Family Drama Fiction

Fifteen years after graduating from Harvard, five close friends on the cusp of middle age are still pursuing an elusive happiness and wondering if they’ve wasted their youthful opportunities. Jules, already a famous actor when she arrived on campus, is changing in mysterious ways but won’t share what is haunting her. Mariam and Rowan, who married young, are struggling with the demands of family life and starting to regret prioritising meaning over wealth in their careers.

In the end...we all lose. How well do you think you know the Callahans? Yes, I'm asking you. Because I know you've been watching. The chaos, the violence, the love, and the madness - who could look away? Not me, for sure. My grandmother always told me...where you look is where you go. So I ask again, how well do you think you know the Callahans? Do you really think you understand Melody, Liam, or even Ethan? I have to wonder - will your mind be able to handle it?  

Daisy Darker is arriving at her grandmother’s house for her 80th birthday. It is Halloween, and Seaglass—the crumbling Cornish house perched upon its own tiny private island—is at one with the granite rocks it sits on. The Darker family haven’t all been in the same place for over a decade, and when the tide comes in, they’ll be cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours. When the tide goes back out, nothing will ever be the same again, because one of them is a killer.

It's 16-year-old Edie who finds their mother, Marianne, dangling in the living room from an old jump rope, puddle of urine on the floor, barely alive. Upstairs, 14-year-old Mae had fallen into one of her trances, often a result of feeling too closely attuned to her mother's dark moods. After Marianne is unwillingly admitted to a mental hospital, Edie and Mae are forced to move from their childhood home in Louisiana to New York to live with their estranged father, Dennis, a former civil rights activist and literary figure on the other side of success.

Ren Ishida is nearly finished with graduate school when he receives news of his sister Keiko's sudden death. She was viciously stabbed one rainy night on her way home, and there are no leads. Ren heads to Akakawa to conclude his sister's affairs, still failing to understand why she chose to abandon the family and Tokyo for this desolate town years ago. Haunted in his dreams by a young girl who is desperately trying to tell him something, Ren struggles to find solace in the void his sister has left behind.

After 40 years with his beloved wife, Henry is alone for the first time. His sudden bachelorhood is a struggle for him and his daughter Lisa, who is feeling pressure to fill the void. To give Henry the companionship he’s craving, Lisa buys him a personal robotic assistant. The device transforms Henry’s life and inspires him to embrace the possibility of romance during his golden years. 

Christopher and Hannah are a happily married surgeon and nurse with picture-perfect lives. All that’s missing is a child. When Janie, an abandoned six-year-old, turns up at their hospital, Christopher forms an instant connection with her, and he convinces Hannah they should take her home as their own.

When Ann Tran gets the call that her beloved grandmother, has passed away, her life is already at a crossroads. She lives in a beautiful lake house and has a charming professor boyfriend, but it all crumbles away with one positive pregnancy test. With both her relationship and carefully planned future now in question, Ann returns home to Florida to face her estranged mother. Under the same roof for the first time in years, mother and daughter must face the simmering questions of their past, while trying to rebuild their relationship without the one person who's always held them together.

Peter Ducksworth, a Trinidadian widower of English ancestry, retires to Barbados, believing he will find an earthly paradise there. He decides to divide his land among his three daughters while he is alive, his intention not unlike that of King Lear, who hoped "That future strife/May be prevented now". But Lear made the fatal mistake of confusing flattery with love, and so does Ducksworth. Feeling snubbed by his youngest daughter, Ducksworth decides that only after he dies will she receive her portion of the land.

Kathryn Brooker is the headmaster's wife. While her husband spends his days disciplining unruly teenagers in the grand halls of Mountbriers Academy, Kathryn spends hers baking scones for her son's cricket match in a beautiful cottage in the manicured school grounds. Anyone who peered through the downstairs sash window at the four figures sat easily around their scrubbed-pine kitchen table would see a happy family without a care in the world. They would envy Kathryn her perfect life. But they would be wrong. Kathryn is trapped in a nightmare.

Whether it’s being told you have to purchase two seats on an airplane or getting dirty looks when you’re with a handsome man, being a big girl in a superficial world can come with more issues than any woman should have to deal with. Add to that some over-the-top family and marriage issues, and you have the perfect recipe for some Big Girls Drama.

The year is 1970. Emma Gable, a blind teenager coming of age in a small industrial town in Western New York, is about as far from the seismic cultural transformations rocking campuses and city streets across America as a person can get. Emma escapes the chaos of her dysfunctional family by dialing up random numbers on the phone in her bedroom, just to see who'll answer.

Marisa never planned to be a snoop for hire. It wasn't like she wanted to catch her best friend's boyfriend making out with another girl. But as her reputation for sniffing out cheaters spreads all over school, Marisa finds herself the reluctant queen of busting two-timing boys. And her next case? It's for ex-frenemy Kendall. She's convinced that her boyfriend, TJ, has feelings for someone else and persuades Marissa to start spying on him. But the more Marisa gets to know sincere and artistic TJ, the more she starts to fall for him. Worse yet, the feelings seem to be mutual.

This "richly appointed and generously portrayed" ( Kirkus Reviews) debut novel tells the story of a WASPy, old-Boston family coming face-to-face with an America much larger than the one it was born in. Caroline Dunlap has written off the insular world of the Boston deb parties, golf club luaus, and WASP weddings that she grew up with. But when she reluctantly returns home after her college graduation, she finds that not everything is quite as predictable, or protected, as she had imagined.

Mona is married to Jack, younger brother to Denny Springer, lead singer for the greatest rock-and-roll band in the world. Jack happens to sing, too, of course, not that anyone in the world notices very much. After Denny attends the family Easter dinner in London for the first time in decades, Mona invites Denny to join her and her family for the summer at a rental house in coastal Connecticut. She tells Denny it'll be a chance for him to finally bond with Jack, from whom Denny has been estranged for 20 years. Denny initially laughs at the idea...but then shows up on their doorstep.

Boon Hoenes only has three goals in life: to make Posey Adler his wife, to win the Stanley Cup for the second year in a row, and for Shea Adler to like him. The first, he's got on lock. The second, he's well on his way. And the third...well, two out of three ain't bad.

Celia Burrows thought she had it all - a handsome husband, two successful children, and a gorgeous beach house on the northern coast of Maine. But her perfect life cracks apart when her husband of 30 years informs her that he's leaving. In a note. And since problems come in threes, her adult children reveal they've both been struggling with issues of their own.

The mid-1800s is a time of great change for James McGrother and his family. Friendship and loyalty draw the Irish fisherman into a world he would rather stay away from. Choices must be made that could bring the wrath of an old enemy upon James' head. How many fresh starts should a person have to make in their lifetime? Why is it that just when you think your boat has reached the shore, the tide turns and sweeps you back out to a stormy sea?

As the past catches up with Catherine, one of her sisters becomes a thorn in her side. To make life even more stressful for her, the young woman finds herself torn between two of the people she loves most in the world. As her husband, Patrick, does his best to provide for his young family, Catherine fears he is keeping secrets from her, possibly even more hurtful than the one she has concealed in her heart. While Patrick yearns for social change and a better future for his children, his wife is more concerned about the past and what damage it might cause.

Tina Jenson belongs to the same social stratum as Harris Chapman, but he’s out of her league - at least that’s what she thinks before they jump in bed together. It’s the perfect night, but when she overhears crude, hurtful comments the next morning, she can’t get away fast enough. Ten years later, Tina’s life is a mess. That night with Harris didn’t just hurt her feelings; it started a cascade of disappointment and heartbreak. Every time she bumps into Harris, her heart twists inside out. And she’s harboring a painful secret from their night together.