Family life fiction / Stories about family

Book SynopsisA rare, funny and poignant novel celebrating the beauty of open adoption and non-traditional families.They look just like any other family... but between the four children there are THREE sets of parents who committed to an open adoption of biological siblings, keeping the children connected after the death of their grandmother.Tabitha the planner of the group, is insistent that everything happens just so. Quiet single mother Ginger resists the forced togetherness, and newest mother Elizabeth is still reeling from going directly from failed fertility treatments into adopting a newborn.But when the three women receive a surprising call from their children's birth mother, announcing she is pregnant again and wants them to help her find an adoptive family for this child too, the delicate bonds they are still struggling to form threaten to collapse. As tensions start to rise on their joint family holiday, the three women reckon with their own feelings about what it means to be a mother and what they owe each other as a family.The New York Times bestselling author of The Weird Sisters returns with a striking and intimate new novel about three very different women facing an impossible question: what makes a family?Real Simple''s Best Books of 2022The Washington Post''s 12 Noteworthy Books for July and AugustEntertainment Weekly's Best New Books of July 2022''[A] full-bodied exploration of family ties, especially those made by choice'' The New York Times Book Review''Brown's experience with adoption brings emotional depth to her chronicle of each woman's anxieties'' The Washington Post''Brown has a sure hand in portraying the adoptive women; their smart, lively dialogue sparks as the characters try to define the boundaries of a family'' Publishers'' Weekly''A prismatic story of family, adoption, and how the people we choose to keep close shape who we are'' Kirkus''Explores what it means to be a family, in all its messy complication'' Christina Baker Kline''Brown brings compassion and insight to exploring the hopes and vulnerability that make us first human, then family'' Isabel Costello''A beautifully written, elegantly assembled exploration of the joys and complications of family, any family, no matter what it looks like'' Laurie Frankel''I adored this story'' Prima''Smart, original, wholly satisfying'' Elinor Lipman

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis‘The writer who saved my life — or my soul.’ Merve Emre, The New Yorker ‘A true living hero of the American avant-garde.’ Jonathan Franzen ‘One of the very few contemporary prose writers who seem to be doing something independent, energetic, heartfelt.’ Lydia Davis A new collection of stories from the ‘godmother of flash fiction’ (The Paris Review). In Williams’ stories, life is newly alive and dangerous; whether she is writing about an affair, a request for money, an afternoon in a garden, or the simple act of carrying a cake from one room to the next, she offers us beautiful and unsettling new ways of seeing everyday life. In perfectly honed sentences, with a sly and occasionally wild wit, Williams shows us how any moment of any day can open onto disappointment, pleasure, and possibility.Trade Review‘[Williams] writes an unmistakable type of story: short, tightly wrought, each sentence a small masterpiece — a three-act play in miniature … With flying narrators and women whose hair drags on the floor as they walk, there’s something of Leonora Carrington’s visions about the stories.’ -- Francesca Peacock * The Spectator *‘As proved by I Hear You’re Rich, Diane Williams’s fiction, long beloved by those in the know, is joyful, unnerving, and linguistically spry.’ -- Leo Robson * The Telegraph *‘Williams explores the pleasures and disappointments of adulthood in this distinctive collection … Williams’ blend of precision and understatement make her insights on her characters’ fears and limitations cut deeply while leaving the stories open to interpretation. This will leave readers aching in all the best ways.’ * Publishers Weekly *‘Miniscule stories from a master of the form … It’s nearly impossible to categorise Williams’ work. She interrogates both the mundane and the metaphysical. In story after story, she upends what readers have grown to expect from traditional narratives — a beginning, middle, and end, to say the least — sometimes leaving us without any of those elements at all. A Williams story might be made up of a fragment of dialogue, a thought, a description, or some combination of these … Mysterious, gemlike, and strange.’ * Kirkus Reviews *‘You can always count on Diane Williams, head literary weirdo and “godmother of flash fiction” for a good time — if you consider having your mind blown to be a good time, which you should. Her latest book has 33 short pieces guaranteed to shift the world around you, if only for a moment.’ * Lit Hub *‘Spry, sly, and spirited, Williams’ very short stories — most are a couple of pages long — are brilliantly unsettling … Williams’ clean sentences are uncluttered, but strangely surprising, and the stories themselves have mysterious depths, a teasing sense of meaning and connection that can never be quite explained or articulated.’ -- Eithne Farry * Daily Mail *‘How much can one writer do with how little? Williams is so intelligent, fearless, and tough, she does extraordinary things within the constraints of her own stringent rules.’ -- Heather Cass White * Times Literary Supplement *‘Every event, thought, image, phrase, and word are given equal opportunity to claim or elude your attention. Turn the pages and see what stands out to you. You might be surprised.’ * Chicago Review of Books *‘The short stories in Williams’ eleventh collection — I Hear You’re Rich— are some of her very best. Alluring and allusive, the 33 beautifully wrought literary miniatures in this volume — the shortest of which is a single sentence of 23 words — are characteristically attuned to what Williams describes as “those exigencies, calamities that underpin everyday life”. Taken together, these distinctive — and sometimes surprisingly comedic — stories confirm Williams is indeed one of the most important US writers working today.’ -- Alexander Howard * The Conversation *‘Williams delights … What a treat! Life is rendered immediate and fresh through her eyes as she takes on the simplest of subjects — affairs, a request for money, the act of carrying a cake — with precision and gusto.’ * RUSSH Magazine *‘Mesmerising.’ * Tertulia *‘These 33 stories, a few as short as a paragraph, pack inordinate complexity into tiny spaces and take unpredictable turns toward unexpected conclusions … From the elusiveness of love to the desire for escape, the themes here are hard to mine in flash fiction. That Williams does so is a tribute to her talent.’ -- Shelf Awareness, starred review‘Like looking into the deep, expressive eyes of a person … struggling against forces that are not always clear to them.’ * The New York Times Book Review *‘Williams’s sentences are syntactically flexible, spasmodic, surprising … Flip to a random page and you’ll likely find at least one question. The world for Williams’s characters is an endlessly baffling place — which might be another way of saying it’s endlessly interesting.’ * Southwest Review *‘It takes a master of the short story form to craft truly incisive slice-of-life fiction, and Diane Williams proves that she’s among the best with her latest collection, I Hear You’re Rich … In each brief story, we see the entirety of the human experience bubbling underneath.’ * West Trade Review *‘You might call Diane Williams’s plots dreamlike — they proceed according to their own mysterious logic, interrupting themselves — but they’re not hazy … [Williams] turn[s] the everyday stuff of realist fiction into props for existential fun houses … I Hear You’re Rich will please fans of Lydia Davis and David Lynch.’ * Vulture *‘Stories that offer glimpses into the mundane and exhilarating beauty of everyday life.’ * The Millions *Praise for The Collected Stories of Diane Williams: ‘Full of funny, libidinal, and invigorating enigmas … Readers who love the arresting phrase, the surprising word, will gravitate to her … It’s perfect to leave on the bedside table, to be consulted before one’s dreamlife begins.’ -- Ange Mlinko * The London Review of Books *Praise for The Collected Stories of Diane Williams: ‘Erudite, elegant, and stubbornly experimental. For any writer, an omnibus collection is a triumph. To see years of Ms Williams’ confounding fictions collected in so hefty a volume is like seeing snowflakes accrue into an avalanche.’ -- Rumaan Alam * The New York Times *Praise for How High? — That High: ‘Williams is a magician of the miniature … Don’t let their diminutive stature fool you: these pieces pack a punch. Brief, elliptical, steeped in longing — or is that lust? — they offer slices of life that rely on interior more than exterior details, which is to say they are small road maps of the soul … All the pieces here … are rigorous in both language and emotion, using nuance and inference to explore the implications, the contradictions, that people rarely share aloud … Williams’ small gems are as dense and beautiful as diamonds, compressed from the carbon of daily life.’ * Kirkus Reviews *Praise for How High? — That High: ‘Williams returns with a collection showcasing her mastery of succinct and suggestive stories … Williams’ prose evokes both strangeness and familiarity as she gets at the core of what it means to live into one’s later years. This is by no means for everyone, but it will surely satisfy fans of well-wrought fiction.’ * Publishers Weekly *Praise for Diane Williams: ‘I would describe Williams as the writer who saved my life — or my soul, if one believes such a thing exists ... [Williams’] stories, many no longer than a page, suggest that what is left unsaid between people remains more powerful than what they have the capacity to articulate. Although Williams studied with Gordon Lish (and before that, with Philip Roth), her minimalism is distinctive for its sublimity and its spirituality, its ability to evoke the laws of a world apart.’ -- Merve Emre * The New Yorker *Praise for Diane Williams: ‘Williams can do more with two sentences than most writers can do with two hundred pages.’ * The New York Review of Books *Praise for Diane Williams: ‘Not a single moment of the prose, here, is what you expect, and even the ordinary is, in the context created by Diane Williams, no longer ordinary: it is fresh, happy, and peculiar — or is it we who are refreshed, happy, and more peculiar than before after reading her?’ -- Lydia DavisPraise for Diane Williams: ‘This book will rewire your brain.’ * NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour *

Read more less

Book SynopsisAfter building a successful group of restaurants, Val Reynolds meets and marries jeweller Hugo Gilard, and forms the Gilrey Corporation. On Hugo’s death, Val finds herself fighting against managers within the corporation who seek to take it over and turn into a more ruthless and profit-driven concern than she and Hugo envisaged. The battle involves Val’s four adult children and their partners, not all of whom are wholly supportive of her. The business jungle and its effect on the people within it is exposed in the ongoing battle for control of the Gilrey Corporation, and its effect on a family at a vulnerable time shows the different characters and aspirations of them all. After describing family matters historically in Howell Grange and over three days of a marriage in The Densham Do, Bruce Harris turns to the business politics and conflicts of the Gilard family in this latest work.

Read more less

Book Synopsis'I absolutely adored this book' - Stephen KingMeet Mrs Planksy, supposed retiree, reckless motorbike rider and exasperated solver of international internet scams.Mrs Plansky's Revenge is bestselling author Spencer Quinn's first novel in a new series since the meteoric launch of Chet and Bernie -- introducing the irresistible and unforgettable Mrs Plansky, in a story perfect for book clubs and commercial fiction readers.Mrs Loretta Plansky, a widow in her seventies, is settling into retirement in Florida while dealing with her 98-year-old father and fielding requests for money from her beloved children and grandchildren. Thankfully, her new hip hasn’t changed her killer tennis game one bit.One night Mrs Plansky is startled awake by a phone call from a voice claiming to be her grandson Will, who needs ten thousand dollars to get out of a jam.By morning, Mrs Plansky has lost everything. Law enforcement announces that her life savings have vanished, and that it’s hopeless to find the scammers behind the heist. First humiliated, then furious, Loretta Plansky refuses to be just another victim.In a courageous bid for justice, Mrs Plansky follows her only clue on a whirlwind adventure to a small village in Romania to get her money and her dignity back — and perhaps find a new lease on life, too.Trade Review'If you like Sue Grafton and Janet Evanovich, hop on this train.''Terrific... Quinn radiates pure comedic genius.''I absolutely adored this book. Really fun but with a few teeth, as well. Mrs. Plansky is a terrific character. The story ticks along like a good watch.' -- Stephen King'Nothing short of masterful.''Mrs Plansky is a wonderfully memorable heroine, full of wit ... Readers will be eager to see what Mrs Plansky gets up to next.' * Publisher's Weekly *

Read more less

Book Synopsis"This is one beautiful book."—Mia CoutoKnown and celebrated in Brazil and abroad for his novel Resistance , Julián Fuks returns to his auto-fictional alter ego Sebastián in a narrative alternating between the writer’s conversations with refugees occupying a building in downtown São Paulo, his father’s sickness, and his wife’s pregnancy. With impeccable prose, the author builds associations that go beyond the obvious, not only between glimpsing a life's beginning and end, but also between the building’s occupation and his wife's pregnancy — showcasing the various forms of occupation while exposing the frailty of life, the risk of solitude and the brutality of not belonging.Trade Review"Fiction to look out for in 2021." —The Observer"...a thoughtful, intimate exploration of how people literally and figuratively occupy their own stories and those of others." —Publishers Weekly"Poignant, thought-provoking and engaging." —The Scotsman"Wholly mesmerising." —Irish Times"Best books of 2021" —The Financial Times"This is one beautiful book."" —Mia Couto"A slender yet striking novel." —Hopscotch Translation"Occupation asks a lot of its readers, but it gives in equal measure; and when you do come up for air, you look around you with a renewed and invigorated sense of the space you occupy in your own life. Superb." —Lunate"A quiet masterpiece." —Asymptote"In Fuks’ prose occupation and resistance walk hand-in-hand." —Full Stop**********Praise for Julián FuksPart of The New York Times' The Decameron Project: New Fiction.International Dublin Literature Prize (Longlist)English PEN (Award)José Saramago Literary Prize (Winner)Jabuti Award for Best Foreign Edition (Winner)Oceanos Prize for Literature in Portuguese (Winner)Jabuti Award for Book of the Year (Winner)Anna Seghers Prize (Winner)"This small book carries a big punch...Fuks is a young writer to watch." —The Guardian"Fuks’s skill lies in his quiet exploration of how exclusion — willed or imposed — shapes experience within families." —New York Times"Fuks’ prose is rythmic and patterned." —The Times Literary Supplement"Eloquent, unsettling and deeply philosophical." —The Financial Times"This elegant, essayistic novel, the first translated into English by this Brazilian writer, is a family drama with the dramatic parts deliberately quieted.... Fuks impressively inhabits the near despair that comes with the fragmentation of family and country." —Kirkus"Fuk’s work, while challenging in form, comes together in a powerful way. This is a thoughtful novel about identity and exile." —Publishers Weekly"Resistance is an urgent and profound novel, a meditation on family, home and dislocation. Fuks focuses on a single family living in Brazil, years after fleeing Argentina. One of the best novels I've read concerning the generation after Brazil's military regime. Fuks' writing is sharp and humane, intimate and lyrical. A stunning work." —Mark Haber, Brazos Bookstore"A brilliant achievement." —Le Monde**********

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisIt is London, 1880, and Lucas Jarmyn struggles to make sense of the death of his beloved youngest daughter; his wife, Aurora, seeks solace in rigid social routines; and his eighteen-year-old daughter Dinah looks for fulfilment in unusual places. Only the housekeeper, the estimable Mrs Logan, seems able to carry on. A train accident in a provincial town on the railway Lucas owns claims the life of a young child and, amid the public outcry, a father journeys to London demanding justice. As he arrives in the city on a frozen January morning he finds a family with a terrible secret tearing their lives apart.Trade ReviewAs the days get colder and darker, nothing warms me more than a period novel. Reminiscent of Kate Summerscale and set in the Victorian era, two men of very different social classes both lose their daughters in tragic accidents. * Red *Maggie Joel's new novel takes us upstairs, downstairs and into the darkest corners of a Victorian household... If you like robust dramas with the occasional dash of dark humour, then you will love this. * Daily Telegraph (Sydney) *A page-turner full of detail and colour. * Saturday Age *A sombre but fascinating tale. * The Australian *

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisWinner of the AWP Prize for the Novel, this debut novel digs deep into the complexities of family history and relationships. When Etta's grandmother dies, she is compelled to travel to Myanmar to explore complicated adolescent memories of her grandmother's family and the violence she witnessed there. Full of rich detail and complex relationships, The Golden Land explores those personal narratives that might lie beneath the surface of historical accounts.Trade Review"A heartfelt exploration of the ties of family, The Golden Land is an engrossing tale told across generations with the explosive history of Myanmar as its backdrop. Elizabeth Shick has written a compelling, emotionally complex novel that explores the difficulties of defining oneself amid the struggle of competing cultures. This is a timely, necessary book." * Sabina Murray, author of The Human Zoo and Valiant Gentlemen *“Elizabeth Shick’s steady, elegant prose transported me to a place I knew little about, and I found myself wanting to learn more about this turbulent period in Myanmar’s history. The Golden Land is both a rich and intimate family portrait as well as a portal leading into another world, relevant and important to where we are in our own country today.” * Mira T. Lee, author of Everything Here is Beautiful *“The Golden Land is a gorgeous and moving novel about one young woman’s journey to Myanmar, where her family’s stay with their relatives, nearly 25 years ago, was cut short by political unrest. The novel immerses us in the Burma of 1988 and the Myanmar of 2011; both places are fraught with great beauty and suffering. Through the main character’s journey, we learn the difference between “adapting and accepting, between carrying on and forgetting” and find hope in the paradox that love is always tangled with disappointment, democracy doesn’t preclude loneliness and suffering, and yet trusting people we love is as natural and inevitable as breathing. This is a remarkable novel, at once informative and deeply felt.” * Kyoko Mori, author of Yarn: Remembering the Way Home *“The Golden Land moves back and forth in time, evoking present-day Myanmar’s indeed golden past when Burma, and capturing its perilous political moment, while also uncovering a Burmese-American family’s interwoven secrets, layer upon layer, one revelation leading to the next with poignant logic and a gathering momentum. Elizabeth Shick tells this story with flawless authority, giving us a rich, ever-beckoning novel that’s historically sure, culturally acute, and, most of all, humanly wise as it asks how much of where we came from do we need to hold close, and how much can’t we shed, however urgently we wish to.” * Douglas Bauer, author of The Beckoning World *“Like the Burmese puppeteer whose marionettes dance within this novel, Elizabeth Shick knows how seeming opposites are actually tied together: jiggle the past, and the future tilts; touch regret, touch loss, and set in motion love or liberation. Balancing the personal with the political, and showing romance side by side with a blood-soaked reality, this engrossing story is about the difficult necessity of revisiting trauma. The Golden Land radiates with cultural empathy, a glow that might light a path toward justice.” * Michael Lowenthal, author of Charity Girl *

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Columbia space shuttle and its contents rain down on the people of Kiser, Texas, in Kathryn Schwille’s imaginative debut novel set six weeks before the invasion of Iraq. What Luck, This Life begins in the aftermath of the space shuttle’s break-up, as the people of Piney Woods watch their pastures swarm with searchers and reporters bluster at their doors. A shop owner defends herself against a sexual predator who is pushed to new boldness after he is disinvited to his family reunion. A closeted father facing a divorce that will leave his gifted boy adrift retrieves an astronaut’s remains. An engineer who dreams of orbiting earth joins a search for debris and instead uncovers an old neighbor’s buried longing. In a chorus of voices spanning places and years, What Luck, This Life explores the Columbia disaster’s surprising fallout for a town beset by the tensions of class, race, and missed opportunity. Evoking Sherwood Anderson’s classic Winesburg, Ohio and Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, the novel’s unforgettable characters struggle with family upheaval and mortality’s grip and a luminous book emerges—filled with heartache, beauty and warmth.Trade Review“A century after the publication of Winesburg, Ohio, Kathryn Schwille has created a similarly unexpected, and unexpectedly moving, portrait of a small town: this one in East Texas, in the wake of a tragedy. Her characters speak from the heart; their troubles and small triumphs speak to all of us.” * Andrea Barrett, author of Ship Fever and Archangel *"Kaleidoscopic and incredibly moving, What Luck, This Life is the story of a hardscrabble town and the people who call it home. This is a book full of heart and wisdom." * Thomas Pierce, author of The Afterlives *What Luck, This Life is an astonishing work of literary talent, surprising at every turn. The novel takes the catastrophe of a space shuttle blowing its fragments across the uninspired landscape of an East Texas town and in the search for remains uncovers a second set of catastrophes and secrets in the lives of the people on the ground. The characters are wild and desperate, but they are also us. For we are all cast out, looking for a return. From the tattered remains of disaster, Schwille creates a glimmering constellation of humanity, a flash of heavenly light. Just thinking about this book makes me feel more alive. * Elaine Neill Orr, author of Swimming Between Worlds *A modern day Winesburg, Ohio. * Kirkus *With this novel, Schwille has given us a landscape of longings, passions, and heartaches so real and deep we can almost walk around in it. The pieces of the Columbia fall on and bring into relief the whole rich array of lives and dramas that exist in Kiser, Texas--every one of them rendered with remarkable feeling. The result is a powerful portrait of Kiser and of the human condition. * Clare Beams, author of We Show What We Have Learned *

Read more less

Book SynopsisA child swipes her mother's ring, snatches her sister's nightgown, and runs outside to play "bride." She soon loses the ring, rips the gown, correctly assumes it's about to rain daggers, and runs away from home to find a better family. What happens next is a summer-long journey in which Grace Townsend rides shotgun in a Plymouth Belvedere, and hunkers in the back of a rattletrap vegetable truck, crawls into a crumbling tunnel, dresses up with a prom queen, and keeps vigil in the bedroom of a molestation victim. There are reasons why Grace remembers the summer of 1956 for the rest of her life. Those are just a few. Through the eyes of a child and the mature woman she becomes, we make the journey with Grace and discover important truths about life, equality, family, and the soul-searching quest for belonging.

Read more less

Book SynopsisA Confederacy of Dunces-esque family story written by one of China's most beloved women writers.

Read more less

Book SynopsisRamiza Shamoun Koya reveals the devastating cost of anti-Muslim sentiment in The Royal Abduls, her debut novel about a secular Indian-America family. Evolutionary biologist Amina Abdul accepts a post-doc in Washington, DC, choosing her career studying hybrid zones over a faltering West Coast romance. Her brother and sister-in-law welcome her to the city, but their marriage is crumbling, and they soon rely on her to keep their son company. Omar, hungry to understand his roots, fakes an Indian accent, invents a royal past, and peppers his aunt with questions about their cultural heritage. When he brings an ornamental knife to school, his expulsion triggers a downward spiral for his family, even as Amina struggles to find her own place in an America now at war with people who look like her. With The Royal Abduls, Koya ignites the canon of post-9/11 literature with a deft portrait of second-generation American identity.Trade Review“Ramiza Shamoun Koya’s The Royal Abduls is filled with wonderfully flawed, yet deeply sympathetic characters who occupy utterly convincing and beautifully drawn narrative and emotional situations. Is independence freedom or isolation? How can we balance our own needs with those of our loved ones? How can we both protect ourselves and connect with others? Koya’s novel reminds us that the answers to these questions are, of course, both deeply personal and deeply political, and in answering them, Koya performs the marvelous alchemy of dropping us into a story world that dismantles and then reassembles our sense of who we are.” —Karen Shepard, author of The Celestials “The Royal Abduls is a novel for our times. It is a novel of struggle and a reminder of the hope that we once felt and that, hopefully, we will feel again soon.” —Carol Zoref, author of Barren Island “Koya has crafted a tender-hearted story with a sharp knife edge. She's cut to the heart of the devastating effects of colonialism and white supremacy on multi-generational American immigrant families.” —Jenny Forrester, author of Narrow River, Wide Sky "After reading Ramiza Shamoun Koya's warm and wise debut novel, you will not soon forget the Abdul family, especially the tenderness between Amina and her young nephew, Omar, as both struggle to find happiness amid family turmoil and hostility towards Muslims in post-9/11 America. Koya imbues each page of The Royal Abduls with lessons of the heart and what it means to save yourself while protecting the ones you love." —Mo Daviau, author of Every Anxious Wave “A beautiful and messy family story set in the tumultuous post 9/11 world of Washington, DC, The Royal Abduls digs deep into the hearts of a small boy and his academic auntie as they struggle to define themselves and stay connected to the ones they love. It’s a story of an immigrant experience of our times, full of hope and tender human wisdom.” —Joanna Rose, author of A Small Crowd of Strangers “The Royal Abduls is a propulsive and absorbing story of the tensions that reside between career and love, personal desires and family expectations. Upping the power of this book, Ramiza Shamoun Koya deftly reveals how these tensions are made more complicated by political, cultural and social forces. Especially unique in this story is the complex and beautifully drawn relationship between the two point of view characters: a childless aunt and her adolescent nephew. We need more stories like this.” —Jackie Shannon Hollis, author of This Particular Happiness: A Childless Love Story

Read more less

Book SynopsisMarrying the wrong man is easier than leaving him. How does a librarian from New Jersey end up in a convenience store on Vancouver Island in the middle of the night, playing Bible Scrabble with a Korean physicist and a drunk priest? She gets married to the wrong man for starters—she didn't know he was 'that kind of Catholic'—and ends up in St. Cloud, Minnesota. She gets a job in a New Age bookstore, wanders toward Buddhism without realizing it, and acquires a dog. Things get complicated after that. Pattianne Anthony is less a thinker than a dreamer, and she finds out the hard way that she doesn't want a husband, much less a baby, and that getting out of a marriage is a lot harder than getting into it, especially when the landscape of the west becomes the voice of reason. A Small Crowd of Strangers, Joanna Rose’s second novel, is part love story, part slightly sideways spiritual journey.Trade Review"A tale of the impossibility of becoming someone that some else wishes you were (that you thought you could be), with an ending that is nothing but joyful." —Whitney Otto, author of How to Make an American Quilt "In A Small Crowd of Strangers, the profoundly talented Joanna Rose creates a generous, compassionate, and vivid world. We drift along with Pattianne Anthony, newly married but barely tethered to her own choices. When the truth about her marriage gains an unexpected and inexorable momentum, it both explodes and saves Pattianne’s life. Piling detail upon shining detail, Rose builds her story of political strife, spiritual awakening and feminist reclamation to a climax that made me laugh and cry and long for more. An important meditation on how our supposed missteps often create as much life as they destroy, Pattianne’s final destination rewards the reader as much as it does the character. —Michelle Ruiz Keil, author of All of Us With Wings “As a fan of Joanna Rose’s groundbreaking novel, Little Miss Strange, I was eager to read the next, A Small Crowd of Strangers. Lucky readers—this novel, too, is buoyant, tender, and it’s so easy to invest in her lively characters and the gorgeously described landscape. At the center of the novel is Pattianne Anthony, a quirky reference librarian who is smart and witty, but who also tends to make major life choices on a whim. One of those is to marry a charming schoolteacher, Michael Bryn, and move from her childhood home in New Jersey to St. Cloud, Minnesota. It’s Pattianne’s discovery of self that most captivates through these pages—her budding realization that she has let life lead her instead of her leading life. As Pattianne ventures out, we witness her profound discoveries about love, family, faith, and the abiding strength of an eclectic community, and in this way Rose’s novel becomes sweetly intimate, a joy to read.” —Debra Gwartney, author of I Am a Stranger Here Myself “Joanna Rose’s A Small Crowd of Strangers is the story of Pattianne Anthony, a young woman who leaves home on a spiritual quest and—by shedding what husband, family, and orthodox Catholicism expect of her—learns to share ‘time and space and silent language with strangers,’ learns to live alone on the edge of ‘a crazy gathering of lost souls.’ Pattianne finds solace in solitude, ultimately realizing that she is ‘seeking wonder.’ She spends quiet, introspective stretches in the Pacific Northwest’s natural world, gaining a Buddhist sensibility suited to her soul. Joanna Rose’s beautifully lyric novel is a gift: the work of a true story-teller. Her quiet, careful wonderment nourishes our souls.” —Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita “If you’ve ever longed for the truth, but were afraid to face the reality of it, or made bad decisions for the right reasons, you’ll love this fascinating cast of characters and the honesty, complexity and beauty of this captivating story.” —Anna Quinn, author of The Night Child "Beneath the tranquil developments of Joanna Rose’s coming-of-adulthood novel A Small Crowd of Strangers lie dire possibilities, but also the hope of meeting one’s authentic self." —Michelle Anne Schingler, Foreword Reviews PRAISE FOR JOANNA ROSE'S DEBUT NOVEL, LITTLE MISS STRANGE (Algonquin) “An extraordinarily powerful first novel . . . Sarajean is impossible to forget.” —Kirkus Reviews “Packed with colorful details reminiscent of the dream the era of ‘free love’ left behind.” —Redbook “A wondrous, uncanny book, like few others you will read . . . So assured and accomplished that it seems the work of a seasoned novelist at the peak of her talent.” —The Oregonian “The closest thing to a perfect book that I have read in years.” —The Bellingham Herald

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisA very unusual family saga written with unusual intelligence and compassion. Erica Witsell has a gift for depicting complex relationships. - Phyllis Rose, author of Parallel Lives, The Year of Reading Proust, and The Shelf Every summer, Jessie and Emma leave their suburban home in the Central Valley and fly north to Baymont. Nestled among Mendocino's golden hills, with ponies to love and endless acres to explore, Baymont should be a child's paradise. But Baymont belongs to Laurel, the girls' birth mother, whose heedless parenting and tainted judgement cast a long shadow over the sisters' summers---and their lives. Caught in a web of allegiances, the girls learn again and again that every loyalty has its price, and that even forgiveness can take unexpected turns. Luminous and poignant, Give is the story of one family's troubled quest to redeem the mistakes of the past and a stirring testament to the bonds of sisterhood. This is a gripping narrative about family, identity, and loyalty . . . Beautifully written! - Kate Rademacher, author of Following the Red Bird At times subtle and at times cutting to the quick Give digs deep into the heart and soul of a family as connected as it is torn apart. Give pulls no punches, delivering an honest look into the lengths we will go for family. - Amy Willoughby-Burle, author of The Lemonade YearTrade Review"I met Erica at a conference and after hearing her speak, I couldn't wait to read her bookI was not disappointed. Jessie and Emma are the product of a broken marriage between Len and Laurel." Andrea, reviewer at Fountain Bookstore, Richmond, VA"Erica is a superb story teller, and her book deserves to be read by as many book lovers as possible." Jon Mayes, book blogger, https://advancereadingcopy-jon.blogspot.com/2019/05/erica-witsells-give.html"In its earnest, unrestrained exploration of sisterhood, Give is a groundbreaking approach to the timeless themes of loss, love, and loyalty." Wesleyan University NewsletterA very unusual family saga written with unusual intelligence and compassion. Erica Witsell has a gift for depicting complex relationships. -- Phyllis Rose, author of Parallel Lives, The Year of Reading Proust, and The ShelfThis is a gripping narrative about family, identity, and loyalty... Beautifully written! -- Kate Rademacher, author of Following the Red BirdAt times subtle and at times cutting to the quick Give digs deep into the heart and soul of a family as connected as it is torn apart. Give pulls no punches, delivering an honest look into the lengths we will go for family. -- Amy Willoughby-Burle, author of The Lemonade Year

Read more less

Book Synopsis"It’s not romantic," Torrey says. "It’s physics. For every letter there is an equal and opposite, you know…letter." Sheila’s life is built of little thievings. Adrift in her mid-thirties, she sleeps in fragments, ditches her temp jobs, eavesdrops on her neighbor’s Skype calls, and keeps a stolen letter in her nightstand, penned by a UPS driver she barely knows. Her mother is stifling and her father is a bad memory. Her only friends are her mysterious, slovenly neighbor Vinnie and his daughter Torrey, a quirky twelve-year-old coping with a recent tragedy. When her grandmother Rosamond dies, Sheila inherits a box of secret love letters from Harold C. Carr—a man who is not her grandfather. In spite of herself, Sheila gets caught up in the legacy of the affair, piecing together her grandmother’s past and forging bonds with Torrey and Vinnie as intense and fragile as the crumbling pages in Rosamond’s shoebox. As they get closer to unraveling the truth, Sheila grows almost as obsessed with the letters as the man who wrote them. Somewhere, there’s an answering stack of letters—written in Rosamond’s hand—and Sheila can’t stop until she uncovers the rest of the story. Threaded with wry humor and the ache of love lost or left behind, How to Set Yourself on Fire establishes Julia Dixon Evans as a rising talent in the vein of Shirley Jackson and Lindsay Hunter.Trade Review"Offbeat and winning...the story of a surprisingly touching friendship between a 35-year-old woman and her 12-year-old neighbor. Torrey, who becomes obsessed with the letters and also becomes something of a fairy godmother to Sheila, urges her to find Harold, pushing Sheila to her eventual, reluctant transformation. It’s impossible not to be charmed by Torrey and Sheila’s relationship." --Publishers Weekly "Evans gets inside every nook and cranny of Sheila’s head, and it’s hard to look away from, like driving by a train wreck. Socially awkward to the core, Shelia and her fellow characters are emotionally detached from each other but not from readers, who will be fully drawn into Evans’ world and eventually rooting for Sheila, too. With its touch of mystery, this refreshingly realistic and quirky novel is hard to put down." --Booklist "A page turner. Gripping in its terseness ... How to Set Yourself on Fire pulls the reader along, white-knuckled and wide-eyed. ... The emotion is inexorable while the humor is palpable and the story is skillfully acute. How to Set Yourself on Fire could almost be a “beach-read” if it were more acceptable to cry on the beach." --Popscure "This honest first-person narrator is just the woman without a filter that I want to listen to: She’s honest, funny, and shares all of the emotions that some readers might not feel brave enough to confront...How to Set Yourself on Fire deserves every one of its five stars—and maybe more." --Independent Book Review "The friendship that develops between Torrey and Sheila gives the book its real heart. Torrey matches Sheila's extreme immaturity with her own wisdom, and their bond feels unexpected and fresh." --Kirkus Reviews "A brooding tale of memory, emotional malaise, grief, and voyeurism...Here, even the most isolated individuals find meaningful connections." --Foreword Reviews "The atmosphere taut with tension, secrets and lies, How to Set Yourself on Fire exudes the quiet menace of an explosion waiting to happen...the start of a literary career that will be nothing short of incendiary." --Vol. 1 Brooklyn "How to Set Yourself on Fire is a family mystery that slowly reveals itself, illuminating a poignant emptiness in its lovable but complicated main character. Sheila is funny, depressed, searching, and unpredictable. Her story will move you long after its lovely final scene." --Lindsay Hunter, author of Eat only When You're Hungry "This book had me glued. I came for the intrigue buried in the treasure hunt of letters, but I stayed for the unlikely friendship of thirty-five-year-old Sheila and twelve-year-old Torrey. I would read a whole series of these two having adventures together, but I'll have to relish this singularly heartbreaking and hilarious story of lost and found love, in all its guises. " --Jac Jemc, author of The Grip of It "This book features my favorite type of protagonist: the creepy, socially awkward woman who you can't help but fall in love with. It's also the best kind of reading experience: a book that is funny and difficult to put down, and builds to something that is disarmingly touching." --Juliet Escoria, author of Witch Hunt

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisA multicultural saga, This Fierce Blood follows three generations of women in the Sylte family. In rural late-nineteenth-century New England, Wilhelmina Sylte is a settler starting a family with her Norwegian immigrant husband. When she forms an inexplicable connection with a mountain lion and her cubs living near their farm, Mina grapples with divided loyalties and the mysterious bond she shares with the animals. In 1927 in southern Colorado, Josepa is accused of witchcraft by a local priest for using the healing practices passed down from her Native mother. Fighting for her family’s reputation and way of life, Sepa finds strength in worldly and otherworldly sources. When Magdalena, an ecologist, inherits her great-grandmother Wilhelmina’s Vermont property, she and her astrophysicist husband decide to turn the old farm into a summer science camp for teens. As Magda struggles with both personal and professional responsibilities, the boundary between science and myth begins to blur. Rich in historical and cultural detail, This Fierce Blood combines magical realism with themes of maternal ancestral inheritance, and also explores the ways Hispano/Indigenous traditions both conflicted and wove together, shaping the distinctive character of the American Southwest. Readers of Téa Obreht and Ruth Ozeki will find much to admire in this debut novel.Trade Review"Malia Márquez’s intense multigenerational novel incorporates magical realism into its story of three women struggling with family and social expectations. . . . Attentive to the pressures facing women across historical eras, the lush novel This Fierce Blood shows the power of strong women staying true to themselves." * Foreword Reviews *“Passion, faith, identity, trauma, love, and loyalty. . . through the interwoven stories of three women spanning generations, Malia Márquez dramatizes these urgent-as-ever themes. Taken individually, the stories of Wilhelmina, Josepa, and Magdalena are equally gripping. But like voices in a chorus, united in the sublime oratorio that is This Fierce Blood, their tales strike chords, harmonies, and syncopations greater than the sum of their distinct parts. Márquez has written a singular and passionate first novel.” * Peter Selgin, author of 'The Inventors' and 'Duplicity' *“This Fierce Blood traverses time, culture, and distance with gorgeous, sure-footed prose and a compelling cast of characters. By showing us all that separates these generations of Sylte women, Márquez deftly guides us toward what binds them. A wholehearted debut with a whisper of magic and deep, twisting roots in the natural world, this novel announces the arrival of a very special writer.” * Lily Brooks-Dalton, author of 'Good Morning, Midnight' *“This Fierce Blood is a wonder of a novel—at once epic and intimate, all of it deeply alive. Malia Márquez writes with compassion and precision, writes, to borrow words from these pages, ‘Like a song. Or a spell.’ I’m grateful to have been pulled into the magic of this book, grateful for my time with its generations of unforgettable, wild-hearted women.” * Gayle Brandeis, author of 'Many Restless Concerns' and 'The Book of Dead Birds' *“This Fierce Blood is a gorgeous and ecologically tender generational odyssey. The rebellious, loving, and brilliant Sylte women at the heart of this magical debut novel offer us a vision of what is possible when we consider both the power of our familial bonds and a natural world beyond the human. Malia Márquez has given us a spellbinding novel that remembers and fiercely reclaims our shared histories.” * Michael Zapata, author of 'The Lost Book of Adana Moreau' *"This Fierce Blood is compelling and beautiful. It is a multigenerational saga that captures the beauty, difficulty, and importance of merging and growing cultures. It clashes and it mends relationships across generations and cultures in a thoughtful and lovely way. It’s absolutely stunning." * Bookish Brews *

Read more less

Book SynopsisAll the Tiny Beauties follows five characters in California as their lives intertwine.All the Tiny Beauties begins with a kitchen fire that sends the reclusive Webster Jackson to the home of his new neighbor, Colleen, who discovers him on her doorstep wearing a lacy peignoir, his house in flames. Unwilling to take responsibility for the lonely eccentric, Colleen reaches out to Webb’s estranged daughter, Debra. She also helps him find a live-in companion, a young adult reeling from the loss of her childhood friend. Moving among perspectives and generations, we see the longings and vulnerabilities that drive and impede these characters as their stories intertwine—Webb’s first love clashing with his last; Colleen embarking on a secret affair with Debra; the older Webb and his young housemate, Hannah, forming a bond over tragedy, guilt, and his passion for baking. Confronting the many ways they’ve failed others as well as themselves, Webb, Colleen, Hannah, and Debra slowly find ways forward and ways out. While exploring the fragile nature of our connections to one another, All the Tiny Beauties asks larger questions about the constraints society imposes that warp and wound, leading us to deny those things that make us wholly ourselves.Trade Review“All the Tiny Beauties is a careful, beautiful literary novel that ponders the contents of happiness and the purpose with which people lead their lives. By questioning what it means to conform to gender and social roles, it makes a deep investment in the multiplicity of identities.” * Foreword Reviews *“The best books are the ones that fill holes—in our lives, in our hearts, in our bookshelves—we didn't even know we had until the books showed up to fill them. Jenn Scott's All the Tiny Beauties is one of those books. It is a time-traveling, mind-bending wonder, a novel about Oakland now and then, about the fluidity of gender, of family, of place. It reminds me of Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad in its wicked sense of humor; its intelligence; its patience; its careful, fond study of how love can drift into hate and then, if we're lucky, back into love again. A wonderful first novel by one of our most talented up-and-coming writers.” * Brock Clarke, author of 'Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe?' *"All the Tiny Beauties is a wonder, an arrow-to-the-heart kind of a novel. At once compact and expansive, this book is part family reckoning, part love story, part grappling with notions of gender that both complete and confine us. Like Jenny Offill in Department of Speculation, Scott is a master at balancing the melancholic longing of her characters with moments of bristling hilarity and joy. All the Tiny Beauties is a wise and urgent novel that rewards you on every page." * Sarah Domet, author of 'The Guineveres' *

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less