A murder, a tryst, a mysterious child. A Victoria aristocrat who obsesses over her Churchill relatives. A repressive Welsh mother with a royalty fixation. A once-carefree Hesquiat girl from Nootka Sound. A dashing Icelandic philanderer. And quiet, steady Julia Godolphin, trying to rise above it all. The lost novel of Norma Macmillan, the Vancouver actress who lived much of her life in New York and Hollywood, is the work of a woman steeped in the American entertainment industry but deeply in love with the history of her native province, which eventually drew her home before her death in 2001. The Maquinna Line: A Family Saga is set on Vancouver Island from 1871 to 1945, with a nod to the meeting of Captain Cook and Chief Maquinna in 1778. It traces the stories of the five families of varied social standing, including two descendents of Chief Maquinna. In the end, they’re all ordinary people trying to find happiness in the face of intrigue, ambition, misunderstanding and changing social and sexual mores.
Domestic fiction
- Author:Macmillan, NormaSummary:
- Author:Shriver, LionelSummary:
In 2029, the United States is engaged in a bloodless world war. Overnight, the "almighty dollar" plummets in value. The Mandibles have been counting on a sizable fortune, but once the inheritance turns to ash, each family member must contend with disappointment and the challenge of sheer survival.
- Author:Gardam, JaneSummary:
The New York Times called Sir Edward Feathers one of the most memorable characters in modern literature. A lyrical novel that recalls his fully lived life, Old Filth has been acclaimed as Jane Gardam's masterpiece, a book where life and art merge. And now that beautiful, haunting novel has been joined by a companion that also bursts with humor and wisdom: The Man in the Wooden Hat. Old Filth was Eddie's story. The Man in the Wooden Hat is the history of his marriage told from the perspective of his wife, Betty, a character as vivid and enchanting as Filth himself. They met in Hong Kong after the war. Betty had spent the duration in a Japanese internment camp. Filth was already a successful barrister, handsome, fast becoming rich, in need of a wife but unaccustomed to romance. A perfect English couple of the late 1940s. As a portrait of a marriage, with all the bittersweet secrets and surprising fulfillment of the 50-year union of two remarkable people, the novel is a triumph. The Man in the Wooden Hat is fiction of a very high order from a great novelist working at the pinnacle of her considerable power. It will be read and loved and recommended by all the many thousands of readers who found its predecessor, Old Filth, so compelling and so thoroughly satisfying.
- Author:Jewell, LisaSummary:
In a hospice in Bury St. Edmunds, Daniel is slowly fading away. His friend Maggie sists with him every day and she listens to the story of his life, to his regrets and secrets. He tells her about the children he has never met and never will. Lydia, Dean and Robyn don't know each other yet but when they slowly find their way into each other's lives, everything starts to change.
- Author:Wynne-Jones, TimSummary:
Burl Crow hasn't had many breaks in his young life. His father is a manipulative lout with a dangerous temper; his mother, worn down by years of abuse, now resorts to her little helpers to get her through the days. Then he meets Nathaniel Orlando Gow, the Maestro, and in just one day, this eccentric genius changes Burl's life forever.
- Author:Lowell, CatherineSummary:
Samantha Whipple, the only remaining descendant of the Brontë family, embarks on a modern-day literary scavenger hunt to find the family's long-rumored secret estate--diaries, paintings, letters, and early novel drafts--using clues mysteriously arriving at her doorstep from her eccentric father.
- Author:Hodgins, JackSummary:
It's the summer of 1956 and Rusty Macken is itching to leave for the big city. But first he must endure an epic funeral with his huge, rowdy family. Glory, a glamorous city girl who fell for the wildest Macken of all, has met a tragic end. As everyone waits to see what outrageous form the widower's mourning will take, Rusty's departure becomes anything but easy.
- Author:Ferrante, ElenaSummary:
Elle Giovanna's pretty face is changing, turning ugly, at least so her father thinks. Giovanna, he says, looks more like her Aunt Vittoria every day. But can it be true? Is she really changing? Is she turning into Aunt Vittoria, a woman she hardly knows but whom her mother and father clearly despise? Surely there is a mirror somewhere in which she can see herself as she truly is. Giovanna is searching for her reflection in two kindred cities that fear and detest one another: a Naples of the heights, which assumes a mask of refinement, and a Naples of the depths, a place of excess and vulgarity. She moves between both in search of the truth, but neither city seems to offer answers or escape.
- Author:Jen, GishSummary:
Chinese-American Carnegie Wong and his WASPy wife Blondie have two adopted children of Asian descent, Lilly and Wendy. The girls are a handful, but they are nothing compared to Carnegie's mother. Mama Wong's dislike for Blondie is relentless--so much so that she introduces a Chinese woman named Lan to the household. When Lilly and Wendy begin to favor Lan over their white mother, Blondie clings ever more tightly to her biological son, Bailey.
- Author:Khan, SabinaSummary:
With a welcome mix of humor, heart, and high-stakes drama, Sabina Khan provides a timely and honest portrait of what it's like to grow up feeling unwelcome in your own culture. Seventeen-year-old Rukhsana Ali tries her hardest to live up to her conservative Muslim parents' expectations, but lately she's finding that impossible to do. She rolls her eyes when they blatantly favor her brother and saves her crop tops and makeup for parties her parents don't know about. Luckily, only a few more months stand between her carefully monitored life in Seattle and her new life at Caltech. But when her parents catch her kissing her girlfriend Ariana, all of Rukhsana's plans fall apart. Her parents are devastated and decide to whisk Rukhsana off to Bangladesh, where she is thrown headfirst into a world of arranged marriages and tradition. Through reading her grandmother's old diary, Rukhsana gains some much-needed perspective and realizes she must find the courage to fight for her love without losing the connection to her family as a consequence.
- Author:Chiaverini, JenniferSummary:
When Sylvia Bergstrom Compson discovers a stash of letters in the attic of Elm Creek Manor, she traces a remarkable tale back to 1859. Then, escaped slave Joanna spent a brief period at Elm Creek Farm until she was captured and returned to bondage, leaving her son in the care of the Bergstrom family. Now, if Sylvia is to determine the ultimate fate of Joanna and her son, she must rely on one important clue--the meticulous herloom quilt Joanna stitched and left behind.
- Author:Ringland, HollySummary:
After her family suffers a tragedy, nine-year-old Alice Hart is forced to leave her idyllic seaside home. She is taken in by her grandmother, June, a flower farmer who raises Alice on the language of Australian native flowers, a way to say the things that are too hard to speak. Under the watchful eye of June and the women who run the farm, Alice settles, but grows up increasingly frustrated by how little she knows of her family's story. In her early twenties, Alice's life is thrown into upheaval again, forcing her to flee to the dramatically beautiful central Australian desert. In this otherworldly landscape Alice thinks she has found solace, until she meets a charismatic and ultimately dangerous man.
- Author:Ferrante, ElenaSummary:
Leda, a middle-aged divorcée, is alone for the first time in years when her daughters leave home to live with their father. Her initial, unexpected sense of liberty turns to ferocious introspection following a seemingly trivial occurrence.
- Author:Leaman, LouisaSummary:
After an accident leaves fiercely independent, adventure-seeking Jess Taylor badly injured, she thinks she's ready to settle down with kind, caring, easy-to-love Tim. But then her grandmother tasks her with retrieving a family heirloom from a local auction, and she finds herself face-to-face with a charming stranger, Guy. Known within the family as the "True Love Necklace," the bauble possesses a seemingly magical ability that helped four generations of Taylor women find their soul mates. Guy has already bought her grandmother's precious necklace, and while Jess desperately tries to buy it back from him, he somehow convinces her to go out on a date instead. But only to get the necklace back.
- Author:Lewis, BeverlySummary:
An accident cripples Caleb's dad. Despite being even more tightly bound to the farm and to the man who so opposed his courtship of Nellie, Caleb can't forget his first love. Although Nellie sometimes thinks of Caleb, her New Order ways keep them apart. Yet as she still yearns for a husband, new possibilities beckon and soon surprise her heart.
- Author:Grenier, Daniel, Strauss, PabloSummary:
There’s something extraordinary about Thomas Langlois.Thomas is a young boy growing up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with a French-Canadian father, Albert, and an American mother, Laura. But beyond the fact that he lives between two cultures and languages, there’s something else about Thomas that sets him apart: he was born on February 29.Before Albert goes on a strange quest to find out more about their mysterious relative, Aimé Bolduc, he explains to Thomas that he will only age one year out of every four and he will outlive all of his loved ones.Thomas’s loneliness grows and the years pass until a terrible accident involving a young girl sets in motion a series of events that link the young girl and Thomas to Aimé Bolduc — a Civil War–era soldier and perhaps their contemporary.Spanning three centuries and set against the backdrop of the Appalachians, from Quebec to Tennessee, The Longest Year is a magical and poignant story about family history, fateful dates, fragile destinies, and lives brutally ended and mysteriously extended.
- Author:Howard, AudreySummary:
Amy Pearson's family is desperately poor, even by the standards of Edwardian Liverpool, but they have each other - until Amy is torn from her home by her rich aunt, a woman obsessed by religion and snobbery who wants a girl she can mould as she wishes. Clever and pretty, ten-year-old Amy is perfect for her purposes. It is the beginning of a long journey for Amy, as she desperately searches for the family she lost, and a home where she can be free at last from her aunt's possessive tyranny. But she will have to endure a forced marriage and a tragic war before she can at last find what she seeks.
- Author:Roy, Zoë S.Summary:
The Long March Home tells the story of three generations of women. Agnes, a young Canadian goes to China as a missionary, and falls in love with a Chinese medical student. Growing anti-western sentiment forces her to return home to Nova Scotia, where she discovers she is pregnant. Meihua, their American-born daughter, travels to China in search of the father she never met and winds up marrying a Chinese man, but the Cultural Revolution tears their lives apart. With both parents imprisoned, it falls to the family’s illiterate servant, Yao, to shield their daughter, Yezi, and her brother, from family tragedy, poverty, and political discrimination, negotiating their survival during the revolution that she barely understands. Only after her mother is released, does Yezi learn about her foreign grandmother, Agnes. Curious about her ancestry, Yezi travels to the U.S. to meet Agnes and learn about her life in China with the man her mother still longs to find.
- Author:Gay, WilliamSummary:
Nathan Winer never knew what happened to his father, who disappeared one rainy night when Nathan was seven. Raised by his mother to be hardworking and self-sufficient, Nathan keeps his distance from the rest of his rural Tennessee community. But there is an evil in this place that has already touched his life. It will poison Amber Rose, the young woman he comes to love.
- Author:Janowitz, BrendaSummary:
Three siblings. A priceless family ring. One legendary love story. In 1978, Lizzie Morgan and Ritchie Schneider embark on a whirlwind romance on the bright beaches and glamorous yachts of Long Island. Over the years, their relationship has its share of ups and downs, including a nine-month hiatus that ends with a stunning eleven-carat ring-one that looks just like the diamond Richard Burton gifted Liz Taylor after their own separation. Like the famous couple, despite the drama that would unfold throughout the Schneiders' marriage, the ring would be there as a symbol of their love...until it wasn't. Decades later, when the lost ring unexpectedly resurfaces, the Schneiders' three children gather under one roof for the first time in years, eager to get their hands on this beloved, expensive reminder of their departed parents. But determining the fate of the heirloom is no simple task, unearthing old wounds and heartaches the siblings can't ignore. And when the ring reveals a secret that challenges everything they thought they knew about their parents' epic love story, they'll have to decide whether to move forward as a family or let the ring break them once and for all. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.