Family life fiction Books

Agnes Grey exposes the harsh working conditions of a young governess who's hired by multiple families, including the overly critical Bloomfields and the delusional Murrays. While on assignment, Agnes endures consistent cruelty, forcing her to look inward...

George Babbitt is a forty-six-year-old real estate broker. His job allows him to enjoy many commodities of the middle-class, and offers he and his family a place in an elevated social circle. With three kids, a loving wife, a steady job, and a fair...

For years, Alfred, the eldest son of the Bligh family, has traveled the world like a vagabond. However, since he is a poor communicator, his whereabouts and activities are often left to his family's imagination. One morning, as the Bligh family gather...

Two years after his wife's death, Germain is encouraged to move on and find a new woman and home to accommodate his three growing children. He travels to visit a single woman who is eager to start a new family.Following his daughter's death, Pre Maurice...

In the Year of Jubilee (1894) is a novel by George Gissing. Inspired by his own struggles as a working writer and unhappily married man, Gissing crafts a tale of romance and ambition that measures the dreams of one woman against the realities of an...

The Appleby's are happy couple. Often referring to the other as "father" or "mother", the couple have remained as affectionate and passionate as newlyweds, and both are energetic despite their old age. Though they feel young and full of life, their adult...

A woman stuck in a loveless marriage is torn between her duty and desire to reconcile with a former fianc after an extended absence.The Judgement House tests the importance of one's family, integrity and social status. Jasmine Grenfel is a determined...

Maggie Tulliver is a brilliant woman who finds herself at the center of a love triangle between her childhood crush and a cousin's potential fianc. The controversial romance makes her a town pariah, damaging her most beloved relationships.Maggie adores...

Originally published in 1896, The Murder of Delicia centers a wealthy woman whose husband's infidelity and self-indulgence leads her to an unexpected yet fateful end. The woman is forced to face the harsh and cruel reality of her marriage.Delicia Vaughn...

An exploration of the class struggle in nineteenth century London where a potential inheritance turns family and friends into desperate foes eager to escape their circumstance. A compelling story about greed, deception and the innate need to survive...

Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740) is a novel by English writer and printer Samuel Richardson. Recognized as the first English novel, Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded is an epistolary novel that takes on the themes made popular in conduct literature, a genre...

Spanning over a period of sixty-five years, from the 1840s to 1905, The Rainbow by D.H Lawrence follows three generations of the Brangwen family, mapping the change in their romantic relationships amid the industrialization of Great Britain. Their story...

p>The Real Adventure (1916) is a novel by Henry Kitchell Webster. Written at the height of Webster's career as a popular author of magazine serials, The Real Adventure is a story of romance, ambition, and identity. Exploring the effects of the...

When Gertrude Coppard, a refined young woman, meets Walter Morel, a rough coalminer, at a Christmas party dance, they feel immediately drawn to each other. After a short romance defined by physical attraction, the couple decide to marry. However,...

Thrse Raquin (1867) is a novel by French author mile Zola. Initially serialized in L'Artiste, a popular French literary magazine, Thrse Raquin, Zola's third novel, earned the author widespread fame and critical condemnation for its scandalous content and...

While remodeling his new home, a man and his children move into a country cottage where he must adjust to the new sights and sounds. This is a detailed look at how he manages his disparate children in a foreign environment.A sudden move prompts a man to...

Over the span of a century, the Pontifex family is populated by manipulative and domineering characters attempting to control the fate of the next generation. In The Way of All Flesh, Ernest Pontifex tries to pursue a righteous path but is met with...

Originally published in 1895, a dying man instructs his son to reject their family fortune because of its evil origins and his grandfather's unsavory past. Yet, his son is enamored by the riches and its potential for good. John Calvert was a successful...

A Dateless Bargain (1887) is a novel by Catherine Louis Pirkis. Known for her contribution of Victorian detective fiction, Pirkis wrote over a dozen novels and countless stories throughout her brief career as a professional writer. Among them, A Dateless...

Are Parents People? (1924) is a collection of stories by Alice Duer Miller. Inspired by her work as an activist for women's suffrage, Miller explores themes of independence, agency, and female desire while illuminating the subject of divorce. Her work...

White Resin is an ethereal love story of the almost-impossible reconciliation between the manufactured world and the haunting and feminine nature that envelops it. In this impassioned and wildly imagined story of creation, a girl named Da, is born to...

From the acclaimed author of the internationally bestselling Ava Lee novels, a bold and captivating new novel about a search for lost family and the cost of keeping secrets.As a boy, Jack Anderson was abandoned by his mother in a Glasgow movie theatre...

L'Heureux is a writer of astonishing vision-a master of storytelling and the sentence.A nun crashes her car; an unborn child sings to its mother; a troubled priest is in the market for a London apartment. In The Heart Is a Full-Wild Beast, John L'Heureux...

It takes a guilty bastard to make a justified bitch.When a severed finger shows up on her doorstep in a seedy section of Las Vegas, Helen Taylor does not freak out. She's already crazy, as evidenced by her junk-stuffed house and its ever-growing...

Braverman challenges mythological nuclear family roles in her memorable collection of new stories.A thirteen-year-old girl must choose between her mother in Beverly Hills or her pot-growing father in the Allegheny Mountains. Dr. Bernie Roth and his wife...

In the universally-praised Returning to Earth, Jim Harrison has delivered a masterpiece-a tender, profound, and magnificent novel about life, death, and the possibility of finding redemption in unlikely places. Donald is a middle-aged Chippewa-Finnish...

Chosen by the Chicago Tribune and Publishers Weekly as one of the Best Novels of 2005, Lily King's new novel is a story about an independent woman and her fifteen-year-old son, and the truth she has long concealed from him. Fifteen years ago Vida Avery...

Darcey Steinke's first novel, now back in print, is an unusually assured and lyrical debut. Set on an island resort town off North Carolina, it tells of summer people and islanders, mothers and sons, women and men, love and its dangers. It is the story...

A History of the Future is the third thrilling novel in Kunstler's "World Made By Hand" series, an exploration of family and morality as played out in the small town of Union Grove. Following the catastrophes of the twenty-first century-the pandemics,...

Nathan Ballingrud's Shirley Jackson Award winning debut collection is a shattering and luminous experience not to be missed by those who love to explore the darker parts of the human psyche. Monsters, real and imagined, external and internal, are the...

A finalist for the 36th annual Amazon.ca First Novel Award!Five siblings, all haunted by the death of a brother in their youth. One winter day, when another of them will be taken by cancer.Guddy is struggling to fly across the continent in a snowstorm to...

As tensions simmer in a small country town, three women are going to need more than CWA sausage rolls and can-do community spirit to put things right. From a bestselling Australian author comes a delightful novel full of practical wisdom and dry humour...

Bighearted, gritty, magical and moving, Lola in the Mirror is the irresistible new novel from international bestselling author of Boy Swallows Universe and All Our Shimmering Skies, Trent Dalton. 'Mirror, mirror, on the grass, what's my future? What's...