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Domestic fiction

  • Author:
    Hepworth, Sally
    Summary:

    Stephen Aston is getting married again. The only problem is, he's still married to his first wife, even though she is in a care facility for dementia. But he'll take care of that easily, by divorcing her—even if his adult daughters protest. Tully and Rachel Aston look upon Heather as nothing but an interloper. Heather is the same age as Rachel and even younger than Tully. Clearly she's a gold digger and after their father's money. Heather has secrets that she's keeping close, and reasons of her own for wanting to marry Stephen. With their mother unable to speak for herself, Tully and Rachel are determined to get to the truth about their family's secrets, the new wife closing in, and who their father really is. But will getting to the truth unleash the most dangerous impulses...in all of them?

  • Author:
    Bird, Sarah
    Summary:

    Having grown up at the Yokota Air Base in Japan, and having moved six times in the last eight years, Bernadette "Bernie" Root and her five siblings are quintessential military brats. It's 1968, and eighteen-year-old Bernie is returning to the regimented life at Kadena Air Base on Okinawa after her first year away at college.

  • Author:
    Krossing, Karen
    Summary:

    Calvin is the smallest guy in his high school, and a perfect target for Rozelle and her girl gang. His mother is dead, his father is long gone and his only remaining relative, his grandmother, is getting too sick to run her dry cleaning business. The only time Calvin feels in control is when he's working his yo-yo. When he takes up street performing, Rozelle demands a cut and insists on being his manager. To get media attention, she markets him as a yo-yo genius who can predict the future, dubbing him the "Yo-Yo Prophet." Calvin begins to believe his own hype, but as Gran's condition deteriorates, he realizes that it will take more than fame and adulation to keep his family intact.

  • Author:
    Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan
    Summary:

    A young boy living in the Florida backwoods is forced to decide the fate of a fawn he has lovingly raised as a pet.

  • Author:
    Guidry, Jacqueline
    Summary:

    Ten-year-old Vivien Leigh wants more than anything to understand the adult world. But when two black nuns come to teach at her all-white Catholic elementary school, everything begins to change. Her father leads a "Concerned Citizens" group aiming to replace the new nuns, and her mother's relationship with their black housekeeper deteriorates.

  • Author:
    Enright, Anne
    Summary:

    An incandescent novel from one of our greatest living novelists (The Times) about the inheritance of trauma, wonder, and love across three generations of women. Nell McDaragh never knew her grandfather, the celebrated Irish poet Phil McDaragh. But his love poems seem to speak directly to her. Restless and wryly self-assured, at twenty-two Nell leaves her mother Carmel's orderly home to find her own voice as a writer (mostly online, ghost-blogging for an influencer) and to live a poetical life. As she chases obsessive love, damage, and transcendence in Dublin and beyond, her grandfather's poetry seems to guide her home. Nell's mother, Carmel McDaragh, knows the magic of her Daddo's poetry too well-the kind of magic that makes women in their nighties slip outside for a kiss and then elope, as her mother Terry had done. In his poems to Carmel, Phil envisions his daughter as a bright-eyed wren ascending in escape from his hand. But it is Phil who departs, abandoning his wife and two young daughters. Carmel struggles to reconcile "the poet" with the father whose desertion scars her life, along with that of her fiercely dutiful sister and their gentle, cancer-ridden mother. To distance herself from this betrayal Carmel turns inward, raising Nell, her daughter and one trusted love, alone. The Wren, the Wren brings to life three generations of McDaragh women who must contend with inheritances-of poetic wonder and of abandonment by a man who is lauded in public and carelessly selfish at home. Their other, stronger inheritance is a sustaining love that is "more than a strand of DNA, but a rope thrown from the past, a fat twisted rope, full of blood." In knife-sharp prose studded with crystalline poetry, Anne Enright masterfully braids a family story of longing, betrayal, and hope.

  • Author:
    Meindl, Maria
    Summary:

    When aspiring stage-manager Rebecca Weir falls for the married director of SenseInSound theatre company, she initiates a love triangle and working collaboration which go on for two decades. Set in Toronto at the start of the 1980s, You'll Know Even Then explores the genesis of what its disciples call 'The Work'. The director, Marlin, has the status of a Guru in SenseInSound, but is he pushing people's limits or abusing his power? Is the 'The Work' a cutting-edge artistic practice, a road to personal healing, or a cult?

  • Author:
    Rubio, Gwyn Hyman
    Summary:

    The Woodsman's Daughter is set in 19th-century rural Georgia. Dauntless teenaged beauty Dahlia is plagued by her hard-drinking father and his terrible secrets. Determined to make a better life for herself, Dahlia strikes out to raise her own family. But her life is haunted by tragedy, and she is never out of reach of fate's cruel hand.

  • Author:
    Sarginson, Saskia
    Summary:

    A sweeping and turbulent drama about the anxieties of postwar Britain, where one strong and inspirational young woman looks to find her place, no matter the cost.

    Sometimes, the truth lies in fiction

    It’s hard to be an American girl in 1957. Especially when your dad’s job means you have to move four thousand miles from home. Especially if you’d rather play baseball than wear a dress. Especially if you see your mom fraying a little more from anxiety each day. And especially if being five minutes older means you have to protect your fragile twin brother.

    Still, Hedy Delaney loves her family, and she’s trying to make the best of her new life on a U.S. airbase in England. After all, her dad’s a war hero, her mother’s a beauty, and her brother’s a brainiac who writes moving stories about space travel.

    Then one tragic day, the unforeseen occurs and all three are ripped away, leaving Hedy alone with countless questions. What really happened on the airbase? What went on behind military closed doors? What were the secrets that could never be told? And how could any of it have led to her family’s destruction?

    In her search for the truth, Hedy turns to a story her brother began months before he died. Deciding to finish what her brother started, Hedy begins to piece together what happened to her family. But whether she’s ready for what she’ll discover is another matter entirely.

    A sweeping and turbulent family drama, The Wonderful asks whether writing fiction can uncover fact, and if it’s ever better to let the truth remain hidden.

    Sometimes, it’s safer not to finish what you’ve started.

  • Author:
    Giovinazzo, Diana
    Summary:

    Swept into a passionate affair with the idolized mercenary, Anita's life is suddenly consumed by the plight to liberate Southern Brazil from Portugal, a struggle that would cost thousands of lives and span almost ten bloody years. Little did she know that this first taste of revolution would lead her to cross oceans, traverse continents, and alter the course of her entire life, and the world.

  • Author:
    Turnbull, Bryn
    Summary:

    Before Edward, Prince of Wales renounced his throne for American divorcee Wallis Simpson, he loved another: Thelma Morgan Furness, sister to the first Gloria Vanderbilt. This is her story.

  • Author:
    Shors, John
    Summary:

    Ian and his 10-year-old daughter Mattie are struggling with the passing of Kate--wife and mother--after her long battle with cancer. When Ian finally opens a letter Kate handed him before her death, he is surprised at the request inside: that he and Mattie travel across Asia while opening a series of letters from Kate, one at a time. As they complete each stage of the trip, they tie paper wishes to trees, which helps them come to terms with their loss.

  • Author:
    Steinbeck, John
    Summary:

    Steinbeck's novel features Ethan Allen Hawley, formerly of the New England aristocracy but now a humble grocery clerk. Inspiring little but resentment in his wife and daughters, Ethan nevertheless does his utmost to live an honest life. Every man, however, has his breaking point, and Ethan risks his integrity and much more as he embarks on what he hopes will be a path back to wealth and privilege.

  • Author:
    Chiaverini, Jennifer
    Summary:

    Quilters have flocked to Elm Creek Manor to learn from Master Quilter Sylvia Compson and her expert colleagues. There's Sarah, Sylvia's onetime apprentice who's paired her quilting accomplishments with a mind for running the business of Elm Creek Quilts; Agnes, who has a gift for applique; Gwen, who stitches innovative art quilts; Diane, a whiz at the technicalities of quick-piecing; and Bonnie, with her encyclopedic knowledge of folk art patterns. But with Judy and Summer, two other founding members of the Elm Creek Quilters, departing to pursue other opportunities, will the new teachers be able to fill in the gaps created by the loss of their expertise -- and more important, their friendship?

  • Author:
    Chase, Eve
    Summary:

    "An enthralling story of secrets, sisters, and an unsolved mystery." —Kate Morton

    An evocative novel in the vein of Kate Morton and Daphne Du Maurier, in which the thrill of first love clashes with the bonds of sisterhood, and all will be tested by the dark secret at the heart of Applecote Manor.

    Four sisters. One summer. A lifetime of secrets.
     
    When fifteen-year-old Margot and her three sisters arrive at Applecote Manor in June 1959, they expect a quiet English country summer. Instead, they find their aunt and uncle still reeling from the disappearance of their daughter, Audrey, five years before. As the sisters become divided by new tensions when two handsome neighbors drop by, Margot finds herself drawn into the life Audrey left behind. When the summer takes a deadly turn, the girls must unite behind an unthinkable choice or find themselves torn apart forever.

    Fifty years later, Jesse is desperate to move her family out of their London home, where signs of her widower husband’s previous wife are around every corner. Gorgeous Applecote Manor, nestled in the English countryside, seems the perfect solution. But Jesse finds herself increasingly isolated in their new sprawling home, at odds with her fifteen-year-old stepdaughter, and haunted by the strange rumors that surround the manor.

    Rich with the heat and angst of love both young and old, The Wildling Sisters is a gorgeous and breathtaking journey into the bonds that unite a family and the darkest secrets of the human heart.

  • Author:
    Lansens, Lori
    Summary:

    In Leaford, Ontario, love and grief combine to awaken an obese woman from her loneliness. When her husband doesn't come home on the eve of their 25th wedding anniversary, Mary Gooch, who has never learned to be self-sufficient, sets out on a remarkable journey of self-discovery.

  • Author:
    Sooley, Jill
    Summary:

    Prissy Montgomery goes to great lengths to avoid having sex with her husband, Howie. So when he confesses to having an affair, and requests a divorce, she shouldn’t be all that surprised. With her fourteen-year-old son in tow she leaves the comfort of her Toronto home and heads back to Paradise Bay, her childhood home in Newfoundland. But Prissy’s mother, in an effort to spare her daughter humiliation, takes out an obituary to announce Howie’s untimely demise. Prissy is horrified by the deception, especially when her childhood friend becomes widowed for real. When their son has an altercation with the law, Howie, the “dead” husband, heads home to help, and his arrival leaves the town of Paradise Bay reeling, with more questions than answers.

  • Author:
    Butler, Paul
    Summary:

    The Widow’s Fire explores the shadow side of Jane Austen’s final novel Persuasion, disrupting its happy ending and throwing moral certainties off balance. We join the action close to the moment when Austen draws away for the last time and discretely gives an overview of the oncoming marriage between heroine Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth. This, it transpires in The Widow’s Fire, is merely the beginning of a journey. Soon dark undercurrents disturb the order and symmetry of Austen’s world. The gothic flavor of the period, usually satirized by Austen, begins to assert itself. Characters far below the notice of Anne, a baronet’s daughter, have agendas of their own. Before long, we enter into the realm of scandal and blackmail. Anne Elliot must come to recognize the subversive power of those who have been hitherto invisible to her — servants, maids and attendants — before she can defend her fiancé from an accusation too dreadful to be named. Captain Wentworth himself must learn the skills of living on land; the code of honour and secrecy which has protected him on deck no longer applies on the streets of Bath.

  • Author:
    Golden, Marita
    Summary:

    From acclaimed author Marita Golden comes a moving African-American family drama of love and devotion in the face of Alzheimer's disease. You just can't plan for this kind of thing. Diane Tate certainly hasn't. She never expected to slowly lose her talented husband to the debilitating effects of early-onset Alzheimer's disease. As a respected family court judge, she's spent her life making tough calls, but when her sixty-eight-year-old husband's health worsens and Diane is forced to move him into an assisted living facility, it seems her world is spinning out of control. As Gregory's memory wavers and fades, Diane and her children must reexamine their connection to the man he once was-and learn to love the man he has become. For Diane' daughter Lauren, it means honoring her father by following in his footsteps as a successful architect. For her son Sean, it means finding a way to repair the strained relationship with his father before it's too late. Supporting her children in a changing landscape, Diane remains resolute in her goal to keep her family together-until her husband finds love with another resident of the facility. Suddenly faced with an uncertain future, Diane must choose a new path-and discover her own capacity for love.

  • Author:
    Pearson, Kit
    Summary:

    In 1932, after the death of their father, ten-year-old Polly and her older sister Maud must leave their home in Winnipeg and begin a new life with their grandmother on a remote island off the coast of B.C. Maud goes off to boarding school in Victoria and Polly, despite missing her sister, begins to adapt to her new life on the island. But on the edge of this budding happiness, is a dark secret that Polly struggles to keep.

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