What You Have Left

Ask Again, Yes

Mary Beth Keane · 388 pages

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Karen Joy Fowler · 336 pages

Meet the Cooke family: Mother and Dad, brother Lowell, sister Fern, and Rosemary, who begins her story in the middle. She has her reasons. "I was raised with a chimpanzee," she explains. "I tell you Fern is a chimp and, already, you aren't thinking of her as my sister. . . . Until Fern's expulsion . . . she was my twin, my fun-house mirror, my whirlwind other half. . . . I loved her as a sister."

The Patron Saint of Liars

Ann Patchett · 352 pages

Listen

Kate Veitch · 365 pages

One steamy Christmas Eve in the Australian suburbs, a mother walks out on her young children forever. Forty years on the four adults are experts at concealing their pain. But the past is about to reach into the present and long buried memories are rising to the surface again.

Y

Marjorie Celona · 350 pages

Why would a mother give up her daughter? Can abandonment ever be an act of love? And could you ever forgive her? 'My life begins at the Y ... ' Abandoned as a newborn at the doors of the local YMCA and then bounced between foster homes, Shannon eventually finds stability in the home of Miranda, a single mother with a daughter of her own. But as Shannon grows, so do her questions. Will she ever bel

The Joy Luck Club

Amy Tan · 332 pages

Four mothers, four daughters, four families, whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's telling the stories. In 1949, four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, meet weekly to play mahjong and tell stories of what they left behind in China. United in loss and new hope for their daughters' futures, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Their daughters, who have neve

That Summer

Sarah Dessen · 198 pages

During the summer of her divorced father's remarriage and her sister's wedding, fifteen-year-old Haven comes into her own by letting go of the myths of the past.

Last Night in Twisted River

John Irving

In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, an anxious twelve-year-old boy mistakes the local constable's girlfriend for a bear. Both the twelve-year-old and his father become fugitives, forced to run from Coos County--to Boston, to southern Vermont, to Toronto--pursued by the implacable constable. Their lone protector is a fiercely libertarian logger,

Bone

Fae Myenne Ng · 208 pages

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Rebecca Wells · 383 pages

The antics of a group of women in a small town where they were expected to raise babies, not Cain. The story is recounted by a mother to a daughter, the daughter thinking she is so much better because she got out of that town and is now a theater producer. The moral: mothers too were once rebels.

Kafka on the Shore

Haruki Murakami · 508 pages

The unlikely alliance between Kafka Tamura, a fifteen-year-old runaway, and the aging Nakata, a man who has never recovered from a wartime affliction, brings dramatic changes to both characters as they embark on a surreal odyssey through a strange, sometimes violent, sometimes fantastical world.

The Silver Star

Jeannette Walls · 304 pages

Two motherless sisters--Bean and Liz--are shuttled to Virginia, where their Uncle Tinsley lives in the decaying mansion that's been in their family for generations. When school starts in the fall, Bean easily adjusts and makes friends, and Liz becomes increasingly withdrawn. Then something happens to Liz and Bean is left to challenge the injustice of the adult world.

And the Mountains Echoed

Khaled Hosseini · 446 pages

Presents a story inspired by human love, how people take care of one another, and how choices resonate through subsequent generations. Afghanistan, 1952. Abdullah and his sister Pari live with their father and step-mother in the small village of Shadbagh. Their father, Saboor, is constantly in search of work and they struggle together through poverty and brutal winters. To Adbullah, Pari, as beaut

Kendra

Coe Booth · 292 pages

The acclaimed author of TYRELL returns to PUSH with a striking novel about a mother and daughter who are only fourteen years apart, but need to learn to understand each other before it's too late. Kendra's mom, Renee, had her when she was only 14 years old. Renee and her mom made a deal -- Renee could get an education, and Kendra would live with her grandmother. But now Renee's out of grad scho

Ghana Must Go

Taiye Selasi · 318 pages

"Kweku Sai is dead. A renowned surgeon and failed husband, he succumbs suddenly at dawn outside his home in suburban Accra. The news of Kweku's death sends a ripple around the world, bringing together the family he abandoned years before"--Dust jacket flap.

Dicey's Song

Cynthia Voigt · 256 pages

When Momma abandoned Dicey Tillerman and her three siblings in a mall parking lot and was later traced to an asylum where she lay unrecognizing, unknowing, she left her four children no choice but to get on by themselves. They set off alone on foot over hundreds of miles until they finally found someone to take them in. Grams rundown farm isnt perfect, but they can stay together as a family which

The Prince of Tides

Pat Conroy · 668 pages

PAT CONROY has created a huge, brash thunderstorm of a novel, stinging with honesty and resounding with drama. Spanning forty years, this is the story of turbulent Tom Wingo, his gifted and troubled twin sister Savannah, and their struggle to triumph over the dark and tragic legacy of the extraordinary family into which they were born. Filled with the vanishing beauty of the South Carolina low

Pedro Páramo

Juan Rulfo · 123 pages

Dentro de su brevedad -determinada por el rigor y la concentración expresiva-, *Pedro Páramo* sintetiza la mayor parte de los temas que han interesado -y afligido- siempre a los mexicanos: ese misterio nacional que el talento de Juan Rulfo ha sabido condensar por medio rural del sur de Jalisco -de Comala en particular, región inscrita ya en la mitología literia universal-; sus personajes muertos q

Clear Light of Day

Anita Desai · 183 pages

Set in India's Old Delhi, CLEAR LIGHT OF DAY is Anita Desai's tender, warm, and compassionate novel about family scars, the ability to forgive and forget, and the trials and tribulations of familial love. At the novel's heart are the moving relationships between the members of the Das family, who have grown apart from each other. Bimla is a dissatisfied but ambitious teacher at a women's college w

Fade to Blue

Sean Beaudoin · 224 pages

Sophie Blue started wearing a black skirt and Midnight Noir lipstick on her last birthday. It was also the day her father disappeared. Or spontaneously combusted. Which is sort of bad timing, since a Popsicle truck with tinted windows has started circling the house. Kenny Fade is a basketball god. His sneakers cost more than his Jeep. He's the guy all the ladies (and their mommas) want. Bad. Sophi

The History of Us

Leah Stewart · 367 pages

Two decades after the tragic accident that killed their father, Theodora, Josh, and Claire return to their childhood home to confront painful realities about their incapable mother and the devoted aunt who raised them.

I, Emma Freke

Elizabeth Atkinson · 240 pages

Growing up near Boston with her free-spirited mother and old-world grandfather, twelve-year-old Emma has always felt out of place but when she attends the family reunion her father's family holds annually in Wisconsin, she is in for some surprises.

Nineteen Minutes

Jodi Picoult · 586 pages

The startling and poignant story of the aftermath of a tragic high school shooting, from the bestselling author of My Sister's Keeper and The Pact.'Picoult makes us ponder the ambiguous relationships between love and lying, legality and morality; the strange ways repressed memories leak into the present.' Los Angeles TimesIntricately textured and rich with psychological and social insight, Jodi Pi

Everything Sad Is Untrue

Daniel Nayeri · 356 pages