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Domestic fiction

  • Author:
    Flynn, Robert
    Summary:

    Chance Carter doesn't like his Grandmother Rista. When he learns her health is failing, the only thing compelling him to leave Florida for Texas is his status as the sole heir to her million-dollar ranch. Yet when he pays her a visit, he learns the reality of the past -- including why Rista shot both her husband and the man who may have been Chance's father.

  • Author:
    Boyd, Hilary
    Summary:

    What do you do if you've been married to a man for half your life and out of nowhere he leaves your bed permanently? When this happens to Jeanie, she's furious and determined to confront George, her husband of thirty years. Is he in love with someone else? What did she do wrong? He won't tell her.

  • Author:
    Martin, Charles
    Summary:

    Modern cowboy Tyler Steele must raise his son, Brodie, save his ranch, and rebuild his life after his wife leaves him for being emotionally distant and ultimately learns that being a man means confronting your true weaknesses.

  • Author:
    Charleson, Karen
    Summary:

    Everyone knows everyone's business in the small fishing community of Kitsum. So when young Brenda Joe fears she might be pregnant, she also worries that rumours will spread quickly. Things look up when Brenda's favourite aunt, Monica returns to Kitsum for Christmas, although she is preoccupied with her own relationship problems. It's become clear to her that the white man she's been living with in Vancouver sees her as his "Indian Princess," his own exotic arm candy, and she's had enough. When she learns about Brenda's secret relationship with a local man, Monica is appalled and goes to set him straight. But is there more to this attractive loner with the hard-partying relations than meets the eye? Come spring, amid their secrets and betrayals, each family member will be tempted down to the water to collect herring eggs from artfully placed hemlock branches. The question is, will they be able to face one another?

  • Author:
    Carofiglio, Gianrico
    Summary:

    When Antonio is diagnosed with epilepsy at eighteen, he and his absentee father travel to Marseille to visit a doctor who may hold the hope for an effective treatment and connect for the first time.

  • Author:
    Harvey, Sarah N.
    Summary:

    Sixteen-year-old Sid barely remembers his birth mother and has no idea who his father was. Raised on an idyllic island by loving foster parents, Sid would be content to stay there forever, drawing, riding his bike, hanging out with his friend Chloe and helping out with Fariza, a newly arrived foster child. But when a stranger named Phil arrives on the island with disturbing news about his birth family – including a troubled younger brother – Sid leaves all that is familiar to help find the sibling he didn't know existed. What he discovers is a family fractured by mental illness, but also united by strong bonds of love and compassion. As Sid searches for his brother, gets to know his grandmother, and worries about meeting his biological mother, he realizes that there will never be a simple answer to the question, Am I my brother's keeper?

  • Author:
    Straub, Emma
    Summary:

    Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Harper's Bazaar, Oprah Daily, Glamour, Entertainment Weekly, Vogue, Good Housekeeping, Parade, Bustle, Marie Claire, PopSugar, Thrillist, Lit Hub and more! "The pages brim with tenderness and an appreciation for what we had and who we were. I could not have loved it more."--Ann Patchett "The kind of book that will make you laugh, make you cry, and make you call the people you love. Exceptional."--Emily HenryWhat if you could take a vacation to your past? With her celebrated humor, insight, and heart, beloved New York Times bestseller Emma Straub offers her own twist on traditional time travel tropes, and a different kind of love story. On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice's life isn't terrible. She likes her job, even if it isn't exactly the one she expected. She's happy with her apartment, her romantic status, her independence, and she adores her lifelong best friend. But her father is ailing, and it feels to her as if something is missing. When she wakes up the next morning she finds herself back in 1996, reliving her 16th birthday. But it isn't just her adolescent body that shocks her, or seeing her high school crush, it's her dad: the vital, charming, 40-something version of her father with whom she is reunited. Now armed with a new perspective on her own life and his, some past events take on new meaning. Is there anything that she would change if she could?

  • Author:
    Singleton, Elyse
    Summary:

    Best friends Lilian and Myraleen, two African American women from rural Mississippi, travel to Europe during World War II to act as members of the Women's Army Corps. During this time of segregation and destruction, both women discover love and heartbreak, triumph and defeat.

  • Author:
    Morgan, Robert
    Summary:

    Two brothers, Muir and Moody are as different as night and day and are always at odds. Muir searches for fulfillment with the church while Moody battles inner demons. Ginny, the boys' mother, struggles to keep the family together amidst their constant bickering.

  • Author:
    Tian, Xixi
    Summary:

    A sweeping debut novel about first love, complicated family dynamics, and the pernicious legacy of racism. Perfect for fans of Tahereh Mafi, Jandy Nelson, and Emily X.R. Pan, with crossover appeal for readers of Brit Bennett's The Vanishing Half and Celeste Ng's Everything I Never Told You. The Flanagan sisters are as different as they come. Seventeen-year-old Annalie is bubbly, sweet, and self-conscious, whereas nineteen-year-old Margaret is sharp and assertive. Margaret looks just like their mother, while Annalie passes for white and looks like the father who abandoned them years ago, leaving their Chinese immigrant mama to raise the girls alone in their small, predominantly white Midwestern town. When their house is vandalized with a shocking racial slur, Margaret rushes home from her summer internship in New York City. She expects outrage. Instead, her sister and mother would rather move on. Especially once Margaret's own investigation begins to make members of their community uncomfortable. For Annalie, this was meant to be a summer of new possibilities, and she resents her sister's sudden presence and insistence on drawing negative attention to their family. Meanwhile Margaret is infuriated with Annalie's passive acceptance of what happened. For Margaret, the summer couldn't possibly get worse, until she crosses paths with someone she swore she'd never see again: her first love, Rajiv Agarwal. As the sisters navigate this unexpected summer, an explosive secret threatens to break apart their relationship, once and for all. This Place Is Still Beautiful is a luminous, captivating story about identity, sisterhood, and how our hometowns are inextricably a part of who we are, even when we outgrow them.

  • Author:
    Gould, Leslie
    Summary:

    After the death of her parents, Mennonite Brenna Zimmerman relocates to the Lancaster County farm of her Old Order Amish grandparents. There, she befriends Rylan Sanders, a disabled veteran, and commits to rising above her own grief to help him as much as she can. But when things take a turn for the worse, Brenna finds herself at a loss for what to do. As Brenna struggles, her Mennonite friend Johann Mazur, a soldier in the Ukrainian Army, encourages her to distance herself from Rylan. But when she discovers that Rylan's army buddies are withholding secrets that could help with his psychological healing, Brenna is torn between her feelings for Johann and her commitment to help Rylan. Inspired by the story of her distant relative who served with the Red Cross and supervised German POWs during World War II, Brenna considers her own future and must decide whether she has the courage to give up the comforts she craves for the life she truly wants.

  • Author:
    Dangarembga, Tsitsi
    Summary:

    Anxious about her prospects after leaving a stagnant job, Tambudzai finds herself living in a run-down youth hostel in downtown Harare. For reasons that include her grim financial prospects and her age, she moves to a widow's boarding house and eventually finds work as a biology teacher. But at every turn in her attempt to make a life for herself, she is faced with a fresh humiliation, until the painful contrast between the future she imagined and her daily reality ultimately drives her to a breaking point. In This Mournable Body, Tsitsi Dangarembga returns to the protagonist of her acclaimed first novel, Nervous Conditions, to examine how the hope and potential of a young girl and a fledgling nation can sour over time and become a bitter and floundering struggle for survival. As a last resort, Tambudzai takes an ecotourism job that forces her to return to her parents' impoverished homestead. It is this homecoming, in Dangarembga's tense and psychologically charged novel, that culminates in an act of betrayal, revealing just how toxic the combination of colonialism and capitalism can be.

  • Author:
    Schoeman, Amy
    Summary:

    In This Is Not a Flowerpot, author Amy Schoeman, with keen observation and an enduring sense of irony, chronicles Lizelle's journey from being a woman with no clear idea of what she wants to one who chooses personal freedom and control over her life. Sometimes shocking, often funny, this wry account of an imprudent marriage is abidingly entertaining. Above all it carries the torch for the abused woman.

  • Author:
    Moore, Lisa
    Summary:

    From the celebrated author of February and Caught comes an exhilarating new novel that asks: What makes a family? How does it shape us? And can we ever really choose who we love? As the snowstorm of the century rages, twenty-one-year-old Xavier is beaten and stabbed in a vicious attack. His mother, Jules, must fight her way through the shuttered streets of St. John's to reach the hospital where Xavier lies unconscious. When a video of the attack surfaces, Jules struggles to make sense of what she sees in the footage -- and of what she can't quite make out. While Xavier's story unfolds, so, too, do the stories that brought him there. Here, across families and generations, are stories of mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers; of children cared for, neglected, lost, and re-found; of selfless generosity and reluctant debt. Above all, Moore, in the inimitable largesse of her art, paints a shimmering portrait of the sacrifice, pain, and wild joy of loving. A tour de force of storytelling and craft, This Is How We Love brings us a cast of characters so rich and true they could only have been written by Lisa Moore.

  • Author:
    Frankel, Laurie
    Summary:

    "It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me think."--Liane Moriarty, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Big Little Lies. This is how a family keeps a secret ... and how that secret ends up keeping them. This is how a family lives happily ever after ... until happily ever after becomes complicated. This is how children change ... and then change the world. When Rosie and Penn and their four boys welcome the newest member of their family, no one is surprised it's another baby boy. At least their large, loving, chaotic family knows what to expect. But Claude is not like his brothers. One day he puts on a dress and refuses to take it off. He wants to bring a purse to kindergarten. He wants hair long enough to sit on. When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl. Rosie and Penn aren't panicked at first. Kids go through phases, after all, and make-believe is fun. But soon the entire family is keeping Claude's secret. Until one day it explodes. Laurie Frankel's This Is How It Always Is is an audiobook about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family. And it's about the ways this is how it always is: Change is always hard and miraculous and hard again; parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts; children grow but not always according to plan. And families with secrets don't get to keep them forever.

  • Author:
    Carter, Lauren
    Summary:

    Set in Northern Ontario in the 1990s, this is a thrilling literary novel about two siblings coming to terms with their mother murdering their father and his mistress, and the history of abuse that fuelled her crime. It also features a rescue dog with a tragic past.

  • Author:
    Malik, Ayisha
    Summary:

    For years Bilal Hasham and his wife Mariam have lived contented, quiet lives in the sleepy rural village of Babbel's End. Now all that is about to change. On her deathbed, Bilal's mother reaches for his hand. Instead of whispering her final prayers, she gives him a task: build a mosque in his country village. Mariam is horrified by Bilal's plan. His friends and neighbours are unnerved. As outrage sweeps Babbel's End, battle lines are drawn. His mother's dying wish reveals deeper divisions in their village than Bilal had ever imagined. Soon Bilal is forced to choose between community and identity, between faith and friendship, between honouring his beloved mother's last wish and preserving what is held dear in the place that he calls home.

  • Author:
    Cross-Smith, Leesa
    Summary:

    Tallie Clark is on her way home when she spots a man precariously standing on the edge of a bridge. She convinces the man to join her for a cup of coffee, and he reluctantly shares his first name: Emmett. Over the course of the emotionally-charged weekend that follows, Tallie makes it her mission to provide a safe and comfortable space for Emmett, although she doesn't confess that she works as a therapist. However, Emmett is not the only one who needs help, and he has secrets of his own.

  • Author:
    Center, Katherine
    Summary:

    "...a sharp and witty exploration of love and forgiveness that is at once insightful, entertaining, and thoroughly addictive." - Kirkus, starred review. From the New York Times bestselling author of How to Walk Away comes a stunning new audiobook about courage, hope, and learning to love against all odds. Cassie Hanwell was born for emergencies. As one of the only female firefighters in her Texas firehouse, she's seen her fair share of them, and she's a total pro at other people's tragedies. But when her estranged and ailing mother asks her to give up her whole life and move to Boston, Cassie suddenly has an emergency of her own. The tough, old-school Boston firehouse is as different from Cassie's old job as it could possibly be. Hazing, a lack of funding, and poor facilities mean that the firemen aren't exactly thrilled to have a "lady" on the crew-even one as competent and smart as Cassie. Except for the infatuation-inspiring rookie, who doesn't seem to mind having Cassie around. But she can't think about that. Because love is girly, and it's not her thing. And don't forget the advice her old captain gave her: Never date firefighters. Cassie can feel her resolve slipping...and it means risking it all-the only job she's ever loved, and the hero she's worked like hell to become. Katherine Center's Things You Save in a Fire is a heartfelt and healing tour-de-force about the strength of vulnerability, the nourishing magic of forgiveness, and the life-changing power of defining courage, at last, for yourself. Praise for Things You Save in a Fire: "Oh, how I love Katherine Center's writing...and her newest novel is a gem...a story that reminds us that the word emergency has, at its heart, a new beginning. Just read it, and thank me later." - Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author

  • Author:
    Gudenkauf, Heather
    Summary:

    Once the golden child of tiny Linden Falls, Iowa, Allison Glenn watches her reputation crumble as she is sent to prison for five years--convicted of a terrible crime. But what really happened that fateful night? Allison's younger sister is the only other person who knows the truth. Now out of prison, Allison is more desperate than ever to set the record straight, but the revelation of the truth could have far-reaching consequences.

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