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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a 1943 novel written by Betty Smith. The story focuses on an impoverished but aspirational, second-generation Irish-American, adolescent girl and her family in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York City, during the first two decades of the 20th century.

Ruthie Swain, the bedridden daughter of a dead poet, tries to find her father through stories -- and through generations of family history in County Clare.

Daniel Solomon is not having a good day. Somewhere between Bangkok and Tokyo, zipping through the stratosphere, the jetliner on which he's travelling cracks open like an egg, ejecting Daniel and his fellow passengers into the great blue sky. If only that were the worst of it. Thousands of feet above the merciless Earth, still strapped into his seat, his cherished comics fluttering away like freed parrots, Daniel finds out what it means to have your life flash before your eyes.

Rich Man, Poor Man is a 1969 novel by Irwin Shaw. It is a sprawling work, with over 600 pages, and covers many of the themes Shaw returns to again and again in all of his fiction – Americans living as expatriates in Europe, the McCarthy era, children trying to break away from the kind of life lived by their parents, social and political issues of capitalism, and the pain of relationships.

In 1932, after the death of their father, ten-year-old Polly and her older sister Maud must leave their home in Winnipeg and begin a new life with their grandmother on a remote island off the coast of B.C. Maud goes off to boarding school in Victoria and Polly, despite missing her sister, begins to adapt to her new life on the island. But on the edge of this budding happiness, is a dark secret that Polly struggles to keep.

When Stella, a young Métis mother, looks out her window one evening and spots someone in trouble on the Break a barren field on an isolated strip of land outside her house she calls the police to alert them to a possible crime. In a series of shifting narratives, people who are connected, both directly and indirectly, with the victim police, family, and friends tell their personal stories leading up to that fateful night. Lou, a social worker, grapples with the departure of her live-in boyfriend.

Íso, a young Guatemalan woman, works at a fertility clinic at Ixchel, in the highlands of the Sierra Madre de Chiapas. She tends to the rich northern women who visit the clinic hoping that the waters of the nearby lake might increase their chances of conception. Like many of the women working at the clinic, Íso is aware of the resident American doctor, Eric Mann. Soon Íso is his secret lover, stealing away with Dr. Mann on long motorcycle rides through the mountains and enjoying beach vacations with Eric and his doctor friends. But their tryst does not last long. Dr.

Catherine Leroux’s The Party Wall shifts between and ties together stories about pairs joined in surprising ways. A woman learns that she may not be the biological mother of her own son despite having given birth to him; a brother and sister unite, as their mother dies, to search for their long-lost father; two young sisters take a detour home, unaware of the tragedy that awaits; and a political couple—when the husband accedes to power in a post-apocalyptic future state—is shaken by the revelation of their own shared, if equally unknown, history.

At the centre of this epic tale are enigmatic Sparrow, a genius composer who wishes desperately to create music yet can find truth only in silence; his mother and aunt, Big Mother Knife and Swirl, survivors with captivating singing voices and an unbreakable bond; Sparrow's ethereal cousin Zhuli, daughter of Swirl and storyteller Wen the Dreamer, who as a child witnesses the denunciation of her parents and as a young woman becomes the target of denunciations herself; and headstrong, talented Kai, best friend of Sparrow and Zhuli, and a determinedly successful musician who is a virtuoso at ma

To the shock of his family and community, George Woodbury, an affable teacher and beloved husband and father, is arrested for sexual assault at a prestigious prep school in Connecticut. While he awaits his trial in jail, his family is left to pick up the pieces. His wife, Joan, a trauma nurse, is unable to triage her emotional reactions, and vaults between rage and denial. Daughter Sadie, the consummate overachiever, finds herself paralyzed on her boyfriends couch with a bong, while a local author attempts to exploit her story.