Book picks similar to
The Secret Son by Jennifer Burke


fiction
relationships
irish-fiction
quit

Past Forward-A Serial Novel: Volume IV


Chautona Havig - 2012
    Jerked from a life of isolation with her mother, Willow learns what alone really means when she finds her mother still in her bed, never to awaken again in this life. From the moment Willow arrives in the police station with her startling announcement, Chad Tesdall fights the friendship he knows he can't avoid. This collection includes episodes fifteen through eighteen of Past Forward. In this volume, Chad and Willow start their life together. A surprise attack, Willow's first vacation, and a slow, gradual expansion of the farm brings more changes to Walden Farm. Follow as Willow's story unfolds past forward.

The Five Wishes of Mr. Murray McBride


Joe Siple - 2018
    He finds it in Jason Cashman, a ten-year-old boy with a terminal heart defect and a list of five things he wants to do before he dies. Together, they race against the limited time each has left, ticking off wishes one by one. Along the way, Murray remembers what it's like to be young, and Jason fights for the opportunity to grow old. But when tragedy strikes, their worlds are turned upside-down, and an unexpected gift is the only thing that can make Jason's final wish come true.

A Good American


Alex George - 2012
    It is 1904. When Frederick and Jette must flee her disapproving mother, where better to go than America, the land of the new? Originally set to board a boat to New York, at the last minute, they take one destined for New Orleans instead ("What's the difference? They're both new"), and later find themselves, more by chance than by design, in the small town of Beatrice, Missouri. Not speaking a word of English, they embark on their new life together. Beatrice is populated with unforgettable characters: a jazz trumpeter from the Big Easy who cooks a mean gumbo, a teenage boy trapped in the body of a giant, a pretty schoolteacher who helps the young men in town learn about a lot more than just music, a minister who believes he has witnessed the Second Coming of Christ, and a malevolent, bicycle-riding dwarf. A Good American is narrated by Frederick and Jette's grandson, James, who, in telling his ancestors' story, comes to realize he doesn't know his own story at all. From bare-knuckle prizefighting and Prohibition to sweet barbershop harmonies, the Kennedy assassination, and beyond, James's family is caught up in the sweep of history. Each new generation discovers afresh what it means to be an American. And, in the process, Frederick and Jette's progeny sometimes discover more about themselves than they had bargained for. Poignant, funny, and heartbreaking, A Good American is a novel about being an outsider - in your country, in your hometown, and sometimes even in your own family. It is a universal story about our search for home.

Beautiful Ruins


Jess Walter - 2012
    On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying.And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot—searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier.What unfolds is a dazzling, yet deeply human, roller coaster of a novel, spanning fifty years and nearly as many lives. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Walter introduces us to the tangled lives of a dozen unforgettable characters: the starstruck Italian innkeeper and his long-lost love; the heroically preserved producer who once brought them together and his idealistic young assistant; the army veteran turned fledgling novelist and the rakish Richard Burton himself, whose appetites set the whole story in motion—along with the husbands and wives, lovers and dreamers, superstars and losers, who populate their world in the decades that follow. Gloriously inventive, constantly surprising, Beautiful Ruins is a story of flawed yet fascinating people, navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams.

Gold


Chris Cleave - 2012
    They've loved, fought, betrayed, forgiven, consoled, gloried, and grown up together. Now on the eve of London 2012, their last Olympics, both women will be tested to their physical and emotional limits. They must confront each other and their own mortality to decide, when lives are at stake: What would you sacrifice for the people you love, if it meant giving up the thing that was most important to you in the world?

The Perfume Collector


Kathleen Tessaro - 2013
    When she receives an unexpected inheritance from a complete stranger, Madame Eva d’Orsey, Grace is drawn to uncover the identity of her mysterious benefactor.Weaving through the decades, from 1920s New York to Monte Carlo, Paris, and London, the story Grace uncovers is that of an extraordinary women who inspired one of Paris’s greatest perfumers. Immortalized in three evocative perfumes, Eva d’Orsey’s history will transform Grace’s life forever, forcing her to choose between the woman she is expected to be and the person she really is.The Perfume Collector explores the complex and obsessive love between muse and artist, and the tremendous power of memory and scent.

Mrs. Hemingway


Naomi Wood - 2014
    Hemingway reveals the explosive love triangles that wrecked each of Hemingway's marriages.The Paris Wife was only the beginning of the story... Paula McLain's New York Times bestselling novel piqued readers' interest about Ernest Hemingway's romantic life. But Hadley was only one of four women married, in turn, to the legendary writer. Just as T.C. Boyle's bestseller The Women completed the picture begun by Nancy Horan's Loving Frank, Naomi Wood's Mrs. Hemingway tells the story of how it was to love, and be loved by, the most famous and dashing writer of his generation. Hadley, Pauline, Martha and Mary: each Mrs. Hemingway thought their love would last forever; each one was wrong. Told in four parts and based on real love letters and telegrams, Mrs. Hemingway reveals the explosive love triangles that wrecked each of Hemingway's marriages. Spanning 1920s bohemian Paris through 1960s Cold War America, populated with members of the fabled "Lost Generation," Mrs. Heminway is a riveting tale of passion, love, and heartbreak.

The Star and the Shamrock


Jean Grainger - 2020
    Berlin 1939. When her husband doesn't come home one day, Ariella realises that the only way she can ensure her Jewish children's safety is to avail of the Kindertransport, but can she bear to let them go?A thousand miles away, Elizabeth Klein has closed herself off from the world. Losing her husband on the last day of the Great War, and her child months later, she cannot, will not, love again. It hurts too much.But she is all Liesl and Erich Bannon have.Thrown together in the wild countryside of Northern Ireland, Elizabeth and the Bannon children discover that life in the country is anything but tranquil. Danger and intrigue lurk everywhere, and some people are not what they seem.

The Temporary Gentleman


Sebastian Barry - 2014
    In 1957, sitting in his lodgings in Accra, he urgently sets out to write his story. He feels he cannot take one step further, or even hardly a breath, without looking back at all that has befallen him.He is an ordinary man, both petty and heroic, but he has seen extraordinary things. He has worked and wandered around the world - as a soldier, an engineer, a UN observer - trying to follow his childhood ambition to better himself. And he has had a strange and tumultuous marriage. Mai Kirwan was a great beauty of Sligo in the 1920s, a vivid mind, but an elusive and mysterious figure too. Jack married her, and shared his life with her, but in time she slipped from his grasp.A heart-breaking portrait of one man's life - of his demons and his lost love - The Temporary Gentleman is, ultimately, a novel about Jack's last bid for freedom, from the savage realities of the past and from himself.

Hot and Bothered: A Novel


Annie Downey - 2006
    He’s a rat, anyway, and currently attends Sex Addicts Anonymous. He still comes by the house, though, as do her hippie, macrobiotic mother; her feisty, alcoholic best friend; her God-fearing grandmother; and that Perfect Guy, the one with the beatific son who plays with her daughter, the one who happens to have a winning smile, wild black hair, a professorship at Harvard—and (drats!) a gorgeous doctor girlfriend. Told in short takes that perfectly mimic the frantic nature of our busy lives, Hot and Bothered follows its heroine through the streets of Cambridge, where she spends far too much time staring into space and sipping mocha lattes with extra whipped cream; to church, where she prays for a little salvation; to Alaska, where she believes a rugged outdoorsman might just be that salvation; and to Cape Cod, where, in a little house by the sea, she might finally see the light. Annie Downey has written an updated Cinderella story for all single moms.

The Bogman


Walter Macken - 1972
    Walter Macken paints a memorable portrait of the hard life of subsistence farming, of loveless arranged marriages, and of rebellion against suffocating social mores.

Italian American Reconciliation


John Patrick Shanley - 1998
    He enlists the aid of his lifelong buddy, Aldo Scalicki, a confirmed bachelor who tries, without apparent success, to convince Huey that he would be better off sticking with his new lady friend, Teresa, a usually placid young waitress whose indignation flares when she learns what Huey is up to. In a moonlit balcony scene (hilariously reminiscent of Cyrano de Bergerac) Aldo pleads his lovesick friend's case and, to his astonishment, Janice capitulates although not for long. However we do learn that her earlier abuse of Huey was intended to make him "act like a man" which, at last, he does. And, more than that, he (and the audience) become aware that, in the final essence, "the greatest and only success is to be able to love" a truth which emerges delightfully from the heartwarming, wonderfully antic and always imaginatively conceived action of the play.

Skylarks At Sunset


Rita Bradshaw - 2007
    And so when she meets and falls in love with Daniel Fallow, son of a successful businessman, she's quick to accept his proposal of his marriage. His family, though, are against the match, and so the young couple marry in secret. Grudging acceptance follows, and as the Depression worsens Daniel is persuaded to join the family business, unaware of his father's dodgy dealings. Tragedy is just around the corner, and worse is to come when war is declared in 1939: as Daniel leaves to fight and her children are evacuated, Hope wonders if she will ever have all her family around her again...

The God of Sno Cone Blue


Marcia Coffey Turnquist - 2014
    Medallion.Story summary: Something is odd about Grace. She has mismatched eyes, one dark and one light. She thinks she's seen God. When her mother dies, she begins to get letters from her, as if from the grave. The letters tell of her mother's life before she married Grace's father, in time, confessing fiercely guarded family secrets. "I wasn't always a Preacher's Wife... I made mistakes along the way."Looking back, as a middle-aged woman, Grace relives those transformative years, coming of age in the 1960s as the daughter of The Reverend Thad Carsten and his much-younger wife, Sharon. When they move to a new neighborhood in Portland, Oregon, Sharon is healthy and Grace takes turmoil in stride: a new school, her backward neighbors, the simmering Vietnam War and political unrest. On the whole, life is sublime-until Sharon gets sick and dies. Then Grace's world turns upside down.Days after Sharon is gone, the letters to her daughter start coming, delivered mysteriously in the dark of night. Grace finds them-addressed to her-and devours every word, desperate to figure out who's delivering them. As she struggles with questions of loss and faith, she begins to butt heads with the preacher, increasingly focused on the mysterious messenger and her mother's letters. The handwritten pages arrive periodically as Grace matures, fostering a strange mother daughter relationship.Early on, the letters offer motherly advice, but increasingly they shift their focus to Sharon's early teens, eventually confessing a forbidden young adult romance. By then, Grace is desperate for the rest of the story, searching everywhere for her mother's writings, until finally there's a breakthrough. When she reads the last of the letters-and an astonishing truth-she embarks on a journey that changes her life and perspective forever.What did Sharon confess in the last letter to her daughter? How does it affect their unusual mother daughter relationship? As Grace runs away to trace her mother's past and teenage romance, what will she find?With its elements of romance and mystery, The God of Sno Cone Blue, sometimes searched as "Snow" Cone Blue is best described as contemporary women's fiction, though its strong central male character also appeals to men. The novel's storyline and mother daughter relationship are fitting Inspirational Fiction, and its passion and coming of age tale are appropriate for teenagers and young adults.* USA Today Bestselling Author Linda Needham on this inspirational fiction story: "The God of Sno Cone Blue is a joyous celebration of a young girl's journey to womanhood. Grace is a modern match for Tom Sawyer, with a grand spirit and enough spunk to weather the heartache of losing her mother at a tender age. Along the way, she gains the wisdom to recognize the breadth of her mother's love through a series of posthumous, sometimes shocking letters delivered in the years that follow. With a driving style and a colorful cast of eccentric characters, author Marcia Coffey Turnquist fiercely delivers equal parts laughter, sorrow and the kind of joy that will stay with you long after you've finished the book."*Author Rod Gramer on this novel fraught with family secrets: "Marcia has created a compelling character in Grace, one whose great personal loss is redeemed by a great personal discovery."*Portland Society Page editor Elisa Klein on the story's mystery and romance: "Surprises abound and the twists and turns kept me flipping pages late into the night as I curled up in my favorite chair to drink it all in."*Award-winning artist D.K. Lubarsky on this coming of age novel: "A masterful storyteller, Turnquist takes you on a magical journey of discovery in this poignant tale of innocence and growing up. The God of Sno Cone Blue is a delightful read."

The Tea House on Mulberry Street


Sharon Owens - 2003
    But a perpetually dieting housewife still comes in to escape her husband's stick-thin mistress, a struggling artist pens love letters to actor Nicolas Cage, and a woman returns to search for a long-lost soulmate. Behind the cherry cheesecakes and chocolate cappuccinos are the stirrings of a change that will redefine and heal lives. And lead Penny and Daniel to discover what truly matters in life--and love.