by Kate Grenville (1986)
Lilian Una Singer starts life as the daughter of a prosperous middle-class family. She ends it as a cheerfully eccentric bag-lady living on the streets, quoting Shakespeare for a living. How did she come to take this journey, and why did she make the choices she did? The world presents Lilian with many obstacles, not least the fact that she is a woman. But in spite of everything, she triumphantly makes her life her own, savouring every momen with the reminder that 'everything matter'. Lilian's Story is a wonderful, life-affirming novel from one of our most gifted writers.
Porochista Khakpour
While growing up, Xerxes Adams's major life goal is to completely separate himself from his Iranian parents, neither of whom can offer their son anything he can actually use to make sense of his immigrant identity or help him define himself.
Victoria Patterson
Life is pretty sweet for Even Hyde. Despite his parents' divorce in 2001, he's doing just fine, having chosen to live with his richly successful father in Newport Beach, California. When not spending bonding' time with his partially absent father, he has his run of the house, where he more or less comes and goes as he pleases. Even's older brother Gabe continues to live in Cucamonga with their emotionally unstable mother. Though he feels discarded and left behind, Gabe visits Even and their father on the weekends. Even doesn't seem too worried about Gabe's quick-to-ignite temper or his evolving addiction to skipping school and smoking weed. But then Gabe commits a crime so unbelievably heinous that Even can't forgive his own flesh and blood for it. In his personal recounting for THE LITTLE BROTHER,Even shares the events immediately following his brother and two of his friends savagely gang raping (while videotaping) an unconscious girl. When Gabe somehow ends up losing the video tape (which ends up in Even's hand) it is up to Even to make the life-changing decision: does he do the right thing and turn his own brother in to the police or does family come first?
Kevin Kwan
"[A] novel of a family riven by fortune, an ex-wife driven psychotic with jealousy, a battle royal fought through couture gown sabotage, and the heir to one of Asia's greatest fortunes locked out of his inheritance" -- provided by publisher.
Kristin Hannah
Can a woman ever really know herself if she doesn’t know her mother? From the author of the smash-hit bestseller Firefly Lane and True Colors comes a powerful, heartbreaking novel that illuminates the intricate mother-daughter bond and explores the enduring links between the present and the past. Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise her children and manage the family apple orchard; the other followed a dream and traveled the world to become a famous photojournalist. But when their beloved father falls ill, Meredith and Nina find themselves together again, standing alongside their cold, disapproving mother, Anya, who even now, offers no comfort to her daughters. As children, the only connection between them was the Russian fairy tale Anya sometimes told the girls at night. On his deathbed, their father extracts a promise from the women in his life: the fairy tale will be told one last time—and all the way to the end. Thus begins an unexpected journey into the truth of Anya’s life in war-torn Leningrad, more than five decades ago. Alternating between the past and present, Meredith and Nina will finally hear the singular, harrowing story of their mother’s life, and what they learn is a secret so terrible and terrifying that it will shake the very foundation of their family and change who they believe they are.