I’m interested in characters and stories that reveal the light and darkness inside and between people. For me, the best stories are ones that feature screwed-up characters trying their best to put one step in front of the other, sometimes in a misguided way that costs those most dear to them. This kind of dynamic is most fraught in the family unit. Family members stunt and cultivate each other in unexpected and fascinating ways. So I’m drawn to reading about dysfunctional families, as well as writing about them as I have in my novels, The Promise of Pierson Orchard (2017) and Stone Creek (out in August 2024).
This story takes place in the orderly, progressive suburban town of Shaker Heights. The lives of two families – the “perfect” Richardson family and an enigmatic, artistic mother and her daughter – interweave and are changed forever. The novel explores the layered complexities of power, the conformist’s vs. artist’s life, and motherhood.
"Witty, wise, and tender. It's a marvel." -Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train and A Slow Fire Burning
"To say I love this book is an understatement. It's a deep psychological mystery about the power of motherhood, the intensity of teenage love, and the danger of perfection. It moved me to tears." -Reese Witherspoon
From the bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You and Our Missing Hearts comes a riveting novel that traces the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their…
These twenty-two, well-crafted flash fiction stories illuminate a wide array of family situations and humanity by exploring both mundane and extraordinary moments. This collection manages to be funny, quirky, and poignant, while examining the foibles of family life and relationships with a particular focus on the roles of women and girls.
Twenty-two (very) short stories from Tori Bond create what Kathy Fish calls a "a collection of tightly woven, deliciously wrought stories" that, as Amy L. Clark writes, "allow Bond’s own words to soar like crows, or like chickens, and sometimes, like hope."
Edge of the Known World is a near-future love and adventure story about a brilliant young refugee caught in era when genetic screening tests like 23AndMe make it impossible to hide a secret identity. The novel is distributed by Simon & Schuster. It is a USA Today Bestseller and 2024…
I’ve heard people say that Jonathan Franzen is the master of dysfunctional families. In this novel, a troubled family of five gathers for one last Christmas together. There’s a rift between parents and children (now grown), partly because the parents judge the children in ways that are steeped in tradition and a culture of days gone by and partly because the children dismiss or override their aging parents. I love this book because the characters are deeply flawed, selfish, and absolutely human.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES Bestseller NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER
“A spellbinding novel” (People) from the New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Franzen, the author of Crossroads, The Corrections is a comic, tragic epic of worlds colliding: an old-fashioned world of civic virtue and sexual inhibitions, a new world of home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental health care, and globalized greed.
After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson’s disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the…
In this wildly imaginative and delightfully funny novel that includes a family trip to Antarctica, the main character, Bernadette Fox, is an unconventional mother to say the least. Her marriage is in trouble and she abandons her daughter. And yet, this family loves one another so deeply, they find ways to face their problems that bring them closer together.
A misanthropic matriarch leaves her eccentric family in crisis when she mysteriously disappears in this "whip-smart and divinely funny" novel that inspired the movie starring Cate Blanchett (New York Times).
Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect; and to 15-year-old Bee, she is her best friend and, simply, Mom.
Then Bernadette vanishes. It all began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette's intensifying allergy to Seattle --…
Two women, a century apart, seek to rebuild their lives after leaving their homelands. Arriving in tropical Singapore, they find romance, but also find they haven’t left behind the dangers that caused them to flee.
Haunted by the specter of terrorism after 9/11, Aislinn Givens leaves her New York career…
White Oleander tells the story of Ingrid, a brilliant poet imprisoned for murder, and her daughter, Astrid, who is left to fend for herself in a series of foster homes. The turbulent, difficult mother-daughter relationship in this novel is forever seared into my mind. At its core, this is a novel about finding one's way, no matter what.
White Oleander is a painfully beautiful first novel about a young girl growing up the hard way. It is a powerful story of mothers and daughters, their ambiguous alliances, their selfish love and cruel behaviour, and the search for love and identity.Astrid has been raised by her mother, a beautiful, headstrong poet. Astrid forgives her everything as her world revolves around this beautiful creature until Ingrid murders a former lover and is imprisoned for life. Astrid's fierce determination to survive and be loved makes her an unforgettable figure. 'Liquid poetry' - Oprah Winfrey 'Tangled, complex and extraordinarily moving' - Observer
This story is about a Pennsylvania family threatened by betrayal, financial desperation, old flames, fracking, and ultimately finding forgiveness.
In the novel, Green Energy arrives, offering the impoverished rural community of Minden, Pennsylvania, the dream of making more money from their land by leasing natural gas rights for drilling. But orchardist, Jack Pierson, fears his brother, Wade, who now works for Green Energy, has returned to town after a shame-filled twenty-year absence so desperate to be the hero that he’ll blind their hometown to the potential dangers. Family decisions lead to tragedy and Jack must fight to find a common ground that will save his fractured family, their land, and the way of life they love.
In the bigoted milieu of 1945, six days after the official end of World War II, Bess Myerson, the daughter of poor Russian immigrants living in the Bronx, remarkably rises to become Miss America, the first —and to date only— Jewish woman to do so. At stake is a $5,000…
The Good Woman's Guide to Making Better Choices
By
Liz Foster,
A heart-warming and hilarious novel about the highs and lows of marriage, fraud, and goat’s cheese.
Libby Popovic is a country girl who’s now living a golden life in Bondi with her confident financier husband Ludo, and their two children. When Ludo is jailed for financial fraud, and Libby’s friends…
