Book picks similar to
Orange Horses by Maeve Kelly
short-stories
irish
ireland
short-story-collections
No Safe Secret
Fern Michaels - 2016
Married to Tanner, a top cosmetic dentist, she has a wonderful daughter finishing high school and twin stepsons from Tanner's first marriage. No one in her exclusive neighborhood in Goldenhills, Massachusetts, knows what living with the demanding Tanner is really like. They know even less about the life she left behind in Florida almost two decades ago. Back then, Molly was Maddy Carmichael, living with her twin brother and neglectful mother in a run-down trailer park amid the orange groves of Florida. After the terrible events of her high school prom night—and the act of vengeance that followed—she fled north and reinvented herself. But the veneer of Molly's polished existence is finally cracking. As secrets old and new are revealed, Molly must face painful truths and the choices she made in their wake—and find the strength to become the woman she once hoped to be.
Wait Till You See Me Dance
Deb Olin Unferth - 2017
Her stories are revered by some of the best American writers of our day, but until now there has been no stand-alone collection of her short fiction.Wait Till You See Me Dance consists of several extraordinary longer stories as well as a selection of intoxicating very short stories. In the chilling “The First Full Thought of Her Life,” a shooter gets in position while a young girl climbs a sand dune. In “Voltaire Night,” students compete to tell a story about the worst thing that ever happened to them. In “Stay Where You Are,” two oblivious travelers in Central America are kidnapped by a gunman they assume to be an insurgent—but the gunman has his own problems.An Unferth story lures you in with a voice that seems amiable and lighthearted, but it swerves in sudden and surprising ways that reveal, in terrifying clarity, the rage, despair, and profound mournfulness that have taken up residence at the heart of the American dream. These stories often take place in an exaggerated or heightened reality, a quality that is reminiscent of the work of Donald Barthelme, Lorrie Moore, and George Saunders, but in Unferth’s unforgettable collection she carves out territory that is entirely her own.
Dog-Heart
Diana McCaulay - 2010
Alternating between the perspectives of the woman and the boy, the story engages with issues of race and class, examines the complexities of relationships between people of very different backgrounds, and explores the difficulties faced by individuals seeking to bring about social change through their own actions. The dramatic climax and tragic choices made grow from the gulf of incomprehension between middle-class and poor Jamaicans and provide penetrating insights into the roots of violence in impoverished communities.
Unbreak Me
Michelle Hazen - 2019
Andra Lawler lives isolated at her family’s horse ranch, imprisoned by the memories of an assault in college. When she needs help training her foals, she hires a Haitian-Creole cowboy from New Orleans with a laugh as big as the Montana sky. LJ Delisle can’t stand the idea that Andra might be lonely—or eating frozen TV dinners. He bakes his way into her kitchen with a lemon velvet cake, and offers her cooking lessons that set them on the road to romance. But even their love can’t escape the shadow of what they've been through. Despite their growing friendship and his gentle rapport with the horses, LJ is still an outsider facing small-town suspicions. Before they can work through their issues, LJ is called home by a family emergency. In the centuries-old, raggedly rebuilt streets of New Orleans, he must confront memories of Hurricane Katrina and familiar discrimination. And Andra must decide if she’s brave enough to leave the shelter of the ranch for an uncertain future with LJ.
Tatty
Christine Dwyer Hickey - 2004
This not just an entertaining tale, but also a heartbreaking account of a disturbed childhood that makes for compulsive reading.
The Mourning After
Rochelle B. Weinstein - 2013
Fifteen-year-old Levon Keller survives, though his older brother David, star athlete and golden child, does not. As the fragile family mourns while trying to move on, guilt-ridden Levon finds himself lost between the memory of his brother and the constant attention his younger sister requires with a rare genetic affliction. When the beautiful and unpredictable teenager Lucy Bell moves in next door, Levon finds a trustworthy friend--one capable of providing salvation and true insight. Their friendship leads the reader on a journey that reveals family secrets and painful truths, culminating in an astonishingly suspenseful realization: when it comes to family, nothing is as it seems. Compelling and rife with raw emotion The Mourning After captures the essence of a family in crisis and recovery. It sings with the power of the human spirit.
My Husband's Sin (The Lacey Taylor Story, #1)
Mary T. Bradford - 2014
For the grieving youngest sibling, Lacey, life is about to come crashing down as a deep secret is revealed. The fall-out affects every member and they struggle to regain the happy family unit they once shared. Each of the siblings, take the reader on a journey as they try to come to terms and learn to handle this huge revelation.
We Two Alone: Stories
Jack Wang - 2020
A young laundry boy risks his life, pretending to be a girl to play organized hockey in Canada in the 1920s. A Canadian couple is caught in when Shanghai is succumbs to violence during the Second Sino-Japanese War. A family struggles to buy a home in South Africa in the early years of apartheid. An actor in New York struggles to keep his career alive while yearning to reconcile with his estranged wife.From the vulnerable and disenfranchised to the educated and privileged, the characters in this extraordinary collection embody the diversity of the Chinese diaspora past and present. In these deeply affecting stories, Jack Wang subverts expectations as he captures the hope, pain, and sacrifices of the millions who journey into the unknown to create better lives, and explores the shifting boundaries of morality, the intimacies and failings of love, and the choices circumstances force us to make.
Gifted
H.A. Swain - 2016
Instead, procedures to induce Acquired Savant Abilities (ASAs) are now purchased by the privileged. And Orpheus's father holds the copyright to the ASA procedure.Zimri Robinson, a natural musical prodigy, is a "plebe"--a worker at the enormous warehouse that supplies an on-line marketplace that has supplanted all commerce. Her grueling schedule and her grandmother's illness can't keep her from making music--even if it is illegal.Orpheus and Zimri are not supposed to meet. He is meant for greatness; she is not. But sometimes, rules are meant to be broken. Here is a thriller, love story, and social experiment that readers will find gripping--and terrifying.
Pond
Claire-Louise Bennett - 2015
Broken bowls, belligerent cows, swanky aubergines, trembling moonrises and horrifying sunsets, the physical world depicted in these stories is unsettling yet intimately familiar and soon takes on a life of its own. Captivated by the stellar charms of seclusion but restless with desire, the woman’s relationship with her surroundings becomes boundless and increasingly bewildering. Claire-Louise Bennett’s startlingly original first collection slips effortlessly between worlds and is by turns darkly funny and deeply moving.
She: Fiction
Michelle Latiolais - 2016
She is the narrative of her passage, from her escape on a bus through her quiet, determined progress across the city’s unforgiving terrain. The journey takes her into and around the lives of Angelinos from all walks: a dancer whose hyperactive sense of smell makes her fiance’s presence insufferable; a penniless botanist who earns her keep creating sugar-icing flowers to decorate glamorous wedding cakes she can never afford; a dentist lamenting the abuses done to the teeth of a patient for whom he has cared dutifully. Her odd encounters, set against the backdrop of Los Angeles’s flagrant wealth, cast into relief its eccentricities and the everyday trials faced by its collection of lost souls. Together these stories reflect and refract one another, illuminating a poignant, unflinching portrait of loss and the search for identity in its wake.
Weather or Knot
Tracy Brogan - 2019
So when the Chanel 7 news director sends her on assignment to join a team of adrenaline-loving, tornado-seeking storm chasers, she's beyond thrilled. Live weather segments from the road is just what Allison needs to boost her on-air visibility and land that promotion she's been working toward. There's just one problem. Dylan Parks. Her one-time fiancé and the man she's never quite forgotten.The last time Dylan Parks saw Allie Winters, she'd just returned his engagement ring and twisted his heart like an F5 tornado. Now here she was in the back of his tech-laden SUV looking more beautiful than ever, and expecting to spend the week with him and his team. In the five years since their break-up, Dylan has worked hard at establishing his career - and he's worked even harder at getting over the love of his life. Neither was easy, and her surprise appearance has left him as unstable as a springtime weather system in Kansas.Long days spent chasing ominous clouds give way to nostalgic evenings that stir up long-buried emotions, but can Dylan and Allie leave behind their turbulent history in the hopes that love, like lightning, sometimes strikes twice?***Includes an excerpt of Tracy Brogan's new release THE NEW NORMAL***
Bethlehem
Karen Kelly - 2019
But what she finds is not what she expected: tragedy haunts the hallways, whispering of heartache and a past she never knew existed.Inspired by the true titans of the steel-boom era, Bethlehem is a story of temptation and regret, a story of secrets and the cost of keeping them, a story of forgiveness. It is the story of two complex women—thrown together in the name of family—who, in coming to understand each other, come finally to understand themselves.
An Autumn in Paris
Alix Nichols
No matter how hot his kisses or how genuine his affection, he’s still reeling. He can’t move on.And I can’t risk falling for him. I have a child to raise—a preteen boy who needs his mom to be all there. But as autumn strips the trees of their leaves, falling for Thomas is exactly what I do. Throwing caution to the wind, I dare to hope for a future with him……until the past comes knocking.Can we handle it or will it break us forever?Whether you're a fan of timeless movies like “Sabrina” or prefer steamy contemporary romance novels, “An Autumn in Paris” has something for you to love.Escape to Paris, and let this sweet, fun and sensual tale give you all the feels!
Ellis Island
Kate Kerrigan - 2009
Set in the 1920s, Kerrigan’s novel tells of a young Irish woman who must choose between her new life in New York City and her husband back home in Ireland, brilliantly capturing these two vastly different worlds in the process. Readers of historical fiction, as well as fans of the novels of Frank Delany and other Irish themed works, will adore their time spent on Ellis Island.