Sons and other flammable objects

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Avery Corman

In the beginning they were three. Joanna and Ted Kramer, and four-year-old Billy -- his big brown eyes bright with curiosity and wonder. A perfect family. Then on day the mother abandons them. Divorce. And now they are two. Father and son. Caring and cared for, learning what loving and belonging are all about, until there is a bond between them that nothing can break. Nothing and nobody -- except maybe a mother who, almost two years later, changes her mind and wants her little boy back. This book was made into a movie by the same title.

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Elizabeth Spencer

A collection of nine short stories explores the emotional fault lines that lie just beneath the surface of happy family life.

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Marissa Stapley

"Mae Summers has it all: a loving fiancé, Peter, a job at the flourishing company he owns and a beautiful New York City apartment. But Mae's life shatters when she wakes up one morning to discover Peter gone--leaving only a cryptic note behind him--and the company in shambles, its investments founded on lies. There's only one place for Mae to go: home to Alexandria Bay, the small tourist town in upstate New York where she was raised by her grandparents in the inn they own. And not all is right in Alex Bay, either: Mae finds her grandmother struggling with dementia, separated from Mae's grandfather thanks to a terrible secret she never meant to reveal. She also finds Gabe, her childhood best friend who became the love of her young life--now a handsome if brooding adult, working through a private trauma that still haunts him. A lifetime of secrets stands in the way of Mae and her family's happiness. Home may be where the heart is, but sometimes it takes equal parts love, forgiveness and will to mend that heart" --

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Kate Grenville

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.