Fiction about Families

Brothers & Sisters

Julia Alvarez, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents.
Four sisters adjust to a new life when their parents bring them to America from the Dominican Republic.

A. Manette Ansay, Sister.
A woman expecting her first child tries to make peace with her past by finding out what happened to her brother who vanished.

Jeffrey Archer, Sons of Fortune.
Twin boys separated at birth grow up in vastly different circumstances and end up running against each other for governor.

Zsuzsa Bank, The Swimmer.
Abandoned by their mother, two children embark on a vagabond existence with their father.

Philip Beard, Dear Zoe.
A girl writes letters to her younger sister, who was killed by a car on 9/11.

Sally Beauman, The Sisters Mortland.
During one fateful English summer, as three sisters have their portrait painted, secrets and sudden tragedy impact their lives.

Diane Chamberlain, The Bay at Midnight.
A woman learns that the wrong man may have been convicted for her sister’s death long ago and turns to a childhood friend for help finding the truth.

Dan Chaon, You Remind Me of Me.
The lives of two brothers separated when one is given up for adoption intersect years later.

Rita Ciresi, Sometimes I Dream in Italian.
Two Italian-American sisters long to escape their heritage, but find as adults that it is their memories that bind them forever.

Harlan Coben, Gone for Good.
A man learns that his brother—who disappeared years ago after being accused of rape and murder—may still be alive.

Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides.
A man tries to help the psychiatrist treating his suicidal sister by recalling their painful childhood.

Marcy Dermansky, Twins.
Identical twins struggle to balance their unique bond with a desire for individuality.

Kim Edwards, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter.
A doctor delivers his wife’s twins and gives away the one with Down’s Syndrome without her knowledge—a secret that haunts their family.

Louisa Ermelino, The Sisters Mallone.
Italian sisters who grew up in Hell’s Kitchen take matters into their own hands when their younger sibling’s husband goes astray.

Pete Fromm, How This All Started.
A girl who’s given up her dream of becoming a pitcher pins her hopes on coaching her younger brother but he must find his own way.

Julian Gough, Juno and Juliet.
Twin sisters experience university life in Galway and the radiance of newfound love.

Kristin Hannah, Between Sisters.
Two estranged sisters are drawn back together by a surprise wedding announcement and a sudden illness.

Jane Heller, Sis Boom Bah.
Two bickering sisters both vie for an eligible doctor but must call a truce when they become suspects in his murder.

Silas House, The Coal Tattoo.
Two sisters divided by their differences but united by an unbreakable bond join together to protect their land from a coal mining company.

Jack Kerley, The Hundredth Man.
An Alabama cop tracking a serial killer seeks advice from his brother, who is in an asylum for the criminally insane.

Sandra Kring, Carry Me Home.
A brain-damaged boy depends on his older brother, but the tables are turned when his brother goes to fight in World War II and returns shellshocked.

Lorna Landvik, Patty Jane’s House of Curl.
Two sisters who lose their husbands open a beauty salon and overcome hardships.

Mary Lawson, Crow Lake.
A successful zoologist looks back on her childhood in rural Canada and the tragic accident that killed her parents and thrust her older brother into assuming responsibility for the family.

J. Robert Lennon, On the Night Plain.
Two brothers left with the family ranch alternately escape and return and then fall for the same woman.

Goldberry Long, Juniper Tree Burning.
A girl raised by hippies tries to find out about her brother’s final days after learning of his suicide.

Jane McCafferty, One Heart.
Two middle-aged sisters who work together but don’t communicate learn to open up and understand each other.

Monica McInerney, The Alphabet Sisters.
Three sisters who formed a singing group called the Alphabet Sisters as children have drifted apart but are reunited by a determined grandmother.

Mary Alice Monroe, Four Seasons.
Three sisters fulfill the dying wish of a fourth sister by setting out to find the baby one of them gave up as a teenager.

Barbara Neil, A History of Silence.
A British woman becomes a therapist for a stroke victim in Louisiana, but the arrival of her mother and sister brings hidden family secrets to light.

Lee Nichols, Hand-Me-Down.
A youngest sister with an aversion to hand-me-downs falls for her sister’s ex-boyfriend.

Frances Park, When My Sister Was Cleopatra Moon.
A girl realizes that the older sister she idolized has changed and they become estranged until a sudden death reunites them years later.

Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper.
A 13-year-old girl who was conceived as a donor for her sister who has leukemia hires a lawyer when a kidney is required of her.

Letty Pogrebin, Three Daughters.
Driven by a legacy of lies, three sisters try to break their parents’ silence and understand the past.

Elisabeth Robinson, The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters.
A Hollywood producer trying to make a film of Don Quixote learns that her sister has leukemia.

Peter Robinson, Strange Affair. Mystery
DCI Alan Banks responds to an urgent message from his estranged younger brother but by the time he gets to London his brother has vanished.

Russell Rowland, In Open Spaces.
A man who wants to leave the family ranch in Montana to pursue a baseball career is torn when one brother drowns and another may be implicated in his death.

Christina Schwarz, Drowning Ruth.
After World War I, a nurse returns to her northern Wisconsin home and stays on to care for her niece after her sister drowns in mysterious circumstances.

Erica Spindler, Dead Run.
A woman heads to Key West to investigate the disappearance of her sister who left her a phone message about illegal activities and threats.

Karen Stolz, Fanny and Sue.
Identical twins growing up during the Depression share a bond but grow to have different perceptions and dreams.

Brian Strause, Maybe a Miracle.
When a girl lapses into a coma and miracles appear to occur in her presence, her brother observes the changes in his family and hopes for her recovery.

Joanna Trollope, Brother and Sister.
A man and woman who were adopted and raised as brother and sister decide to seek their birth mothers.

Lisa Tucker, The Song Reader.
Two orphaned sisters depend on one’s ability to read people’s feelings through songs until she uncovers a secret that turns the community against her.

Judith Henry Wall, My Mother’s Daughter.
In a small town after World War II, a unmarried woman with an unplanned pregnancy lets her infertile sister raise the baby until an act of betrayal tears them apart.

Amanda Eyre Ward, How to Be Lost.
On the day that three sisters plan to run away from their abusive father, the youngest one disappears, affecting the lives of those who remain.

Jennifer Weiner, In Her Shoes.
When her free-spirited younger sister commits an act of betrayal, a woman cuts ties with her and thinks she can never forgive her.

Stephen White, Critical Conditions.
A psychologist tries to draw out a mute teenager who is suspected of murdering the CEO of an insurance company that denied her sister treatment.

Martha Witt, Broken as Things Are.
A girl has a close bond with her emotionally disturbed brother until she begins making friends of her own.

Mia Yun, Translations of Beauty.
A Korean family moves to the U.S. after one of their twin daughters is scarred in an accident.

Parents & Children

Tom Bailey, The Grace That Keeps This World.
In the Adirondack wilderness, a hunter wants to instill his values in his sons, but they want to exert their independence, leading to rising tensions.

Dean Bakopoulos, Please Don’t Come Back from the Moon.
The men of a working class Detroit suburb disappear one by one, leaving their sons to grow up quickly.

Robert Bausch, Out of Season.
A sheriff in a resort town is reunited with his son, who served time in a juvenile detention facility after the death of his younger brother.

Elizabeth Berg, What We Keep.
Two sisters are reunited with their mother whom they haven’t seen since she drifted away from their family when they were adolescents.

Kevin Brockmeier, The Truth about Celia.
A father tries to cope when his 7-year-old daughter vanishes without a trace while in his care.

Lisa Carey, The Mermaids Singing.
After her mother’s death, a girl is taken by her grandmother to an island off the coast of Ireland, where she meets the father she never knew.

James Carroll, Secret Father.
In 1961, an American boy who is angry with his father crosses into East Berlin with two friends, and when they are detained by the Stasi his father and another boy’s mother come to find them.

Stephen Carter, The Emperor of Ocean Park.
A judge who was rejected for the Supreme Court because of his connection to a suspected criminal dies and leaves a mysterious note and a chess piece for his law professor son.

Maxine Chernoff, A Boy in Winter.
A single mother has an affair with her neighbor, and a tragic accident occurs between their two sons.

Thomas Cook, Red Leaves.
When his son is suspected in the disappearance of a girl he was babysitting, a father stands by him but privately has doubts.

Fran Dorf, Saving Elijah.
A woman makes a Faustian pact with the ghost of a former lover to save her 5-year-old son from a coma.

Pamela Duncan, Moon Women.
A North Carolina woman cares for her elderly mother and her teenage daughter, who comes home pregnant.

Nora Eisenberg, Just the Way You Want Me.
After being accused of un-American activities, a man leaves his family and is reported dead, but his daughter later learns he may still be alive.

Melanie Finn, Away from You.
A woman whose mother took her away from her father when she was 12 returns to her childhood home in Africa after his death and tries to learn more about him.

Janet Fitch, White Oleander.
After her mother poisons a lover, a teenage girl is sent to a series of foster mothers from whom she learns things while her mother tries to control her from prison.

Carol Goodman, The Seduction of Water.
A woman returns to the Catskills hotel where her parents worked to uncover her late mother’s secrets and find the final, unpublished volume of a fantasy trilogy her mother wrote.

Stephen Goodwin, Breaking Her Fall.
After learning that his 14-year-old daughter was involved in sex games with older boys at a party, a father rushes to the scene and becomes involved in a fight with lasting consequences.

Elizabeth Graver, The Honey Thief.
Worried about her 11-year-old daughter’s shoplifting, a woman decides to relocate from New York City to a small town upstate.

Norman Green, Way Past Legal.
An ex-con fleeing from cops, a former partner, and the Russian mob takes his 5-year-old son from foster care and tries to start over.

James Grippando, Found Money.
A man learns that his late father hid $2 million in the attic and sent $200,000 to a woman whose mother died mysteriously.

Denis Hamill, Sins of Two Fathers.
A newspaper columnist’s past holds the key when his son is framed for the firebombing of a mosque.

Joanne Harris, Five Quarters of the Orange.
A woman recalls her childhood in a French village in World War II when she and her siblings befriended a German soldier, leading to a series of events that resulted in their mother being expelled from town.

Judith Hendricks, Isabel’s Daughter.
A foundling obsessed with finding the mother who abandoned her sees a portrait of a woman who bears a striking resemblance to herself.

Elizabeth Hyde, Crazy as Chocolate.
When a woman turns 41, she recalls her childhood with her unbalanced mother who committed suicide at the same age.

Alan Judd, Legacy.
An MI6 trainee learns that his late father may have been a KGB agent and tries to determine the truth.

Nora Kelly, Old Wounds. Mystery
In order to care for her dying mother, a historian returns home and takes a job as a lecturer at a women’s college where a student is murdered.

Chang-rae Lee, Aloft.
A retired man finds escape in flying a plane, but he must return to earth to deal with family problems.

Marie Myung-Ok Lee, Somebody’s Daughter.
A Korean girl adopted by Scandinavian-Americans goes to Seoul to learn about her birth mother.

Kate Long, The Bad Mother’s Handbook.
A woman who gave up her dreams when she had a baby at 16 learns that her now teenaged daughter is pregnant and might have to give up college.

William Lychack, The Wasp Eater.
After his parents split up, a boy tries to reunite them by taking a bus to New York to reclaim his mother’s engagement ring from a pawn shop.

Gil McNeil, The Only Boy for Me.
A single mother with a 6-year-old boy must make a choice when a man asks her to move to be with him.

Jacquelyn Mitchard, Deep End of the Ocean.
A family falls apart when their 3-year-old is kidnapped but further changes are in store when his fate is discovered.

Donna Morrissey, Kit’s Law.
A young girl living with her mentally disabled mother on the coast of Newfoundland fights the townspeople’s efforts to remove her from her home and unravels the mystery of her birth.

Tony Parson, Man and Boy.
When a man has a one night stand, his wife runs off and leaves him to take care of their 4-year-old son.

Allison Pearson, I Don’t Know How She Does It.
A hedge fund manager who is the mother of two children struggles to balance career and family.

Anna Quindlen, One True Thing.
A woman who always sought her father’s approval and dismissed her homemaker mother leaves her fast-track career when her mother is dying and learns the value of her mother’s life.

David Rosenfelt, Open and Shut.
A lawyer’s D.A. father asks him to take on the appeal of a death row inmate he prosecuted, but when his father dies suddenly the lawyer uncovers a secret in his father’s past.

Judith Rossner, Olivia.
A woman whose husband got custody of their daughter makes a new life for herself as a chef in New York but her daughter grows to resent her.

Jamie Saul, The Light of Day.
A single father who raised his son after his wife abandoned them is shocked when his son commits suicide and tries to determine what went wrong.

Amy Scheibe, What Do You Do All Day?
A stay-at-home mom copes with two young children while her husband is away on an extended business trip and ponders her role and identity.

Edward Schwarzschild, Responsible Men.
A shady salesman returns home to Philadelphia for the bar mitzvah of his son, who is coping with his parents’ divorce.

Sandra Scofield, Plain Seeing.
Two photographs help a woman understand the mother she lost and never really knew.

Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle.
A woman who gave birth out of wedlock at age 17 discovers that her now teenaged daughter is having an affair with her math teacher.

Amy Tan, The Bonesetter’s Daughter.
As she loses her memory to Alzheimer’s, a woman writes down the story of her early life in China so that her daughter will know the truth.

Ayelet Waldman, Daughter’s Keeper.
A woman’s carefully planned life is thrown into turmoil when she learns that her daughter is pregnant and has been arrested on drug charges.

Jennifer Weiner, Little Earthquakes.
Three expectant mothers meet at a prenatal yoga class and support each other through the joys and hardships of pregnancy and motherhood.

Husbands & Wives

Monica Ali, Brick Lane.
A woman who is sent from Bangladesh to London for an arranged marriage begins to question whether she has a hand in her own destiny.

Charles Baxter, Saul and Patsy.
A happily married interfaith couple move to a small Michigan town where they cope with parenthood and a tragedy involving one of the husband’s remedial high school students.

Elizabeth Benedict, The Practice of Deceit.
A man begins to realize that his new wife is not what she appears to be and is faced with revelations from her past and startling accusations against him.

Elizabeth Berg, Say When.
A complacent husband is stunned by his wife’s announcement that she wants a divorce and refuses her request that he move out.

Clare Boylan, Beloved Stranger.
After 50 years of marriage, a woman must learn to cope on her own when her husband is diagnosed with a bipolar disorder.

Jeanne Braselton, A False Sense of Well Being.
A Southern woman with a seemingly perfect life and marriage begins to fantasize about the many ways her husband could meet an untimely end.

Elizabeth Buchan, The Good Wife Strikes Back.
A woman who has been the perfect wife to a politician for nearly 20 years becomes restless and makes an impulsive trip to Italy.

Christopher Castellani, Saint of Lost Things.
An Italian woman tries to adjust to marriage and a new life in the United States.

Laura Caldwell, The Year of Living Famously.
A woman marries a struggling actor but when he becomes famous overnight their marriage becomes strained.

Rita Ciresi, Remind Me Again Why I Married You.
A five-year marriage seems to be in a rut.

Harlan Coben, Tell No One.
When a man whose wife was murdered receives an e-mail suggesting she may still be alive, he will stop at nothing to learn the truth.

Evan Connell, Mrs. Bridge & Mr. Bridge.
Two perspectives of a mid-century American marriage, told in one book from the wife’s point of view and in the other from the husband’s.

Kavita Daswani, Village Bride of Beverly Hills.
An Indian woman comes to America for an arranged marriage to a man with bossy parents, but expands her horizons with a job at a celebrity magazine.

Richard Paul Evans, A Perfect Day.
A man writes a bestseller but finds that his new fame is hurting his marriage.

Tim Farrington, Lizzie’s War.
While her husband goes to fight in Vietnam, a woman struggles to raise their four children and learns she is pregnant again.

Joy Fielding, The First Time.
An unfaithful husband leaves his wife but returns home when she is diagnosed with a debilitating illness.

Anne Taylor Fleming, Marriage: A Duet.
Two novellas exploring marriage and infidelity.

Paula Fox, Desperate Characters.
Over the course of a weekend, a Brooklyn couple's seemingly perfect life begins to disintegrate.

Clare Francis, Betrayal.
A man becomes entangled in a web of lies when his mistress is murdered and his wife becomes the prime suspect.

Jane Green, The Other Woman.
A woman tries to deal with a mother-in-law whose interfering ways begin to affect her marriage.

Jennifer Haigh, Mrs. Kimble.
The story of three different women who are seduced into marriage and betrayed by an enigmatic man.

Kerry Hardie, A Winter Marriage.
An often-married woman in need of another husband enters into a pragmatic marriage with an older man in an Irish village but begins to doubt her choice due to noisy neighbors and tragic secrets.

Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip.
A man pushes his wife overboard to prevent her from exposing his profitable pollution scam, but she swims to shore and vows to get even.

Al Hudler, Househusband.
While his wife works in a high-profile career, a man stays home to take care of the house and their 3-year-old daughter.

Angela Huth, Invitation to the Married Life.
A variety of couples are invited to a society ball in Oxford, providing a glimpse into their lives and marriages.

Susan Isaacs, After All These Years.
The day after their 25th anniversary, a man announces he’s leaving his wife and then turns up dead in their kitchen, making her the prime suspect.

Gish Jen, The Love Wife.
A Chinese-American man disappoints his mother by marrying a white woman, so she arranges for a Chinese woman to move in with them.

Cassandra King, The Sunday Wife.
A preacher’s wife who has spent 20 years in the shadow of her charismatic husband begins to come out of her shell when she is befriended by a wealthy woman.

Andrew Klavan, Man and Wife.
A psychiatrist is married to a seemingly perfect wife, but a new patient reveals that she’s hiding dark and dangerous secrets.

Richard Mason, The Drowning People.
When a man murders his wife of 45 years, the reasons lie in their past.

Denise Mina, Deception. Mystery
After his wife is convicted of murdering a serial killer who was her psychiatric patient, a man looks through her notes to find out what really happened.

Audrey Niffenegger, The Time-Traveler’s Wife.
A woman falls in love with a time traveler who is periodically and uncontrollably swept back and forth through time.

Patricia O’Brien, The Candidate’s Wife.
When her husband runs for President, a woman must deal with a grueling campaign and the strain it puts on her marriage.

Tim O’Brien, In the Lake of the Woods.
A politician's career is ruined overnight by revelations of his participation in a massacre during the Vietnam War, while his personal life is undone by the sudden disappearance of his wife.

Stewart O’Nan, The Good Wife.
A pregnant woman’s husband is arrested for murder and imprisoned for 25 years while she remains faithful and struggles to make a living for their child.

Jodi Picoult, Mercy.
A sheriff must deal with the mercy killing of his cousin’s wife by his cousin as well as with problems in his own marriage.

Jeanne Ray, Step Ball Change.
A dance teacher’s peaceful life is disrupted by home repairs, her daughter’s engagement to a wealthy blueblood, and her sister’s impending divorce.

Susan Sloan, Behind Closed Doors.
A woman marries a seemingly perfect man and dreams of a happy life but his increasingly abusive behavior finally drives her to act.

Nina Solomon, Single Wife.
When her husband disappears without a word to her, a woman keeps up the pretense that he’s away on business and learns he’s been keeping secrets.

Nicholas Sparks, The Wedding.
A man who forgets his 30th wedding anniversary makes a plan to revive the romance in his marriage.

Sarah Strohmeyer, The Secret Lives of Fortunate Wives.
Privileged wives in an exclusive Cleveland suburb are surprised when one of the town’s most eligible bachelors brings home a new wife who doesn’t fit in.

Rosie Thomas, Other People’s Marriages.
Five married couples who are set in their ways find their lives and marriages thrown into turmoil with the arrival of a widow to their town.

Joanna Trollope, The Rector’s Wife.
A rector’s wife whose public and private life are rigidly circumscribed causes a scandal by taking a job in a supermarket to pay for her child’s school.

Anne Tyler, The Amateur Marriage.
An impulsive woman and a cautious man make a hasty marriage during World War II but during their 30-year marriage the differences between them become impossible to ignore.

Susan Wiggs, The Ocean Between Us.
A Navy wife wants a career and life of her own, and a secret from her husband’s past causes a further rift between them.

Meg Wolitzer, The Wife.
As her husband is about to claim a top literary prize, a woman decides she’s had enough of their marriage and the compromises she has made.

Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road.
A couple in 1950s suburban Connecticut become disillusioned with their lives.

Extended Families

Paul Auster, The Brooklyn Follies.
A retired insurance salesman looking for a place to die heads to Brooklyn where he finds a long-lost nephew and assorted other characters.

Paul Bailey, Uncle Rudolf.
Before World War II, a Romanian boy is sent to England to live with his uncle—a tenor who gave up serious opera for the more lucrative operettas.

Sebastian Barry, Annie Dunne.
An unmarried Irish woman with nowhere to go is invited to live on her cousin’s farm and a grand-niece and nephew come to stay, but her happiness may be threatened.

Chris Bohjalian, Before You Know Kindness.
An animal rights activist is seriously injured with a hunting rifle, throwing two families into turmoil.

Dorothy Cannell, How to Murder Your Mother-in-Law. Mystery
Annoyed when her mother-in-law moves in, Ellie Haskell finds several like-minded women in her town but things turn dangerous when one mother-in-law is found dead.

Nancy Clark, The Hills at Home.
An elderly lady finds her home invaded by various relatives with a variety of problems who come to visit but show no signs of leaving.

Caroline Cousins, Fiddle Dee Death. Mystery
Three cousins investigate the discovery of a body at a historic plantation in South Carolina.

Justin Cronin, The Summer Guest.
A wealthy businessman dying of cancer makes a final visit to a fishing camp owned by a family whose lives are linked to his.

Sandra Dallas, New Mercies.
A woman comes to Natchez, Mississippi, to settle the estate of an aunt she never knew who was said to have died in a murder-suicide.

Patrick Dennis, Auntie Mame.
An orphaned 10-year-old boy is sent to live with his unconventional, glamorous aunt.

Pat DeVoto, Out of the Night that Covers Me.
A privileged boy is orphaned and sent to live with his impoverished, abusive uncle in 1950s Alabama.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Sister of My Heart.
Two cousins born on the day their fathers died share a special bond but family secrets tear them apart.

Clyde Edgerton, Lunch at the Piccadilly.
A man visits his elderly aunt in a convalescent home where the residents try to retain their dignity and freedom.

Moira Forsyth, Waiting for Lindsay.
A 13-year-old girl’s disappearance from a beach in Scotland affects the lives of her siblings and cousins.

Patricia Gaffney, Flight Lessons.
A girl who idolized her glamorous aunt becomes estranged from her after learning of an act of betrayal but later returns to help her aunt run the family restaurant.

Terry Gamble, Good Family.
After a long absence, a woman returns to her family’s summer home on Lake Michigan where a variety of relatives gather at her dying mother’s bedside.

Graham Greene, Travels with My Aunt.
A retired bank manager is pulled out of his boring life by his wild aunt who takes him on a tour of Europe and introduces him to life.

Laila Halaby, West of the Jordan.
Four cousins in Jordan and America face choices about family, traditions and freedom as they grow to womanhood.

Kent Haruf, Plainsong.
Two elderly bachelor brothers on a Colorado cattle farm agree to take in a pregnant teenager.

Ursula Hegi, Sacred Time.
A boy is resentful when his aunt and cousins have to move in with his family, but then a tragic event occurs that haunts him forever.

Nick Hornby, About a Boy.
A bachelor who doesn’t want to be tied down concocts a scheme to date single mothers but ends up with a boy who views him as a father figure.

Silas House, Clay’s Quilt.
An orphaned boy raised by aunts, uncles, and cousins eventually leaves home to seek a life and family of his own.

Jonathan Hull, The Distance from Normandy.
A man agrees to take in his troubled grandson who has been expelled from high school.

Graham Joyce, The Facts of Life.
In postwar England, the son of an American GI and an unstable woman is raised by his six unconventional aunts.

Stephanie Kallos, Broken for You.
An elderly woman with a mansion full of antiques takes in a young woman in search of her wayward boyfriend.

Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees.
A 14-year-old white girl and her black nanny flee from an encounter with racists and take refuge with a trio of beekeeping sisters who may hold the key to the fate of the girl’s mother.

David King, The Ha-Ha.
A Vietnam vet rendered mute by a head injury forms a bond with a boy left in his care by an ex-girlfriend.

Thomas King, Truth and Bright Water.
Two Native American cousins living on a reservation at the U.S.-Canadian border explore family secrets and a woman’s strange disappearance off a cliff.

Brett Lott, A Song I Knew by Heart.
After her son is killed in a car accident, a woman and her widowed daughter-in-law return to her South Carolina childhood home.

Andrew McGahan, The White Earth.
After his father’s death, an Australian boy is sent to live in his great-uncle’s decrepit mansion on a once-vast sheep ranch.

Roland Merullo, In Revere in Those Days.
When an 11-year-old boy's parents die in an airplane crash, he is saved by the loving presence of his extended Italian-American family.

Sue Miller, The World Below.
A woman cleaning out the family home in Vermont learns about her grandmother’s early life.

Jacquelyn Mitchard, A Theory of Relativity.
A man’s custody battle for his late sister’s toddler against her influential in-laws is complicated by the fact that he and his sister were not blood relatives because they were adopted.

Ann Patchett, The Magician’s Assistant.
After the death of her magician husband, a woman discovers he had a family she never knew about.

Anna Quindlen, Blessings.
An ex-con working as a handyman on an elderly woman’s estate finds an abandoned baby and takes care of it with the help of his employer.

Michael Raleigh, In the Castle of the Flynns.
In 1950s Chicago, a boy whose parents are killed in a car crash is taken in by his extended Irish-American family.

Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping.
Two sisters are raised haphazardly, first by their competent grandmother, then by their bumbling great-aunts, and finally by their eccentric aunt.

Lynne Sharon Schwartz, In the Family Way.
An unusual extended family live in the same apartment building on New York’s Upper West Side.

Joanna Scott, Make Believe.
When a mixed race boy is orphaned he becomes the focus of a struggle between his very different sets of grandparents.

Marisa Silver, No Direction Home.
Converging on a house in California, a mismatched group of individuals who have been abandoned in various ways come together to form bonds of friendship and family.

Mark Spragg, An Unfinished Life.
A woman brings her daughter to live with her father-in-law, who blames her for the death of his son.

William Tapply, Nervous Water. Mystery
Boston lawyer Brady Coyne agrees to help his Uncle Moze—an aging Maine lobsterman—find his missing daughter.

Mako Yoshikawa, Once Removed.
An American girl and a Japanese girl become stepsisters but are separated by divorce and reunited many years later to assess their past and form a bond for the future.

Mary Wesley, The Camomile Lawn.
Five cousins spend the summer together in Cornwall in 1939 and then find their fortunes changing as World War II begins.

Susan Wiggs, Table for Five.
Two people with nothing in common find themselves the guardians of three children whose parents were killed in a car accident.

Marcia Willett, The Children’s Hour.
Two elderly sisters living in the family’s seaside home in Devon are disturbed by the arrival of another sister who unearths buried memories.

Monica Wood, Any Bitter Thing.
After a near-fatal accident, a woman thinks she received a visitation from the uncle who raised her until a tragedy tore them apart.

All in the Family

Trezza Azzopardi, The Hiding Place.
A young girl in Wales and her five sisters watch as their mother goes into a decline and their father gambles away the family’s livelihood.

Julianna Baggott, The Miss America Family.
A former beauty queen and her teenage son try to come to terms with their less-than-perfect family.

Judy Fong Bates, Midnight at the Dragon Café.
A Chinese family seeks a better life with a restaurant in Canada but their relationships are strained.

Elizabeth Berg, The Art of Mending.
A brother and sister who had a happy childhood try to make sense of their sister’s accusation that their mother abused her.

Alice Blanchard, Darkness Peering.
A police chief must question his own son about the murder of a teenage girl.

Bonnie Burnard, A Good House.
In the optimistic days after World War II, the future seems bright for an Ontario veteran and his family, but life doesn't always work out as planned.

Carole Cadwalladr, The Family Tree.
In order to understand herself better, a woman looks back at generations of her family history and ponders the question of nature versus nurture.

Hortense Calisher, Sunday Jews.
A family story about the five children of a Jewish woman and a Catholic man.

Sandra Cisneros, Caramelo.
A multi-generational story of a Mexican-American family whose myriad voices create a dazzling weave of passion, poignancy and the stuff of life.

Paula Cohen, Much Ado about Jessie Kaplan.
A woman tries to cope with planning her daughter’s bat mitzvah and her mother’s declaration that she was Shakespeare’s Dark Lady in a past life.

Justin Cronin, Mary and O’Neil.
A man who lost his parents as a teenager forms a close bond with his sister who has her own tragedies and then falls in love with a fellow teacher.

Nicholas Delbanco, The Vagabonds.
After their mother’s death, three siblings learn they’ve inherited a $2 million trust that alters their lives and relationships.

Stacey D’Erasmo, A Seahorse Year.
The teenage son of a lesbian mother and gay father runs away and is later diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Leif Enger, Peace Like a River.
A father takes his children on a cross-country search for his son, who escaped from prison after being charged with murder.

Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides.
In suburban Michigan in the 1970s, a group of adolescent boys become obsessed with five mysterious, doomed sisters.

Elizabeth Evans, The Blue Hour.
A family moves to a large house in big town, but their finances and their family begin to fall apart.

Nomi Eve, The Family Orchard.
A family leaves Eastern Europe in 1837 and settles in Jerusalem, where each successive generation adds a unique chapter to their rich family history.

Patrick Gale, Rough Music.
Family secrets are revealed on a vacation to Cornwall that mirrors a tragic seaside holiday 30 years before.

William Gay, Provinces of Night.
A teenage boy is left alone when his father goes to hunt down his wife’s lover.

Judy Goldman, The Slow Way Back.
A Southern Jewish woman who married a gentile and moved to the city receives old letters written by her grandmother and reconnects with her faith and roots and discovers family secrets.

Allegra Goodman, The Family Markowitz.
Interlinked stories about the members of three generations of a Jewish-American family.

Judith Guest, Ordinary People.
After eight months in a mental institution for attempted suicide, a teenage boy returns home to an affluent suburb, but his family is not sure how to deal with him.

Beth Gutcheon, Leeway Cottage.
A family with a summer home in Maine undergoes many changes over the years through love and war.

Jennifer Haigh, Baker Towers.
The decade following World War II becomes one of tragedy, excitement, and unexpected change for five siblings from a Pennsylvania mining town.

Jane Hamiltion, Disobedience.
A Chicago teenager who reads his mother’s e-mail learns that she’s having an affair.

Shifra Horn, Four Mothers.
Five generations of Israeli women suffer through political and personal turmoil until their curse is ended with the birth of a boy.

Jim Kokoris, The Rich Part of Life.
When a man wins $190 million by playing his late wife’s numbers in the lottery, family members descend on him and another man claims to be the father of his eldest son.

Jeffrey Lent, In the Fall.
After the Civil War, a Union soldier brings home a new wife — a former slave with a secret that will affect subsequent generations of their family.

Ann-Marie MacDonald, Fall on Your Knees.
Dark secrets and tragedy follow a Nova Scotia family through four generations.

Alistair MacLeod, No Great Mischief.
A Canadian man caring for his dying brother explores his family’s history and their Scottish roots.

Margaret Maron, The Last Lessons of Summer. Mystery
A woman returns to clean out her family home where her grandmother was murdered and her mother committed suicide.

Terry McMillan, A Day Late and a Dollar Short.
When their mother becomes ill, four siblings find it hard to overcome their differences and pull together.

Maile Meloy, Liars and Saints.
Through four generations, members of a Catholic family in California keep secrets that threaten to tear them apart.

Rohinton Mistry, Family Matters.
When man with Parkinson’s becomes bedridden he is moved from his resentful stepdaughter’s large home into his daughter’s small, crowded flat.

Ann Napolitano, Within Arm’s Reach.
At Easter, three generations of an Irish-American family come together, each with their own secrets, hopes and fears.

Julie Otsuka, When the Emperor Was Divine.
Two Japanese-American children and their mother are taken to an internment camp in Utah after their father is arrested on suspicion of conspiracy.

Rosamund Pilcher, The Shell Seekers.
A woman’s children have different ideas about what she should do with a priceless artwork that her father painted.

Jeanne Ray, Eat Cake.
A woman whose family life is in turmoil starts a cake baking business from her own kitchen.

Terry Reed, The Full Cleveland.
A privileged girl in Shaker Heights, Ohio, observes the fortunes and misfortunes of her family.

Frederick Reiken, The Odd Sea.
A boy observes the changes in his family when his older brother walks out the door one day and disappears.

Nancy Reisman, The First Desire.
A Russian-Jewish family in upstate New York begins to unravel after the mother dies and the eldest sister—charged with caring for her siblings—leaves without a word.

April Reynolds, Knee-Deep in Wonder.
A woman estranged from her family returns to Arkansas for her aunt’s funeral and is determined to uncover her family history.

Luis Rodriguez, Music of the Mill.
The story of one family connected to a steel mill through decades of war, racial tension, and transition to a technology-based economy.

Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones.
A 14-year-old girl who is murdered is able to observe and touch the lives of those she left behind.

Dani Shapiro, Family History.
A family is torn apart when their bright daughter begins to show signs of mental illness.

Lalita Tademy, Cane River.
Four generations of strong-willed black women survive slavery and racial injustices, maintain strong family ties, and leave a legacy of faith and accomplishment.

Penny Vincenzi, No Angel.
A woman who marries into a publishing empire leads the business and her family through many challenges and hard times in the early 20th century.

Eleanor Widmer, Up from Orchard Street.
A story of three generations of a Russian-Jewish immigrant family on New York's Lower East Side, from the widowed matriarch to her granddaughter.