins on the ground. So when her best friend's boyfriend confides in her, it can't hurt to help him pick out a ring at Tiffany's surely? And when her fashion magazine announces major changes, being terminally late and arguing with your boss isn't that bad, is it? Then suddenly there's another big secret Angela's got to keep.

May We Be Forgiven, a darkly comic novel of 21st-century domestic life, stars Harold Silver, a historian who's always been jealous of his successful brother, George. But when the hot-tempered George is institutionalized for committing a violent act, Harold finds himself comforting his brother's wife and children. What follows is a scathing examination of a family so fractured it may never be whole again.

Kate Chase Sprague was born in 1840 in Cincinnati, Ohio, the second daughter to the second wife of a devout but ambitious lawyer. Her father, Salmon P. Chase, rose to prominence in the antebellum years and was appointed secretary of the treasury in Abraham Lincoln' s cabinet, while aspiring to even greater heights. Beautiful, intelligent, regal, and entrancing, young Kate Chase stepped into the role of establishing her thrice-widowed father in Washington society and as a future presidential candidate.

Frank Derrick is 81. And he's just been run over by a milk float. It was tough enough to fill the hours of the day when he was active. But now he's broken his arm and fractured his foot, it looks set to be a very long few weeks ahead. Frank lives with his cat Bill (which made more sense before Ben died) in the typically British town of Fullwind-on-Sea.

By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas | Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize Selected by Time as One of the Ten Best Books of the Year | A New York Times Notable Book | Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post Book World, The Christian...

This final chapter in Daniel Woolrell's Ozark trilogy peels the lid back on a dysfunctional Missouri family as infidelity threatens to consume their world in violence and terror. Shug Akins is a lonely, overweight thirteen-year-old boy. His mother, Glenda, is the one person who loves him—she...

Euridice is bright and ambitious. But this is Brazil in the 1940s, and society expects her to be a loving wife and mother. While Antenor is busy congratulating himself on his excellent catch, Euridice spends her spends her humdrum days ironing his shirts and removing the lumps of onion from his food, dreaming of the success she could have made of herself - as a writer, dressmaker or culinary whiz - in another life.

Young, attractive and wealthy, Alice Vavasor is a woman in the prime of her life. And yet one question torments her: "What should a woman do with her life?" Torn between the kind but dull Mr. Grey and her dangerous and exciting cousin George, she is prone to constant indecision and uncertainty, much to the detriment of Mr. Grey. Can You Forgive Her? is a crisp and engaging novel, brimming with romance, humor, and pathos. It is the first of six in Trollope's celebrated Palliser series.

Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery is best known for her series of coming-of-age novels featuring the feisty orphan, Anne Shirley. However, Montgomery was also a prolific producer of short stories, which are notable for their wholesome presentations of romance and family life. This collection includes 27 stories that were published between 1909 and 1922.

Just days after mathematician and family patriarch Isaac Severy dies of an apparent suicide, his adopted granddaughter Hazel, owner of a struggling Seattle bookstore, receives a letter from him by mail. In it, Isaac alludes to a secretive organization that is after his final bombshell equation, and he charges Hazel with safely delivering it to a trusted colleague. But first, she must find where the equation is hidden.

Thomasina "Hitch" Waycott loves living and working on the remote family farm and B&B. But she also wants more. To see the world. To own her own home. To fall madly in love. But those are fairy tales, and if her life is a fairy tale, then she’s the ugly duckling. Her deformed lip, her crooked limbs and her weak heart have kept her from taking chances. But that’s about to change. When Grayson Potts comes to stay, he’s unlike anyone Thomasina has ever met.

Emily Morris got her happily-ever-after earlier than most. Married at a young age to a man she loved passionately, she was building the life she always wanted. But when enormous stress threatened her marriage, Emily made some rash decisions. That’s when she fell in love with someone else. That’s when she got pregnant. Resolved to tell her husband of the affair and to leave him for the father of her child, Emily’s plans are thwarted when the world is suddenly split open on 9/11. It’s amid terrible tragedy that she finds her freedom, leaving New York City to start a new life.

It is 1970. The evergreens are thick with snow despite it being the month of April. In an Ottawa hospital, another daughter is born to the Azar family. The parents are from Kfarmichki, a village in Lebanon but their daughters were born in Canada. Four daughters, to be precise. No sons. Youssef is the domineering father. Samira is the quiescent mother. Rima, Katrina and Mona are the traditional daughters. Then there is Adele, the newest member. “You should’ve been born a boy,” Samira whispers to Adele shortly after her entrance into the world.

The frontier of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1783. In the years since the first settlers arrived, looking to build new lives, the township of Grafton has flourished. Together, European immigrants, Native Americans, indentured servants, and former slaves have established a tight-knit community. As time passes and America becomes a nation, Grafton is swept up in the tumult of the outside world. The Cherokees are rounded up and driven west. The Civil War leaves a long shadow. Newcomers make their mark, fortunes are won and lost, and loyalties are tested in the march of history.

Ever since the Bommarito sisters were little girls, their mother, River, has written them a letter on pink paper when she has something especially important to impart. And this time, the message is urgent and impossible to ignore - River requires open-heart surgery, and Isabelle and her sisters are needed at home to run the family bakery and take care of their brother and ailing grandmother.

Set in contemporary Louisville, Leesa Cross-Smith's mesmerizing first novel surrounding the death of a police officer is a requiem for marriage, friendship, and family, from an author Roxane Gay has called "a consummate storyteller". Evi - a classically-trained ballerina - was nine months pregnant when her husband Eamon was killed in the line of duty on a steamy morning in July. Now, it is winter, and Eamon's adopted brother Dalton has moved in to help her raise six-month-old Noah.

On the three-year anniversary of the tornado that orphaned the McCloud children, a cosmetics factory outside of Mercy is bombed, and the lab animals trapped within are released. Tucker reappears, injured from the blast, and seeks the help of nine-year-old Cora. Caught up in the thrall of her charismatic brother, whom she has desperately missed, Cora agrees to accompany Tucker on a cross-country mission to make war on human civilization. Cora becomes her brother's unwitting accomplice, taking on a new identity while engaging in acts of escalating violence.