After being shot down over the desert and imprisoned by the enemy, the world of privilege to which he belongs seems shallow. But in the shadow of his older brother’s death, the full weight of his father’s expectations falls on Chip. Pop Mackinnon—whose money is new but just as good as anyone else’s—has designs on the upper echelons of society. The polo ponies and expensive education he bought for his son weren’t gifts; they were an investment in the family’s future. Now it’s time for Chip to pay him back by marrying a girl who can finally bring the Mackinnons into society’s inner circle.A shrewd and cunning man, Pop is used to getting his way—until the arrival of Jean Cooper, that is. This Midwestern beauty awakens Chip’s passions, and the two embark on an affair that threatens to destroy Pop’s social-climbing plans. A battle of wills between father and son ensues, one that tests the boundaries of their relationship and strays into the place where love turns irrevocably to hate.Originally published in 1982 to wide acclaim, The Good Son remains Craig Nova’s undisputed masterpiece. This classic of contemporary American literature artfully explores the complicated web of emotions that exists between fathers and sons—ambition, jealousy, loyalty, love—in a tale that compels with its simple, searing honesty.Also Available as an eBook.

    It’s firmly rooted in familial embarrassment (the Kellys’ house is “decorated like the inside of somebody’s hut in Guatemala”), reinforced by an abiding love of Dee Dee Ramone and other (lesser) gods of the rock pantheon, and cemented by the secret of a remarkable religious epiphany Francis experiences at the age of twelve.Clare and Francis become happy adults with rewarding careers and loving spouses. But when tragedy strikes, Francis finds his faith shattered and his life horribly transformed, and Clare doesn’t know how to help the brother she loves but has never fully understood.Nearly flattened by sadness, Francis turns to the angry, propulsive music that sustained him through adolescence and finds that you’re never too old to be punk rock. With the help of a bass guitar and the support of Clare and some unlikely new friends, Francis gradually finds his way back from the depths of despair to a life that feels worth living.Told in Clare’s wry, compassionate voice, Long Way Back is an original, moving novel about grief, guitars, and grace. It shows that the Velvet Underground didn’t lie: Your life really can be saved by rock and roll.From the Hardcover edition.

    Bess Hardemon, a tough and canny young teacher living in the mid-nineteenth century, is determined to make a difference at her new school, Priors Heath. Under the austere gaze of the Reverend Carnegie and his deputy, Miss Simms, the young girls remain underfed and unstimulated -- until the arrival of the bright, motivated young Bess.At the cost of her own chance of finding love, Bess remains trapped by her duty, a confinement echoed a century later by Sarah, a teacher at the modern-day Priors Heath who must make her own choice between her duty to her pupils and her efforts to save a broken marriage.

    The bridge holds many secrets.Two hurting women face each other on this night, destinies merging. Mistakes have been made, people have been hurt, and these two are the victims. After the many years, they are ready to give up, ready to end it all. But one thing keeps them from giving up.The bridge holds many secrets, and the city breeds scum. But together, they can heal and help.This passionate, emotional story about the power of forgiveness takes you far away, to a city you'll always remember and never forget. Follow me to the place where mercy and grace mingle, where love and pain go hand-in-hand. Follow me to the bridge.

    A. riots of the 1990s.Straight's brilliant story of the effects of violence in America on three generations of a family is told through the lives of the Thompsons, a large clan who live in Treetown, above downtown Rio Seco, California, and operate a car towing and repair business. Patriarch Hosea is a proud man, and a hardened one, whose father was killed in the violence that erupted in Tulsa many years earlier. All Hosea's memories come flooding black with ferocious force when the bodies of two white women are found engulfed in flames in an abandoned car on his property. These are the first signs that someone wants Hosea off his land; it is up to his son Marcus, the only one of the six children of Hosea and his half-Mexican wife who can negotiate with the white world, to help the family hold on to their home and their livelihood.But it is only when Marcus' nephew Motrice-a young man infatuated with guns and the power that they bring- comes back to Rio Seco from gang-ridden Los Angeles that the real secrets of the bodies found on Thompson land are revealed, as Rio Seco erupts in the same wave of trashing and looting that has engulfed the nearby metropolis.The Gettin Place is a powerful portrait of a family struggling to defend its turf in a changing world, to hold on to the gettin place, the source from which they derive the tools for survival.

    Joan Herlihy is a semi-successful architect grasping at the illustrious commission that will catapult her to international renown, glossy de cor magazines, and the luxe condo designs of Meier, Koolhaas, and Hadid: the incestuous cult of contemporary Starchitects. Unexpectedly, she finds her Venice Beach firm on the short list for a coveted private memorial -- a Napa billionaire's vanity tribute to relatives killed in the Christmas tsunami -- with life-changing consequences. Her brother Chester clings to a failing career as a location scout before suffering an accidental injury resulting from an outrageous prank; the tragicomic repercussions lead him through a maze of addiction, delusion, paranoia -- and ultimately, transcendence.Virtually abandoned by her family, the indomitable Marjorie Herlihy -- mother, widow, and dreamer -- falls prey to a confidence scheme dizzying in its sadism and complexity. And unbeknownst to Marj and her children, the father who disappeared decades ago is alive and well nearby, recently in the local news for reasons that will prove to be both his redemption and his undoing. Spiraling toward catastrophe, separate lives collide as family members make a valiant attempt to reunite and create an enduring legacy. To rewrite a ruined American dream.Deeply compassionate and violently irreverent, "Memorial" is a testament to faith and forgiveness, and a luminous tribute to spirituality in the twenty-first century. With an unflagging eye on a society ruptured by naturaland unnatural disaster, and an insatiable love for humanity, Wagner delivers a masterpiece.

    A force of nature. To know her is to love her, to love her is to hate her. Shes a woman who changes her name according to the ethnic flavor of the month, dabbles in Mormonism, and steals cleaning supplies from restaurant bathrooms. She is beautiful, excitable, contradiction as art form. Shes the kind of mom who reads her daughters diary, serves ketchup soup for dinner, and drags her girls from Utah to California to Wyoming in pursuit of one loser boyfriend after another. Her love for her daughters is fierce, smothering, neglectful. There is no other way than her. Does that sound extravagant? Or should I say there is no other place than her, observes Lucy, the endearing narrator of Nicole Stansburys very special debut novel, Places to Look for a Mother. In the tradition of Mona Simpsons Anywhere But Here and Larry McMurtrys Terms of Endearment, Places to Look for a Mother tells a tale of mostly maddening mother-daughter bonds. Forgiveness is always there, but its hard to find. And the Taylor family usually loses it. With lithe prose, pitch-perfect dialogue, and gloriously real characters, author Nicole Stansbury conjures a family that proves Tolstoy right once again: All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. The Taylors are no exception, but Places to Look for a Mother is an exceptionally good novel.

    As the gathered family settle in to their first Christmas together for some years, the grown siblings - Rodney, Johnny and Gwen - are surprised when they are invited to each put stickers on the furniture and items they wish to inherit from their parents.Disputed Land is narrated by Leonard and Rosemary's thirteen-year-old grandson, Theo, who observes how from these innocent beginnings age-old fissures open up in the relationships of those around him. Looking back at this Christmas gathering from his own middle-age - a narrator at once nostalgic and naïve - Theo Cannon remembers his imperious grandmother Rosemary, alpha-male uncle Johnny, abominable twin cousins Xan and Baz; he recalls his love for his grandfather Leonard and the burgeoning feelings for his cousin Holly. And he asks himself the question: if a single family cannot solve the problem of what it bequeaths to future generations, then what chance does a whole society have of leaving the world intact?

    She flees to Burlington, Vermont, home of Aunt May, her mother's only living relative. There she adopts Beulah, a Labrador puppy in training to become a companion dog for the blind. Not for a moment does Janey suspect that this "year of the dog" will change her life forever.Shelby Hearon is an acknowledged master at illuminating the nuances of relationships. In Year of the Dog, she explores the surprising ways that the heart heals after a betrayal. While Janey is training Beulah, Beulah leads Janey to a new love, James Maarten, a smart, "fidgety" teacher they meet at the dog park. As Janey soon discovers, James has suffered a betrayal of his own that makes it hard for him to open up and trust her with even the smallest details of his past. While Janey tries to help James, she also reaches out to her enigmatic Aunt May, a retired librarian reputed to be the friend, perhaps even the lover, of popular mystery writer Bert Greenwood. When Janey attempts to solve the twin mysteries of why her great aunt has distanced herself from the family—and what her true relationship is with Bert Greenwood—Beulah provides the clues that lead Janey to uncover the secrets of her aunt's life. By the time Beulah's stay with Janey comes to an end, the people whose lives she's linked will discover that healing and reconciliation can come in the most unexpected ways.

    She has lived with partner Ed for fifteen years and is proud of all they’ve achieved. They go out into the world separately: Ed with one eye on the future in the world of finance; Anita with one foot the past, a curator at Hampton Court Palace. This is the life she has chosen - choices that weren’t open to her mother’s generation - her dream job, equal partnership, freedom from the monotony of parenthood, living mortgage-free in a quirky old house she adores. The future seems knowable and secure.But then Anita finds herself standing in the middle of the road watching her home and everything inside it burn to the ground. Before she can come to terms with the magnitude of her loss, hairline cracks begin to appear in her perfect relationship. And returning to her childhood home in search of comfort, she stumbles upon the secret that her mother has kept hidden, a taboo so unspeakable it can only be written about.The reflection in the mirror may look the same. But everything has changed.Authentic and heartbreaking, Davis’s intoxicating new novel is an exploration of identity, not as a fixed point, but as something fragile, shape-shifting and transient

    Despite Zoe's initial hesitation, they begin to fall in love. Rose is thrilled, recognizing in Keevan the warm, fun-loving father hers could never be. But when Zoe's husband wakes from his depression to see his wife slipping away, Zoe is torn between her love for two men.

    Only his father, a man with his own tumultuous history of violence and addiction, has the answers Bud--now on the brink of divorce and finally, if tenuously, sober--needs.

    The perfect read for fans of Felix Francis' Pulse and Triple Crown. 'The book moves at a relaxed pace but the tension continues to mount until the surprising conclusion. Good characters, good plot and well worth reading' - West Australian It's summer, Royal Ascot, and life is good for young trainer Simon Waterford. He has inherited his father's top-class yard, his brilliant two-year-old has just won the Coventry Stakes and he is soon to marry his beautiful half-Brazilian girlfriend. But Mariana has a secret which would wreck her hopes of marriage - and which Simon's uncle Geoff has found out. And he has threatened to tell Simon. On their way back from the races, two rough-looking young men pass lewd comments about Mariana. There's not much of a brawl - it's over too quickly and is hardly even-handed - but it leaves Mariana in a sea of blood tending to Simon's wounded face, while Geoff lies dead on the floor. It's a tragedy, of course, but Mariana can't help but feel relieved. Her secret is safe, for now... What readers are saying about Deadly Finish: 'John Francome's weaving of the various plot-lines was superb''Another first class book from Francome''Believable characters and great storyline had me on the edge of my seat from beginning to end'

    There he meets the eminent professor, Gordon Stone, and his beautiful wife, Judith Silver, with whom he soon falls into a passionate affair. Into this explosive mix, a young woman appears--a single mother at the end of her emotional rope. Crystal desperately needs David. Yet caught between two women, David bears witness to a heartbreaking turn of events that seems as inevitable as the push and pull of ocean waves. . . .

    Yet all around him things are ending: His parents' marriage is crumbling, his father loses his job during the closing of the Alameda naval base, his family faces eviction from their house, and his beloved grandmother is dying.As betrayal and poverty take their toll, Conrad's efforts to create a new family for himself lead us on a journey alternately hilarious and desolating. Filled with tenderness and a cast of unforgettable characters, The Color Midnight Made is at heart a profound portrait of America.