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Domestic fiction

  • Author:
    Stinson, Kathy
    Summary:

    David’s younger sister Ivy, born with multiple disabilities, needs constant attention. She may be eleven years old, but in many ways she’s still a baby. She embarrasses him in public. She takes all of their parents’ focus, to the point where David wonders if they see him as anything more than a helper for Ivy. But despite it all, he loves her. The summer days are following their usual pattern of taking care of his sister, doing chores, and trips to the cottage. The one exception is Hannah, the new girl across the street. Hannah makes David feel anything but routine. He wants to be around her all the time. And, amazingly, she seems to be into him as well. Everything changes when Ivy has an accident while being looked after by her dad. As David wrestles with what happened to Ivy, he is forced to confront his own feelings of guilt, the meaning of mercy, and what can be forgiven.

  • Author:
    Hopkins, Ellen
    Summary:

    From #1 New York Times bestselling author Ellen Hopkin's comes a new heartbreakingly tender middle grade novel-in-verse about the bonds between two brothers and the love they share. Twelve-year-old Trace Reynolds has always looked up to his brother, mostly because Will, who's five years older, has never looked down on him. It was Will who taught Trace to ride a bike, would watch sports on TV with him, and cheer him on at little league. But when Will was knocked out cold during a football game, resulting in a brain injury-everything changed. Now, sixteen months later, their family is still living under the weight of "the incident," that left Will with a facial tic, depression, and an anger he cannot always control, culminating in their parents' divorce. Afraid of further fracturing his family, Trace begins to cover for Will who is struggling with addiction to pain medication, as he becomes someone Trace doesn’t recognize. But when the brother he loves so much becomes more and more withdrawn, and escalates to stealing money and ditching school, Trace realizes some secrets cannot be kept if we ever hope to heal.

  • Author:
    Pate, Alexs D.
    Summary:

    Edward and his family have escaped the heat and violence of inner-city Philadelphia every summer for the last 5 years. Staying at his Aunt Edna's house in West Rehoboth -- the black side of town -- Edward has the whole summer to have fun and explore. First, Edward wants to learn about the mysterious man named Uncle Rufus living in the shack behind Aunt Edna's.

  • Author:
    Roe, Lisa
    Summary:

    After years of struggling to make ends meet, Ginny, a single mom from Queens, falls for sweet divorced Jeff and relishes the idea of moving with her quirky eleven-year-old daughter Harri to his home in an upscale New Jersey suburb. Even though she's never been impressed by material things, she is thrilled that getting a second chance at love comes with the added bonus of finally giving Harri everything she never could before. And then she meets the neighbors. Ginny is quickly thrust into the complicated realities of a neighborhood defined by the ever-shifting alliances of PTA moms, Real Housewife contenders, and their mean-girl daughters. When the neighbors' secrets, back-stabbing, and bad behavior take a devastating toll on her daughter and new marriage, Ginny must decide what really matters and protect it at all costs.

  • Author:
    Wall, Aimee
    Summary:

    A remarkable debut about intergenerational female relationships and resistance found in the unlikeliest of places, We, Jane explores the precarity of rural existence and the essential nature of abortion. Searching for meaning in her Montreal life, Marthe begins an intense friendship with an older woman, also from Newfoundland, who tells her a story about purpose, about a duty to fulfill. It's back home, and it goes by the name of Jane. Marthe travels back to a small community on the island with the older woman to continue the work of an underground movement in 60s Chicago: abortion services performed by women, always referred to as Jane. She commits to learning how to continue this legacy and protect such essential knowledge. But the nobility of her task and the reality of small-town life compete, and personal fractures within their group begin to grow. We, Jane probes the importance of care work by women for women, underscores the complexity of relationships in close circles, and beautifully captures the inevitable heartache of understanding home.

  • Author:
    Jones, Amy.
    Summary:

    Winner of Northern Lit Award

    Finalist for the Leacock Medal for Humour

    Quill & Quire "Books of the Year 2016"

    Globe & Mail "Best Canadian Fiction of 2016"

    A woman goes over a waterfall, a video goes viral, a family goes into meltdown -- life is about to get a lot more complicated for the Parker family.

    Like all families, the Parkers of Thunder Bay have had their share of complications. But when matriarch Kate Parker miraculously survives plummeting over a waterfall in a barrel -- a feat captured on a video that goes viral -- it's Kate's family who tumbles into chaos under the spotlight. Her prodigal daughter returns to town. Her 16-year-old granddaughter gets caught up in an online relationship with a man she has never met. Her husband sifts through their marriage to search for what sent his wife over the falls. Her adopted son fears losing the only family he's ever known. Then there is Kate, who once made a life-changing choice and now fears her advancing dementia will rob her of memories from when she was most herself. Set over the course of four calamitous days, Amy Jones's big-hearted first novel follows the Parkers' misadventures as catastrophe forces them to do something they never thought possible -- act like a family.

  • Author:
    Bartels, Erin
    Summary:

    "We Hope for Better Things has it all: fabulous storytelling, an emotional impact that lingers long after you turn the last page, and a setting that immerses you. I haven't read such a powerful, moving story since I read To Kill a Mockingbird in high school. This book will change how you look at the world we live in. Highly recommended!"--Colleen Coble, USAToday bestselling author of the Rock Harbor series and The View From Rainshadow Bay "A timely exploration of race in America, We Hope for Better Things is an exercise of empathy that will shape many a soul. Erin Bartels navigates this sensitive topic with compassion as she shifts her readers back and forth between past and present, nudging us to examine the secrets we keep, the grudges we hold, and the prejudices we may help create even without intention."--Julie Cantrell, New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of Perennials ***** When Detroit Free Press reporter Elizabeth Balsam meets James Rich, his strange request--that she look up a relative she didn't know she had in order to deliver an old camera and a box of photos--seems like it isn't worth her time. But when she loses her job after a botched investigation, she suddenly finds herself with nothing but time. At her great-aunt's 150-year-old farmhouse, Elizabeth uncovers a series of mysterious items, locked doors, and hidden graves. As she searches for answers to the riddles around her, the remarkable stories of two women who lived in this very house emerge as testaments to love, resilience, and courage in the face of war, racism, and misunderstanding. And as Elizabeth soon discovers, the past is never as past as we might like to think. Debut novelist Erin Bartels takes readers on an emotional journey through time--from the volatile streets of 1960s Detroit to the Underground Railroad during the Civil War--to uncover the past, confront the seeds of hatred, and discover where love goes to hide.

  • Author:
    Lange, Tracey
    Summary:

    In the vein of Mary Beth Keane's Ask Again, Yes and Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney's The Nest, Tracey Lange's We Are the Brennans explores the staying power of shame--and the redemptive power of love--in an Irish Catholic family torn apart by secrets. When twenty-nine-year-old Sunday Brennan wakes up in a Los Angeles hospital, bruised and battered after a drunk driving accident she caused, she swallows her pride and goes home to her family in New York. But it's not easy. She deserted them all--and her high school sweetheart--five years before with little explanation, and they've got questions. Sunday is determined to rebuild her life back on the east coast, even if it does mean tiptoeing around resentful brothers and an ex-fiancé. The longer she stays, however, the more she realizes they need her just as much as she needs them. When a dangerous man from her past brings her family's pub business to the brink of financial ruin, the only way to protect them is to upend all their secrets--secrets that have damaged the family for generations and will threaten everything they know about their lives. In the aftermath, the Brennan family is forced to confront painful mistakes--and ultimately find a way forward, together. A Macmillan Audio production from Celadon Books"Reading this novel is like getting a view through a lighted window on a family sitting around a table after dark. Who are they? What are they talking about? All families have their own story and the ways they tell it to themselves, and untangling the many strands of this one was deep and richly satisfying. Once I started, I couldn't stop. I read it in one long delicious slide."--Sarah Blake, New York Times bestselling author of The Guest Book

  • Author:
    Pride, Christine
    Summary:

    A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK "[A] propulsive, deeply felt tale of race and friendship." - People " We Are Not Like Them will stay with you long after you turn the last page." -Laura Dave, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Thing He Told Me Told from alternating perspectives, an evocative and riveting novel about the lifelong bond between two women, one Black and one white, whose friendship is indelibly altered by a tragic event-a powerful and poignant exploration of race in America today and its devastating impact on ordinary lives. Jen and Riley have been best friends since kindergarten. As adults, they remain as close as sisters, though their lives have taken different directions. Jen married young, and after years of trying, is finally pregnant. Riley pursued her childhood dream of becoming a television journalist and is poised to become one of the first Black female anchors of the top news channel in their hometown of Philadelphia. But the deep bond they share is severely tested when Jen's husband, a city police officer, is involved in the shooting of an unarmed Black teenager. Six months pregnant, Jen is in freefall as her future, her husband's freedom, and her friendship with Riley are thrown into uncertainty. Covering this career-making story, Riley wrestles with the implications of this tragic incident for her Black community, her ambitions, and her relationship with her lifelong friend. Like Tayari Jones's An American Marriage and Jodi Picoult's Small Great Things , We Are Not Like Them explores complex questions of race and how they pervade and shape our most intimate spaces in a deeply divided world. But at its heart, it's a story of enduring friendship-a love that defies the odds even as it faces its most difficult challenges.

  • Author:
    Keyes, Marian
    Summary:

    On the day she gives birth to her first child, Claire Walsh's husband James tells her he's been having an affair and now's the right time to leave her. Right for who exactly? Exhausted, tearful and a tiny bit furious, Claire can't think of what to do. So she follows the instincts of all self-respecting adults in tricky situations. . . and runs home to Mum and Dad. But while her parents are sympathetic, Claire's younger sisters are less so. Helen wants to share the new toy (baby Kate), while Anna is too busy having out-of-her-head experiences. So when James slips back into her life, desperate to put things right, Claire doesn't know whether to take a chance on a past she feared she'd lost forever or face an uncertain future of her own. But is she as on her own as she really believes? 'An astounding writer and chronicler of our times' Independent On Sunday 'A warm and hilarious page turner' Good Housekeeping 'A modern fairy tale, it's full of Keyes's self-deprecating wit' Sunday Mirror 'Gloriously funny' Sunday Times 'Funny but poignant' Marie Claire

  • Author:
    Sherrard, Valerie
    Summary:

    "I knew one thing – I wasn’t going to be rotting in that place for the rest of my life. I was getting out of there. That place turned people into the living dead. In that neighbourhood, it was hard to hear anything that didn’t carry the sound of defeat." Sixteen-year-old Porter Delaney has his future figured out, but his nice, neat plans are shaken when a man he believes may be his father suddenly appears in his Toronto neighbourhood. Porter knows that he wants nothing to do with the deadbeat dad who abandoned him and his sister twelve years earlier, but curiosity causes him to re-examine the past. Unfortunately, actual memories are scarce and confusing, and much of what he knows is based on things his mother told him. As Porter looks for answers, it begins to seem that all he’s ever going to find are more questions.

  • Author:
    James, Henry
    Summary:

    Set in the exacting social landscape of New York City at the turn of the century, Washington Square is the tale of a wealthy but shy young woman caught between conflicting family expectations.

  • Author:
    Beattie, Ann.
    Summary:

    "He'd tell me anything, anything, as long as the information went unattributed, as long as no one knew he and I had even met." Such is the deal Jane, Harvard valedictorian fresh out of college, strikes with Neil, the intoxicating writer 20 years her senior. It is 1980 in New York City, and the two quickly become lovers, living together in a Chelsea brownstone. Jane is infatuated, but dark secrets lie beneath Neil's polished surface.

  • Author:
    de la Roche, Mazo
    Summary:

    Originally published in 1941, Wakefield’s Course begins in the spring of 1939 at Jalna. Renny Whiteoak is keen to sail for Ireland with his small daughter, Adeline, to buy a racehorse, but he’s more eager to see his younger cousins, Finch and Wakefield, who have been living in London. On his arrival in England, Renny becomes entangled in his cousins’ affairs of the heart. This is book 12 of 16 in The Whiteoak Chronicles. It is followed by Return to Jalna.

  • Author:
    McDougall, Carol
    Summary:

    Set in a small northern town, under the mythical shadow of the Sleeping Giant, Wake the Stone Man follows the complicated friendship of two girls coming of age in the 1960s. Molly meets Nakina, who is Ojibwe and a survivor of the residential school system, in high school, and they form a strong friendship. As the bond between them grows, Molly, who is not native, finds herself a silent witness to the racism and abuse her friend must face each day. In this time of political awakening, Molly turns to her camera to try to make sense of the intolerance she sees in the world around her. Her photos become a way to freeze time and observe the complex human politics of her hometown. Her search for understanding uncovers some hard truths about Nakina’s past and leaves Molly with a growing sense of guilt over her own silence. When personal tragedy tears them apart, Molly must travel a long hard road in search of forgiveness and friendship.

  • Author:
    Anna, Threes, Fasting, Barbara
    Summary:

    India, 1995. Charlotte Bridgwater lives with her father, a former British general, and just one loyal servant in a stately old mansion in the town of Rampur. Money is scarce and the once grand estate is crumbling. In a desperate bid to generate income, Charlotte rents a room to Madan, an Indian tailor with an astonishing talent for making beautiful garments. Madan is unable to communicate verbally, but the two have an immediate and electrifying connection. And, as the extreme heat before the impending monsoon paralyzes the residents of Rampur, the details of their lives unfold: Charlotte's unhappy childhood and the early death of her husband, Madan's poverty-stricken life on the streets, and how and when their paths have crossed before. Told in rich, rhapsodic prose, spanning decades and across continents, Waiting for the Monsoon is an unforgettable tale of love, loss, and the unwavering bond between two people.

  • Author:
    Birdsell, Sandra
    Summary:

    One chilly spring morning, Joe Beaudry and his wife Laurie, wake up in circumstances that would challenge a saint. They are on the lam in a stolen motor home on the edge of a Wal-Mart parking lot in Regina, Saskatchewan. Joe is trying to raise enough cash to get them both to Fort McMurray where he hopes he can find work. But Laurie somehow thinks their situation is only temporary, and maxes out their last credit card on clothes and hair dye. For Joe, it's the last straw. Pushed to figure out what to do next, Joe simply takes off hitchhiking, leaving Laurie waiting, and Joe wondering how he will ever find meaning in a world that has disappointed his every expectation.

  • Author:
    May, Nikki
    Summary:

    "Utterly winning...brings to mind Sex and the City but feels more modern, more real. When I closed Nikki May's delicious, hilarious novel, I felt I was returning to joy. I knew it was time to call my friends...time to get into some good wahala of my own." - Amanda Eyre Ward, New York Times bestselling author of The Jetsetters and The Lifeguards NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2022 BY Vogue * Marie Claire * Glamour * Essence * Oprah Daily * Entertainment Weekly * Bustle * PopSugar * CrimeReads * and more! An incisive and exhilarating debut novel following three Anglo-Nigerian best friends and the lethally glamorous fourth woman who infiltrates their group-the most unforgettable girls since Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha. Ronke wants happily ever after and 2.2. kids. She's dating Kayode and wants him to be "the one" (perfect, like her dead father). Her friends think he's just another in a long line of dodgy Nigerian boyfriends. Boo has everything Ronke wants-a kind husband, gorgeous child. But she's frustrated, unfulfilled, plagued by guilt, and desperate to remember who she used to be. Simi is the golden one with the perfect lifestyle. No one knows she's crippled by impostor syndrome and tempted to pack it all in each time her boss mentions her "urban vibe." Her husband thinks they're trying for a baby. She's not. When the high-flying, charismatic Isobel explodes into the group, it seems at first she's bringing out the best in each woman. (She gets Simi an interview in Shanghai! Goes jogging with Boo!) But the more Isobel intervenes, the more chaos she sows, and Ronke, Simi, and Boo's close friendship begins to crack. A sharp, modern take on friendship, ambition, culture, and betrayal, Wahala (trouble) is an unforgettable novel from a brilliant new voice.

  • Author:
    Corbeil, Carole
    Summary:

    After experiencing the disintegration of their parents' marriage, Claudine and Janine Beaulieu's lives are further complicated when their mother Odette remarries an Anglophone and they are forced to "turn English." Now, years later, Claudine has made a career out of documentary filmmaking, focusing on the painful lives of other women; Janine, a wife and mother, questions her feelings for her sister's boyfriend; and Odette succumbs to her Valium and rum addiction in a luxury retirement villa in Jamaica. Shifting from Duplessis's Montreal of the fifties to Toronto in the eighties, Voice-Over chronicles the lives of a mother and daughters struggling to find their voice in a bilingual country.

  • Author:
    Allende, Isabel
    Summary:

    Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first girl in a family with five boisterous sons. From the start, her life is marked by extraordinary events, for the ripples of the Great War are still being felt, even as the Spanish flu arrives on the shores of her South American homeland almost at the moment of her birth. Through her father's prescience, the family will come through that crisis unscathed, only to face a new one as the Great Depression transforms the genteel city life she has known. Her family loses everything and is forced to retreat to a wild and beautiful but remote part of the country. There, she will come of age, and her first suitor will come calling. She tells her story in the form of a letter to someone she loves above all others, recounting times of devastating heartbreak and passionate affairs, poverty and wealth, terrible loss and immense joy. Her life is shaped by some of the most important events of history: the fight for women's rights, the rise and fall of tyrants, and ultimately not one, but two pandemics.

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