domestic fiction

The Walker clan, Vivi and Big Shep; their children Sidda, Little Shep, Lulu, and Baylor; Vivi's long-time girlfriends the Ya-Yas; and neighbors Cheney and Willetta, live out their lives in flamboyant and secretive style in the bayou of Thornton, Louisiana.

Reporter Camille Preaker tries to unravel the truth of her own troubled past as she returns to her hometown to investigate the murders of two preteen girls.

When Darroti, a young merchant in the city of Lemabantunk, is accused of murdering a highborn woman, he and his family are exiled to the unknown world that lies beyond a mysterious gate, where they encounter a world tormented by hatred and warfare.

Melody Logan, attempting to learn the secrets of her past, gets a summer job working for artist Kenneth Childs, a man she believes may be her real father.

Tells the story of two sisters: Nettie, a missionary in Africa, and Celie, a child-wife living in the South, in the medium of their letters to each other and in Celie's case, the desperate letters she begins, "Dear God.".

The personal, often painful, histories of four Chinese American women who began meeting in San Francisco in 1949 to play mah jong are revealed as the daughter of one who has died searches for her sisters in China to tell them about the mother they never knew.

Contains the story of Ethan Frome, a New England farmer who is married to a hypochondriac, but in love with his wife's lively cousin, Mattie.

Crystal, a scientifically minded fourteen-year-old who has been an orphan since birth, is finally adopted and moves to suburbia--but she quickly learns that having a family does not necessarily bring happiness.

Quoyle and his two emotionally disturbed daughters return to the family ancestral home in Newfoundland to start new lives.

Ruth, a farm girl from Honey Creek, Illinois, reviews the events of her life in an effort to make sense of the violence and tragedy that have plagued her and her family from the time she was a child.