How the world sees you is how you come to see yourself. Failure is built in, violence, petty crime, and jailtime are the common coin.

Dianne Robbins, deserted by her husband, Tim, after giving birth to a daughter with severe birth defects, devotes herself totally to her child for nearly twelve years before she opens herself up to love again with her ex-husband's brother, Alan.

"For fifteen years, the Wilcoxes have been a family in name only. Though never the picture of happiness, they once seemed like a typical white Jewish clan from the Upper West Side. But in the early 2000s, two events ruptured the relationships between them. First, Naomi revealed to her children that her biological father was actually Black. In the aftermath, college-age daughter Bering left home to become a radical peace activist in Palestine's West...

Alice is in the eighth grade, and while she wants her life to be exciting and outrageous, she also wants to feel protected and safe.

"In Urrea's exuberant new novel of Mexican-American life, 70-year-old patriarch Big Angel de la Cruz is dying, and he wants to have one last birthday blowout. Unfortunately, his 100-year-old mother, America, dies the week of his party, so funeral and birthday are celebrated one day apart. The entire contentious, riotous de la Cruz clan descends on San Diego for the events. High rollers and college students, prison veternaos and welfare mothers, happy...

This novel continues the story of the Jordache family started in "Rich Man, Poor Man". Wesley, haunted by his father's murder, begins a strange and deeply personal quest; Billy becomes involved with a girl who leads him into danger; and Gretchen experiences a remarkable twist in her life.

"Mae Townsend has always dreamed of connecting with her estranged Black family in the South. She grew up picturing relatives who looked like her, crowded dinner tables, bustling kitchens. And, of course, the Townsend family barbecue, the tradition that kept her late father flying to North Carolina year after year, despite the mysterious rift that always required her to stay behind. But as Mae's wedding draws closer, promising a future of always standing...

This unforgettable story, filled with empathy, humor and emotional wisdom, follows four generations of an American family living under one roof as they each look for meaning in all the wrong places.

Crow Lake is that rare find, a first novel so quietly assured, so emotionally pitch perfect, you know from the opening page that this is the real thing—a literary experience in which to lose yourself, by an author of immense talent.
Here is a gorgeous, slow-burning story set in the rural “badlands” of northern Ontario, where heartbreak and hardship are mirrored in the landscape. For the farming Pye family, life...

"Nothing brings an estranged family together like a murder next door. High-powered businesswoman Lana Rubicon has a lot to be proud of: her keen intelligence, impeccable taste, and the L.A. real estate empire she's built. But when she finds herself trapped 300 miles north of the city, convalescing in a sleepy coastal town with her adult daughter Beth and teenage granddaughter Jack, Lana is stuck counting otters instead of square footage--and hoping...