By Abbi Waxman
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

After her husband's fatal car accident, Lillian recruits her daughters and supportive sister to help her do research for a boutique vegetable guide at the Los Angeles Botanical Garden, where an instructor and quirky gardeners help her grieve and heal.

By Sarah Addison Allen

In a garden surrounded by a tall fence, tucked away behind a small, quiet house in an even smaller town, is an apple tree that is rumored to bear a very special sort of fruit. This is the story of that enchanted tree, and the extraordinary people who tend it.

By Lorrie Moore
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk

“Ms. Moore has written her most powerful book yet, a book that gives us an indelible portrait of a young woman coming of age in the Midwest in the year after 9/11 and her initiation into the adult world of loss and grief… (New York Times).”

By Jane Fallon
Recommended By Pam Martin, Assistant Library Director

"Fallon takes "careful what you wish for" to hilarious heights in her debut novel, a comedy of errors triggered by a mistress who discovers thrice-weekly hookups with her married lover are better than a 24/7 relationship with him (Publishers Weekly)."

By Jerry Amernic

Follows the coming-of-age of a young man who makes a special connection with his grandfather at the end of the latter’s life, a period marked by the grandfather’s hero-worship of Babe Ruth and memories about one of the athlete’s early home runs.

By Bruce Holsinger
Recommended By Pam Martin, Assistant Library Director

The students and parents of a tight-knit community find their bonds nearly destroyed by competitiveness when an exclusive school for gifted children opens nearby, in a story told from both adult and child perspectives.

By Marilynne Robinson
Recommended By Brenda Cherry, Reference Librarian

As the Reverend John Ames approaches the hour of his own death, he writes a letter to his son chronicling three previous generations of his family, a story that stretches back to the Civil War and reveals uncomfortable family secrets.

By Benjamin Ludwig
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services

Desperately wishing to be reunited with her abusive, drug-addicted birth mother at any cost in spite of finding herself in a wonderful foster home, an autistic 14-year-old struggles to make sense of her world by engaging in strict routines and avoiding the people who would love her.

By Gaynor Arnold

A heart-warming story of first love: a cocky young writer is smitten by a pretty girl in a blue dress.

By Jean Kwok
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian, Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk

A resolute yet naïve Chinese girl confronts poverty and culture shock with equal zeal when she and her mother immigrate to Brooklyn.

By Sarah Addison Allen

In a quirky little Southern town with more magic than a full Carolina moon, two women discover how to find their place in the world–no matter how out of place they feel.

By Kelli Estes

A college student investigates the sad story of a displaced Chinese American in 1886 before making a discovery in a scrap of silk that forces her to choose between her family's honor and the truth.

By Lori Lansens

A novel told from two viewpoints: that of Rose and that of Ruby Darlen, 29-year-old conjoined twins. Rose and Ruby are about to go down in history as the oldest surviving twins to be joined at the head. A recent medical diagnosis has spurred them to write their autobiography, remembering the joys and challenges of their lives.

By Lisa Jewell

When a young girl discovers her 13-year-old sister lying unconscious from an attack during a festive neighborhood party, the once-picturesque garden-square community is thrown into turmoil by the awareness that someone among them may be responsible.

By Kelly Mustian
Recommended By Lisa V., Library Clerk

Ada promised herself she would never go back to the Trace, to her unbearable life on the swamp, and to her harsh father in Mississippi. But now, after running away to Baton Rouge and briefly knowing a different kind of life, she finds herself with nowhere to go but back home. And she knows there will be a price to pay with her father. Matilda, daughter of a sharecropper, is from the other side of the Trace. Doing what she can to protect her family from the whims and demands of some particularly callous locals is an ongoing struggle. She forms a plan to go north, to pack up the secrets she's holding about her life in the South and hang them on the line for all to see. As the two girls are drawn deeper into a dangerous world of bootleggers and moral corruption, they must come to terms with the complexities of their tenuous bond and a hidden past that links them in ways that could cost them their lives.

By Debbie Macomber
Series New Beginnings
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager

After helping each other move on from the heartbreak of divorce, Leanne and her former daughter-in-law Nichole find themselves learning to love again, Leanne with her friend Nikolai and Nichole with rough-around the edges Rocco.

By Simon Mawer

World events are about to overtake 1930s Czechoslovakia, as Jewish newlyweds build their dream home.

By Mario Puzo
Series Godfather Trilogy

Puzo pulls us inside the violent society of the Mafia and its gang wars. The leader, Vito Corleone, is the Godfather. He is a benevolent despot who stops at nothing to gain and hold power. His command post is a fortress on Long Island from which he presides over a vast underground empire that includes the rackets, gambling, bookmaking, and unions. His influence runs through all levels of American society, from the cop on the beat to the nation's mighty.

By Elin Hilderbrand
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian

Entering the afterlife due to a hit and run accident, a successful author learns she can observe the earthly lives of her nearly grown children and is also permitted three "nudges" to alter the outcome of events.

By Andre Dubus III
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk

A man living a solitary existence in seaside New England travels to a quaint Florida community in search of his traumatized, estranged daughter.

By Alex George
Recommended By Donna Burger, Readers' Services Librarian

The Meisenheimer family struggle to find their place among the colorful residents of their new American hometown, including a giant teenage boy, a pretty schoolteacher whose lessons consist of more than just music and a spiteful, bicycle-riding dwarf.

By Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian

In this bighearted story of the lifelong relationships that both wound and heal us, Flora Mancini finds everything she thought she knew about her husband, her marriage and her relationship with her best friend upended when she makes a startling discovery.

By Joyce Maynard
Recommended By Pam Martin, Assistant Library Director

The lives and fortunes of two New Hampshire families, the Planks and the Dickersons, are entwined through the youngest daughters of each family, who were born on the same day in the same hospital.

By Erik Fassnacht
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

An estranged husband and father facing a sudden decline in health attempts to return to his family, but his wife and two sons, once completely dependent on him, have begun to find their way forward without him.

By Sue Miller

Anna Dunlap finds herself caught in a custody battle for her four-year-old daughter Molly.

By Therese Fowler
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian

The single mother of a mixed-race college student and a thriving business owner with a troubled daughter clash over a historic oak tree on their property line and the blossoming romance between their children.

By Joan London

When her parents come to visit their eighteen-year-old daughter, Maya, in Melbourne and discover her missing upon their arrival, a series of strange clues makes her mother aware that Maya is in hiding, forcing her to revisit her own dark past in order to convince her daughter to come home.

By Elinor Lipman
Recommended By Pam Martin, Assistant Library Director

Discarding her late mother's cherished and heavily annotated high school yearbook, Daphne is entangled in a series of absurdities when the yearbook is discovered by a busybody documentary filmmaker.

By Robert Olen Butler
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services

“A collection of stories about Vietnamese immigrants living in Louisiana as they face love, loss, despair, and the challenges and conflicts of a new life (From the Publisher).”

By Sally Hepworth
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian, Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk

Twin sisters who are polar opposites but who are harboring a deep, dark secret about their sociopathic mother must face the consequences of both her actions and their own when one tries to start a family.

By Stewart O'Nan

When her husband is incarcerated for his involvement in a tragic home invasion, Patty Dickerson must raise their newborn child in a community that is sometimes hostile to her, all the while struggling to maintain her dignity.

By Rachel Khong
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian

Struggling with disillusionment after a broken engagement, Ruth moves back home with her parents to discover that her father's erratic memory loss and her mother's eccentricity are manifesting in near-comical ways that help Ruth transform her grief.

By Jennifer Robson
Recommended By Donna Burger, Readers' Services Librarian, Sonia Grgas, Reference Librarian

From the internationally bestselling author of Somewhere in France comes an enthralling historical novel about one of the most famous wedding dresses of the twentieth century—Queen Elizabeth’s wedding gown—and the fascinating women who made it.

By Brenda Janowitz
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

The iconic wedding dress of Grace Kelly inspires three generations of women to forge their own paths, including a Parisian atelier who is hired to sew a look-alike gown before confronting an impossible choice.

By Georgette Heyer

When Lady Ombersley agrees to take in her young niece, no one expects Sophy, who sweeps in and immediately takes the ton by storm. Sophy discovers that her aunt's family is in desperate need of her talent for setting everything right.

By John Steinbeck
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
With Jackie Ranaldo, Head of Readers' Services

Tuesday, June 24, 2014. 1:30 PM.

The landmark novel about the plight of American farmers who were forced off their farms by drought and foreclosure during the 1930's.

Became the movie: The Grapes of Wrath.

By Kristin Hannah
Recommended By Pam Martin, Assistant Library Director, Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian

When her volatile, former POW father impulsively moves the family to mid–1970s Alaska to live off the land, young Leni and her mother are forced to confront the dangers of their lack of preparedness in the wake of a dangerous winter season.

By Rebecca Makkai
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian, Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk

Tuesday, October 22, 2019. 1PM.

A novel set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris follows the director of a Chicago art gallery and a woman looking for her estranged daughter in Paris who both struggle to come to terms with the ways AIDS has affected their lives.

By Pat Conroy
Recommended By John Shea, Library Page

“Eighteen-year-old Ben's attempts to stand up for himself, his mother, and his sister are resisted by his intolerant father, a fighter pilot and inflexible disciplinarian (From the Publisher).”

By Joshilyn Jackson
Recommended By Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk

Three generations of the Slocumb family must deal with a traumatizing family secret after fifteen-year-old Mosey finds a small grave in their backyard.

By Steven Rowley
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian, Donna Burger, Readers' Services Librarian, Sue Ann R., Head of Children's Services

When Patrick, or Gay Uncle Patrick (GUP) for short, takes on the role of primary guardian for his young niece and nephew, he sets “Guncle Rules,” but soon learns that parenting isn’t solved with treats or jokes as his eyes are opened to a new sense of responsibility.

By Dave King

Rendered unable to speak, read, or write after a Vietnam War injury thirty years earlier, Howard Kapostash feels trapped by his disability until his high school sweetheart, recently forced into rehab, asks him to care for her nine–year son.

By Catherine Ryan Hyde

Two strangers—one a lonely boy and the other a Holocaust survivor—develop an unlikely friendship while trying to track down the woman’s missing caretaker.

By Thomas Christopher Greene

Found mentally altered in Central Park, the headmaster of an elite boarding school imparts a story that is shaped by complicated memories, the evolution of a loving relationship and a tragedy he cannot comprehend.

By Nancy Thayer
Recommended By Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk

“After Carley has an affair with her carpenter, her husband ends up dead in a hotel room with her best friend; then her best friend comes begging for help (From the Publisher).”

By Matthew Weiner
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian

Presents the story of a collision course between a dangerous young man and a privileged couple who compete for their daughter's attention.

By Susan Rieger
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian

After the death of family patriarch Rupert Falkes, the five adult Falkes brothers and their grieving mother are thrown into turmoil when an unknown woman sues the estate, claiming that her two sons were fathered by Rupert.

By Ann Napolitano

Awarded a college basketball scholarship away from his childhood home silenced by tragedy, a young man befriends a spirited young woman who welcomes him into her loving, loud, chaotic household.

By Kathryn Stockett
Recommended By Isabel Zinman, Readers' Services Librarian, Megan Kass, Systems Manager

Skeeter returns home to Mississippi from college in 1962 and begins to write stories about the African-American women that are found working in white households, which includes Aibileen, who grieves for the loss of her son while caring for her seventeenth white child, and Minny, Aibileen's sassy friend, the hired cook for a secretive woman who is new to town.

By Francine Rivers
Series Marta's Legacy
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

“The first in an epic two-book saga, this sweeping story explores the complicated relationships between mothers and daughters over several generations… Each woman is forced to confront her faulty but well-meaning desire to help her daughter find her God-given place in the world (From the Publisher).”