Winner of the Pen/Hemingway Award
A modern classic, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, the eccentric and remote sister of their dead mother.
The family house is in the small town of Fingerbone on a glacial lake in the Far

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"With her divorce settlement about to run out and a mortgage she can't afford, Robyn Caldwell needs a plan. But how's she supposed to think when her daughter has become the most demanding bride ever, her son won't even consider college, her best friend is on the brink of marital disaster and her ex is making a bad decision that could bring everything crashing down on Robyn's head? When her great-aunt Lillian invites her to Santa Barbara for the summer,...

Anna has studiously avoided her Aunt Rose-the woman she once loved more than anyone else in the world-ever since the night Rose betrayed Anna and her mother, Rose's own fatally ill sister. In the sixteen years that have passed, Anna has built another life for herself far from her hometown on Maryland's eastern shore, but she can't forgive or forget. Now another betrayal, by a faithless lover, has brought Anna back to her family's restaurant, where...

Carl Turnage is middle-aged and still a bachelor; the person he's closest to is Aunt Lil, who helped raise him. Lil is elderly and in a home, but still insists on driving her car. Meanwhile, a quack evangelist gets Carl to team up with him as a country singer/songwriter before he tries to take over the nursing home.

"A mother and daughter struggle with grief and forgiveness. Will they allow God's spirit--and God's people--to bring true healing...and a future filled with love?"--Provided by publisher.

It was bad enough that her partners left shy store owner Dana Malone to scout new retail space with devastatingly handsome Realtor C. J. Turner. Then—wham!—her way-out wayward cousin literally left a baby on Dana's doorstep, and a birth certificate listing C.J. as the father. Raising her ultracute nephew was a dream come true, and as she and C.J. shared baby duties and close quarters until paternity was established, Dana kept her...

"Paige Watts is the ultimate stage mother. The daughter of Hollywood royalty, Paige channels her own acting dreams into making her daughter, Emma, a star. By the age of nine, Emma is playing a central role in a hit TV show. Then everything is shattered by unforeseeable tragedy. Now Emma is living with her aunt Whitney, who had chosen a very different path than her sister. Whitney was always the studious older sister, hating the cult of celebrity that...

"In 1965 Rome, aspiring actress Silvia Whitford seeks out the Italian aunt she's never met who lives in a crumbling castello where Silvia gets cast in a new horror movie, but when her aunt disappears, the film's make-believe terrors seep into reality, revealing a growing menace."--

After she discovers her sister Tanya dead on the floor of her fashionable New York City townhouse, Letty Carnahan heeds her late sister"s warnings: "If anything bad happens to me-- it's Evan. Promise me you'll take Maya and run. Promise me." Letty hits the road in Tanya's Mercedes with her wailing four-year-old niece Maya, a "go-bag" of cash and a big honking diamond ring but only one clue: a faded magazine story about The Murmuring Surf Motel in...

"Everything Hope knows about the Orchard House is from the stories of her late mother. So when she arrives at the northern Michigan family estate late one night with a terrible secret and her ten-year-old daughter in tow, she's not sure if she'll be welcomed or turned away. But as Hope works the orchard alongside her aunt, daughter, and a kind man she finds increasingly difficult to ignore, a new life begins to blossom"--Provided by publisher.