"The Palmer sisters couldn't be more different. Karen, the eldest, is the responsible one the one who got the grades, married the perfect guy, and has two wonderful, high-achieving children. Cassie is the rebellious one, who got pregnant right after high school and married the wrong man, despite her family's misgivings. And Nicole is a free, creative spirit, who's always been indulged and pampered as the baby of the family who could do no wrong. These...

Catalyzed by a nephew's thoughtless prank, a pair of brothers confront painful psychological issues surrounding the freak accident that killed their father when they were boys, a loss linked to a heartbreaking deception that shaped their personal and professional lives

Picking up where her modern classic The Bean Trees left off, Barbara Kingsolver's bestselling Pigs in Heaven continues the tale of Turtle and Taylor Greer, a Native American girl and her adoptive mother who have settled in Tucson, Arizona, as they both try to overcome their difficult pasts. Taking place three years after The Bean Trees, Taylor is now dating a musician named Jax and has officially adopted Turtle. But when a lawyer for the Cherokee...

In The Shipping News E. Annie Proulx departs from the darkly fated heroes of Heart Songs and Postcards to explore the cracked-up contemporary American family. Quoyle, a third-rate newspaper hack, with a "head shaped like a crenshaw, no neck, reddish hair ... features as bunched as kissed fingertips," is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing wife meets her just deserts. An aunt convinces Quoyle and his two emotionally disturbed...

Brutally raped and murdered by a deceptively mild-mannered neighbor, Susie begins with a compelling description of her death. During the next ten years, she watches over her family and friends as they struggle to cope with her murder. She observes their disintegrating lives with compassion and occasionally attempts, sometimes successfully, to communicate her love to them. Although the lives of all who knew her well are shaped by her tragic death,...

"A marriage is always two intersecting stories."
This realization comes perhaps too late to the husband of Etna Bliss-a man whose obsession with his young wife begins at the moment of their first meeting, as he helps Etna and her companions escape from a fire in a hotel restaurant, and culminates in a marriage doomed by secrets and betrayal.
Written with the intelligence and grace that are the hallmarks of Anita Shreve's bestselling novels,...

Bernadette and Bernard Doyle share a great love for family. Already blessed with a son, they adopt two black children, Teddy and Tip. Even after Bernadette dies, she continues to exert a profound influence over the family. And then Tip is pushed out of a car's path in a sudden act of heroism, and lives are bound by this selfless act

"For generations, the Bradford family has worn the mantle of kings of the bourbon capital of the world. Their sustained wealth has afforded them prestige and privilege--as well as a hard-won division of class on their sprawling estate, Easterly. Upstairs, a dynasty that by all appearances plays by the rules of good fortune and good taste. Downstairs, the staff who work tirelessly to maintain the impeccable Bradford facade. And never the twain shall...

“Brilliant. . . . A structural tour de force. . . . A classic Southern tale of dysfunctional and marginal madness. The author’s gift for giving life to so many voices leaves the reader profoundly moved.”— Seattle Weekly

The companion novel to Rebecca Wells’s celebrated #1 New York Times bestseller Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Who can resist the rich cadences

...

“BERG KNOWS THE HEARTS OF HER CHARACTERS INTIMATELY, showing them with compassion, humor, and an illuminating generosity.”
–The Seattle Times

“BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN . . . [Ginny Young] crosses the country for a reluctant reunion with the mother she has not seen in 35 years. During the long hours of her flight, she returns in memory to the summer when she turned 12 and her family turned inside out. ....