By Amanda Eyre Ward
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian

Winning the grand prize in an essay contest, a single mother reunites her estranged adult children on a 10-day cruise while confronting long-buried secrets from their dysfunctional shared past.

By Betty Smith
Recommended By Sue Ann R., Head of Children's Services

“In 1927, in Brooklyn, New York, Carl Brown and Annie McGairy meet and fall in love. Though only eighteen, Annie travels alone halfway across the country to the Midwestern University where Carl is studying law—and there they marry. But their first year together is much more difficult than they anticipated, in a faraway place with little money and few friends. With hardship and poverty weighing heavily upon them, Annie and Carl come to realize that their greatest sources of strength, loyalty and love, will help them make it through (From the Publisher).”

By Amy Tan
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

Encompassing two generations and a rich blend of Chinese and American history, the story of four struggling, strong women also reveals their daughter's memories and feelings.

By Julian Fellowes
Recommended By Brenda Cherry, Reference Librarian

Two families living in 1840s London must guard a secret that originated at the Duchess of Richmond’s legendary ball on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo.

By Jeanne Ray

Julie and Romeo had been born to rival florist families in Boston, but it is love at first sight when they spot each other across a crowded lobby.

By Rosie Thomas

In 1941, newlywed Nerys Watkins accompanies her husband to a missionary posting in the exotic lakeside city of Srinagar.

By Shirley Ann Grau

The relationship of Will Howland with Margaret Carmichael, his black housekeeper and mistress, is exposed when their granddaughter marries a segregationist with political ambitions, in a novel about racism, persecution, and rage.

By James Scott
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services

After her husband and four of her children are brutally murdered in the winter of 1897, midwife Elspeth Howell, along with her surviving son, 12-year-old Caleb, takes on the frozen wilderness to find the men responsible.

By Jael McHenry

Seeking comfort in traditional family culinary practices after the early deaths of her parents, 26-year-old Asperger's patient Ginny struggles with her domineering sister's decision to sell the house, troubling secrets and the ghost of a dead ancestor, in a story complemented by recipes.

By Ann Hood

After the sudden loss of her only child, Mary Baxter joins a knitting circle as a way to fill the empty hours and lonely days. The women welcome her and reveal their own personal stories of loss, love, and hope.

By Anne Tyler

Forty-year-old Celia Grinstead, mother of three almost-grown children, impulsively walks away from her marriage and sets off into the unknown to begin an entirely new life, but suddenly she discovers that she is accumulating fresh responsibilities.

By J. Ryan Stradal

A talented baker running a business out of her nursing home reconnects with her master brewer sister at the same time her pregnant granddaughter launches an IPA brewpub.

By Ted Thompson

Newly retired, with his sons fully grown and graduated from college, Anders Hill leaves his wife of more than forty years, buys a condo, and seeks freedom, but discovers that the world he left behind may be what he was seeking all along (From the Publisher).

By Vanessa Diffenbaugh
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk
With Lisa Jones, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, February 25, 2014. 1:30 PM.

The story of a woman whose gift for flowers helps her change the lives of others even as she struggles to overcome her own past.

By Louise Erdrich

Horrified when he accidentally kills his best friend's 5–year–old–son while hunting, Landreaux Iron gives away his own young son to his friend's family according to ancient tradition, a decision that helps both families reach a tenuous peace that is threatened by a vengeful adversary.

By Liane Moriarty
Recommended By Pam Strudler, Programming & Arts Librarian

Inheriting a home on Scribbly Gum Island from the recently deceased aunt of her former boyfriend, Thomas Gordon, Sophie Honeywell finds her life turned upside down, caught in the middle of upheaval that helps uncover a mystery, bring a family back together, create new friendships, and build true love.

By Walter Mosley

Ptolemy Grey is a 91-year-old man, suffering from dementia and living as a recluse in his Los Angeles apartment. Then Robyn Small, a 17-year-old family friend, appears and helps clean up his apartment and straighten out his life. A Reinvigorated Ptolemy volunteers for an experimental medical program that restores his mind, and he uses his last days—shortened now by the medical experiment—to delve into the mystery of the recent drive-by shooting death of his great-nephew, Reggie.

By John Irving

In a story spanning five decades, a twelve–year–old boy in New Hampshire mistakes the constable's girlfriend for a bear, leading to an unfortunate accident that forces the boy and his father to become fugitives pursued by the constable.

By Elizabeth Berg
Recommended By Pam Martin, Assistant Library Director, Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk

“40th high-school reunion reawakens old insecurities and crushes among former geeks, jocks, wallflowers and beauty queens (Kirkus Reviews).”

By Jean Hanff Korelitz
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian, Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk

When her triplets, who have no strong familial bond and cannot wait to go their separate ways, leave for college, Johanna, faced with being alone for the first time, decides to have a fourth child and wonders what role the “latecomer” will play in her already fractured family.

By Jane Hamilton

“Eccentric, intriguing, almost perversely readable and entertaining. Hamilton never disappoints (Kirkus Reviews)."

By Christopher Bohjalian
Recommended By Betty Petreshock, Reference Librarian

A Vermont state prosecutor, raising his daughter alone after the death of his wife, falls in love with a homeopathic physician. He is faced with a moral and ethical dilemma when Carissa comes under investigation after one of her patients falls into an allergy–induced coma.

By Gayle Forman
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian

A harried working mother, who is so busy that she fails to recognize she’s had a minor heart attack, leaves the family that resents helping her recover and gradually confronts the painful secrets she has been ignoring.

By Douglas Kennedy
Recommended By Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk

“Jane finds herself involved in the search for a young girl in Calgary despite suffering through doomed relationships, the loss of her savings and personal tragedies and setbacks (From the Publisher).”

By Lisa Genova
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services, Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian, Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk
With Lisa Jones, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, August 30, 2011. 1 PM & 7:30 PM.

In the prime of her life, a woman's fate takes a tragic turn when a devastating car accident leaves her crippled with a debilitating brain disorder.

By Belva Plain

Two sisters separated by adoption and a romantic betrayal emigrate to America from Berlin after their parents fall victim to the Nazis.

By Bonnie Garmus

In the early 1960s, chemist and single mother Elizabeth Zott, the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show due to her revolutionary skills in the kitchen, uses this opportunity to dare women to change the status quo.

By George Bishop
Recommended By John Shea, Library Page

"Absorbing and affirming, George Bishop’s magnificent debut brilliantly captures a sense of time and place with a distinct and inviting voice. Letter to My Daughter is a heart wrenching novel of mothers, daughters, and the lessons we all learn when we come of age (From the Publisher)."

By Kaye Gibbons
Series Ellen Foster

A sequel to Ellen Foster finds fifteen-year-old Ellen settling into a permanent home with a new mother, where she manages conflicted feelings through her ritual visits to the county fair, her poetry, and her growing relationship with marriage-oriented Stuart.

By Kristan Higgins
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager

When she became pregnant in high school and her grandmother kicked her out, Emma worked to build a happy life for herself and her daughter, and now after nearly two decades with no contact, her grandmother suddenly calls her with a request.

By M.L. Stedman
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian
With Lisa Jones, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, August 27, 2013. 1:30 PM.

Moving his young bride to an isolated lighthouse home on Australia's Janus Rock where the couple suffers miscarriages and a stillbirth, Tom allows his wife to claim an infant that has washed up on the shore, a decision with devastating consequences.

By Alan Hollinghurst

Moving into the attic room in the Notting Hill home of the wealthy, politically connected Fedden family in 1983, twenty-year-old Nick Guest becomes caught up in the rising fortunes of this glamorous family and finds his own life forever altered by his association during the boom years of the 1980s.

By John Jay Osborn
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian

Months of therapy in a San Francisco marriage counselor's office trace the crises that are threatening a family and the efforts of a therapist working to help them overcome self–imposed obstacles.

By Celeste Ng
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian, Jackie, Head of Readers' Services

Tuesday, November 26, 2019. 1PM.

When a custody battle divides her placid town, straitlaced family woman Elena Richardson finds herself pitted against her enigmatic tenant and becomes obsessed with exposing her past, only to trigger devastating consequences for both families.

By Saralee Rosenberg

Shelby struggles to cope with her family’s drama and crazy antics.

By Heather Gudenkauf

When her life unexpectedly collides with ten-year-old Jenny Briard, a homeless girl struggling to survive on her own, veteran social worker and mother Ellen Moore discovers that one small mistake can have life-altering consequences.

By Brenda Janowitz
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian, Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian

When their late mother's long–lost eleven–carat ring, which looks just like the diamond Richard Burton gifted Liz Taylor, unexpectedly resurfaces decades later, three siblings discover a secret that challenges everything they thought they knew about their parents' epic love.

By Richard Paul Evans
Series Locket
Recommended By Nancy Lowenstein, Library Page

“Working at a rest home after caring for his mother during her terminal illness, Michael accepts the deathbed request of an elderly woman to return her cherished locket given to her by a long-lost love from her old hometown (From the Publisher).” 

Became the movie: The Locket.

By Jodi Picoult

When his father and sister are injured in an accident that has rendered his father comatose, estranged son Edward decides to stop his father's life support so that his organs can be donated, a choice his sister urges him to reconsider.

By Jo Baker

A reimagining of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice from the perspectives of its below-stairs servants captures the romance, intrigue and drama of the Bennett household from the sideline perspective of Sara, an orphaned housemaid.

By Lisa Scottoline
Recommended By Pam Martin, Assistant Library Director

“If you received news that threatened your family, would you ignore it or devote yourself to proving it false …Scottoline's best novel to date will have faithful fans and new readers singing her praises (Library Journal).”

By Louise Shaffer
Recommended By Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk

“Francesca has lost her way, but just might be able to discover who she is meant to be with the help of a very special dog – and a love story from the past (From the Publisher).”

By Susan Gregg Gilmore
Recommended By Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk

“It’s the early 1970s. The town of Ringgold, Georgia, has a population of 1,923, one traffic light, one Dairy Queen, and one Catherine Grace Cline. The daughter of Ringgold’s third-generation Baptist preacher, Catherine Grace is quick-witted, more than a little stubborn, and dying to escape her small-town life… (From the Publisher).”

By Alice Lichtenstein

"On a cold January morning, Susan, a professor of biology, leaves her husband alone for a few minutes and returns to find him gone. Suffering from dementia, no longer able to dress or feed or wash himself without help, Christopher has wandered alone into a frigid landscape with no sense of home or direction. Lost (From the Publisher)."

By Susan Wiggs

Inheriting her mother's San Francisco bookshop in the wake of a tragedy, Natalie bonds with her ailing grandfather and hires a contractor to perform repairs before unexpected discoveries connect her to the community and family secrets.

By Elena Ferrante

A divorced, 47 year old academic’s deeply conflicted feelings about motherhood. A powerful tale of hope and regret.

By Katherine Center

After the sudden loss of her husband, Libby Moran, falling on hard times, gets an unexpected chance to start over when an estranged aunt offers her a job and a place to live on a goat farm where she and her children discover that country life isn't quite what they expected—but is just what they need.

By Sue Miller

For Eva, the divorced and happily remarried mother of three children, and her adolescent middle child, Daisy, the death of Eva's second husband John in a car accident turns their lives upside down.

By Frederick Reiken

A story of teenage life and love in suburban New Jersey chronicles the relationship between Anthony Rubin, a young Jewish teen whose own family is falling apart, and his neighbor, Juliette, the daughter of a reputed Mafioso.

By Mary McGarry Morris
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services

“Morris's plot, with its twists and reversals, feels tragic in its inevitability. And yet, to the reader's amazement, its message is ultimately redemptive and affirming. This may be the saddest story ever to have a happy ending (Washington Post).”