By Anne Tyler

A travel writer who hates to travel, and to whom "things just happen," becomes involved with an unusual woman following the desertion of his wife.

By Lori Ostlund

After leaving his partner in New Mexico to start a new life in San Francisco, ESL teacher Aaron Englund seeks closure from a rejection-marked childhood and his own questionable choices by exploring his relationships with fellow misfits in his youth.

By Wallace Stegner
With Lisa Caputo, Assistant Library Director

Tuesday, May 24, 2011. 1 PM & 7:30 PM.

Retirees Joseph and Ruth Allston find their placid, rural California life disrupted by a hippie who builds a treehouse on their property and by a young married couple tragically affected by pregnancy and cancer.

By Caroline Angell

A young composer takes a job as a nanny caring for two young boys, but after a tragedy strikes the family, she realizes the children need her to face their loss and she must make a choice between her career and her love for them.

By Chad Harbach
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian
With Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, February 26, 2013.  1:30 PM.

A baseball star at a small college near Lake Michigan launches a routine throw that goes disastrously off course and inadvertently changes the lives of five people, including the college president, a gay teammate, and the president's daughter.

By Elizabeth Poliner
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

Enjoying summertime weeks of freedom at a popular Jewish beach with their children, beautiful Ada thrives when away from her strict husband, while chef Vivie develops diplomatic skills and unmarried Bec is forced to choose between family beliefs and her passion for a married man.

By Mary Beth Keane
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian

When a violent event forcibly ends their romance, the son and daughter of two NYPD rookies reconnect years later and struggle to prevent the past from triggering another separation.

By Ali Smith
Series Seasonal
Recommended By Sonia Grgas, Reference Librarian

A debut installment in a series about aging, time, love and the nature of stories examines the dynamics of pop culture, meditation and harvests in a world growing more bordered and exclusive.

By Annie Ward
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services

Starting a therapeutic journal in the aftermath of a scarring accident, former travel writer Maddie is forced to reckon with her husband's PTSD, her son's safety, and her family's complicated history with her best friend, Jo.

By S.J. Watson
Recommended By Arlene Silverman, Library Clerk, Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk, Meghan F., Children's Services Librarian

An amnesiac attempts to reconstruct her past by keeping a journal and discovers the dangerous inconsistencies in the stories of her husband and her secret doctor.

By Christopher Bohjalian

After a decade of spending a delightful summer week at their country house in New Hampshire, the members of the extended Seton family are confronted by a terrible accident, testing the values and relationships that hold them together.

By Robin Schneider

Star athlete and prom king Ezra Faulkner's life is irreparably transformed by a tragic accident and the arrival of eccentric new girl Cassidy Thorpe.

By Keith Donohue

Developing agoraphobia after a near-drowning incident, a 10-year-old boy draws increasingly disturbing pictures of monsters while his parents search for answers about strange noises coming from the nearby ocean at night.

By Fredrik Backman
Recommended By Sue Ann R., Head of Children's Services

Walking away from her loveless marriage and taking a job in a derelict, financially devastated town, sixty-three-year-old Britt-Marie uses her fierce organizational skills to become a local soccer coach to a group of lost children.

By Colm Toibin
With Lisa Jones, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, May 25, 2010.  1 PM & 7:30 PM.

A diligent young woman with few opportunities in nineteen–fifties Ireland is packed off by her family to Brooklyn, where she encounters new and bewildering experiences before a family crisis presents her with a stark choice between her new life and her old one.

By Elizabeth Strout
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk, Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk, Pam Martin, Assistant Library Director

A pair of brothers confront painful psychological issues surrounding the freak accident that killed their father when they were boys, a loss linked to a heartbreaking deception that shaped their personal and professional lives.

By Carol Anshaw
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

“When a car of inebriated guests from Carmen's wedding hits and kills a girl on a country road, Carmen and the people involved in the accident connect, disconnect, and reconnect throughout twenty-five subsequent years of marriage, parenthood, holidays, and tragedies (From the Publisher).”

By Steven Galloway

While a cellist plays at the site of a mortar attack to commemorate the deaths of twenty–two friends and neighbors, a woman sniper secretly protects the life of the cellist as her army becomes increasingly threatening.

By Ian McEwan

A highly respected London judge hides her decision to separate from a husband who wants an open marriage, a loss that challenges her beliefs throughout a case involving parents whose faith forbids a life-saving transfusion for their son.

By Caroline Leavitt
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian

In 1969, sixteen– year– old Lucy is about to run away to live off the grid in rural Pennsylvania, a rash act that will have vicious repercussions for both her and her older sister, Charlotte.

By Herman Koch
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

Meeting at an Amsterdam restaurant for dinner, two couples move from small talk to the wrenching shared challenge of their teenage sons' act of violence that has triggered a police investigation and revealed the extent to which each family will go to protect those they love.

By Ann Packer
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

When her fiancée Mike is left paralyzed following a tragic accident, Carrie Bell begins to question her familiar world, from her everyday life in Wisconsin to her relationships, as she sets out to rediscover her own identity.

Became the TV Movie: The Dive from Clausen’s Pier

By Barbara Delinsky

Languishing in her career as a business lawyer after relinquishing her dream to defend victims of corporate abuse, Emily Aulenbach impulsively abandons her husband and returns to a New Hampshire town where she spent a watershed college summer.

By Anna Quindlen
Recommended By Betty Petreshock, Reference Librarian, Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

Mary Beth Latham is first and foremost a mother, whose three teenaged children come first, before her career as a landscape gardener, or even her life as the wife of a doctor. And so,when one of her sons, Max, becomes depressed, Mary Beth becomes focused on him, and is blindsided by a shocking act of violence.

By Jonathan Tropper

“By turns funny and moving, Tropper's warm, winning tale will appeal to both male and female readers and may draw comparisons to Nick Hornby and John Scott Shepherd (Booklist).”

By Dani Shapiro

“Rachel Jensen, a woman with New York sensibilities and artistic sensitivity, finds her life in complete turmoil after an unfortunate family incident spirals out of control, leaving her separated from her husband of 15 years and with her teenage daughter in an exclusive reform school. Rachel's past unfolds as she tries to make sense of what has happened and of her growing dysfunction… Shapiro effectively depicts the emotional chaos of a family in pain and the loneliness that results when people are separated from loved ones (Library Journal).”

By Gabriel Chevallier

After being wounded in the trenches of World War I, Jean Dartemont recovers but is sent back to the front lines, as he describes the horrors and futility of war.

By Miranda July

A haunted woman’s reclusively ordered world is thrown into chaos by a houseguest who bullies her into reality and brings love into her life.

By Joseph Finder
Recommended By John Shea, Library Page

Forced to move to the home of his youth after a career setback, Rick Hoffman begins a laborious renovation only to make a discovery that threatens his life and challenges everything he thought he knew about his late father.

By Susan Henderson
Recommended By Pam Martin, Assistant Library Director

Mary Crampton works as an embalmer in a small town that went into decline after a grain elevator accident killed a young athlete, but when the athlete's brother returns, Mary forms a friendship with him and is faced with the possibility of leaving her town.

By Mitch Albom
Recommended By Kalpana Mehta, Reference Librarian

“… retired baseball player Charley "Chick" Benetto-facing the pain of unfulfilled ambitions, alcohol abuse, divorce, and estrangement from a grown daughter-returns to his abandoned childhood home and attempts suicide in a bungling fit of rage. He encounters the spirit of his deceased mother, Pauline "Posey" Benetto, who Chick thoughtlessly took for granted … (Publisher’s Weekly).”

By Kristin Hannah
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian, Isabel Zinman, Readers' Services Librarian

A Depression–era woman confronts a wrenching choice between fighting for the Dust Bowl–ravaged land she loves in Texas or pursuing an uncertain future in California.

By Lauren Grodstein
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk

“After his best friend's daughter, Laura, sets her sights on his son, Alec, Pete Dizinoff sees his plans for a perfect son not just unraveling but being destroyed completely and sets out to derail the romance (From the Publisher).”

By Jay Asher

Receiving her 1st computer and AOL account in 1996, Emma and Josh, discover themselves on Facebook, 15 years in the future.

By Andre Dubus III
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk

“An explosive narrative employs a Florida strip club as a tinderbox of tensions on the weekend before 9/11… Dubus shows a profound empathy as he gets inside the heads of a number of characters, with coincidence, chance and a clash of cultures building to a shattering climax (Kirkus Reviews).”

By Jean Kwok
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian, Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk

A resolute yet naïve Chinese girl confronts poverty and culture shock with equal zeal when she and her mother immigrate to Brooklyn.

By Claire Kells
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

After their plane crashes in the Colorado Rockies, nineteen-year-old competitive college swimmer Avery Delacorte, one of only five survivors, must rely on her teammate Colin Shea to survive sub-zero temperatures, minimal supplies, and the dangerous wilderness.

By Chris Cleave
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk

Cyclists Zoe and Kate are friends and athletic rivals for Olympic gold, while Kate and her husband Jack, also a world-class cyclist, must contend with the recurrence of their young daughter's leukemia.

By Mary Kubica
Recommended By Pam Strudler, Programming & Arts Librarian, Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

The daughter of a prominent Chicago judge and his socialite wife, inner-city art teacher Mia Dennett is taken hostage by her one-night stand, Colin Thatcher, who, instead of delivering her to his employers, hides her in a secluded cabin in rural Minnesota to keep her safe from harm.

By Robin Antalek
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager

A novel spanning over a decade, told in the alternating voices of three friends, explores the indelible bonds between friends and family, and the challenges that threaten to divide them.

By Jon Cohen
Recommended By Sonia Grgas, Reference Librarian

A 38-year old traumatized widow fortuitously meets an 11-year old girl who sets him on a feverish road to redemption.

By Katherine Center
With Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, June 25, 2019. 1:30 PM.

When an accident on what was supposed to be the happiest day of her life lands her in the hospital with a very uncertain future, Margaret struggles to come to terms with family secrets, heartbreak, and starting over before discovering love in an unexpected place.

By Michael Christie

Follows the experiences of young Will, who is closeted in his home by a fiercely agoraphobic mother and who ventures out and makes a new friend with whom he searches for a missing boy.

By Judy Blume
Recommended By Pam Strudler, Programming & Arts Librarian

A novel inspired by a series of passenger airplane crashes that occurred in 1951 and 1952. New Jersey reimagines the impact of the tragedies on three generations of families, friends and strangers.

By Lisa Scottoline

When they are involved in a terrible car accident, Jake Whitmore makes a split-second decision that saves his son from formal punishment, but plunges them both into a world of guilt, lies and secrecy where a dangerous enemy comes forward threatening to expose them.

By Lucy Sykes
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services

Discovering that her young former assistant is plotting to steal her job and transform their fashion magazine into an app, editor-in-chief Imogen Tate is challenged to find her inner geek to save her career and the magazine.

By Vanessa Diffenbaugh
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk
With Lisa Jones, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, February 25, 2014. 1:30 PM.

The story of a woman whose gift for flowers helps her change the lives of others even as she struggles to overcome her own past.

By Walter Mosley

Ptolemy Grey is a 91-year-old man, suffering from dementia and living as a recluse in his Los Angeles apartment. Then Robyn Small, a 17-year-old family friend, appears and helps clean up his apartment and straighten out his life. A Reinvigorated Ptolemy volunteers for an experimental medical program that restores his mind, and he uses his last days—shortened now by the medical experiment—to delve into the mystery of the recent drive-by shooting death of his great-nephew, Reggie.

By Lisa Ko
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian

When his undocumented immigrant mother disappears, eleven-year-old Deming Guo is adopted by a family that attempts to make him over as an American teen while he struggles to reconcile his new life with memories of the family he left behind.

By Douglas Kennedy
Recommended By Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk

“Jane finds herself involved in the search for a young girl in Calgary despite suffering through doomed relationships, the loss of her savings and personal tragedies and setbacks (From the Publisher).”