fiction / family life

"... a young woman decides to reveal the dark secrets of her seemingly-happy family before she leaves them behind, but when her escape plan fails, she must deal with the staggering consequences of telling the truth"--Provided by publisher.

"...when fifteen-year-old Margot and her three sisters arrive at Applecote Manor in June 1959, they expect a quiet Englishcountry 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 inexplicably 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..."--Provided by publisher.

"In a graveyard outside the walls of Old Delhi, a resident unrolls a threadbare Persian carpet. On a concrete sidewalk, a baby suddenly appears, just after midnight. In a snowy valley, a bereaved father writes a letter to his five-year-old daughter about the people who came to her funeral. In a second-floor apartment, a lone woman chain-smokes as she reads through her old notebooks. At the Jannat Guest House, two people who have known each other all their lives sleep with their arms wrapped around each other, as though they have just met. A braided narrative ... 'The Ministry of Utmost Happiness' is at once a love story and a provocation..."--Provided by publisher.

"From an internationally acclaimed novelist, the suspenseful and heartbreaking story of a family ripped apartby secrets and driven to pit love against loyalty, with devastating consequences..."--Provided by publisher.

"A warm, wry, sharply observed debut novel about what happens when a family is forced to spend a week together in quarantine over the holidays..."--Provided by publisher.

"In this pair of novellas and two stories, Russo's characters bear little similarity to the blue-collar citizens we're familiar with from most of his novels. In "Horseman," a tenured professor confronts a young plagiarist as well as her own weaknesses as the Thanksgiving holiday approaches--"And after that, who knew?" In "Intervention," a realtor facing an ominous medical prognosis finds himself in his father's shadow while he presses forward, or not. In "Voice," a semi-retired English professor is conned by his increasingly estranged brother into coming along on a group tour of the Biennale, fleeing a mortifying incident with a traumatized student back in Massachusetts but encountering further complications en route. And in "Milton and Marcus," a lapsed novelist is struggling with his wife's illness and trying to rekindle his screenwriting career, only to be stymied by the pratfalls of that trade when he's called to an aging, iconic star's mountaintop in Wyoming"--Provided by publisher.

"A ... tale of mourning and acceptance that compares and contrasts the contemporary nature of gay tolerance in the East and the West. Yaichi is a work-at-home suburban dad in contemporary Tokyo, married to wife Natsuki, father to young daughter Kana. Their lives are suddenly upended with the arrival at their doorstep of a hulking, affable Canadian named Mike Flanagan, who declares himself the widower of Yaichi's estranged gay twin, Ryoji. Mike is on a quest to explore Ryoji's past, and the family reluctantly but dutifully takes him in"--Provided by publisher.

"Paul Auster's greatest, most heartbreaking and satisfying novel -- a sweeping and surprising story of birthright and possibility, of love and of life itself: a masterpiece. Nearly two weeks early, on March 3, 1947, in the maternity ward of Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, Archibald Isaac Ferguson, the one and only child of Rose and Stanley Ferguson, is born. From that single beginning, Ferguson's life will take four simultaneous and independent fictional paths. Four identical Fergusons made of the same DNA, four boys who are the same boy, go on to lead four parallel and entirely different lives. Family fortunes diverge. Athletic skills and sex lives and friendships and intellectual passions contrast. Each Ferguson falls under the spell of the magnificent Amy Schneiderman, yet each Amy and each Ferguson have a relationship like no other. Meanwhile, readers will take in each Ferguson's pleasures and ache from each Ferguson's pains, as the mortal plot of each Ferguson's life rushes on. As inventive and dexterously constructed as anything Paul Auster has ever written, yet with a passion for realism and a great tenderness and fierce attachment to history and to life itself that readers have never seen from Auster before. 4 3 2 1 is a marvelous and unforgettably affecting tour de force. "--.

"After the death of his estranged father, Amit takes his parent's ashes to the Ganges to fulfill a deathbed promise. Instead of returning home, he wanders, his pain and grief leaving him confused about his future. Almost broke, unsure about his direction in life, and running from memories, he is led by fate to theCamino de Santiago, an ancient 550-mile pilgrimage route across northern Spain..."--Provided by publisher.

"A riveting and emotionally harrowing debut about two young brothers and their physically and psychologically abusive father..."--Provided by publisher.