Miscellaneous Fiction Novels
Discover a curated collection of miscellaneous fiction novels, featuring compelling stories from Alice Hoffman, Laura Moriarty, and Sarah Waters. Explore a diverse mix of contemporary fiction, romance, and multicultural tales, including standout titles like *The Center of Everything*, *Tipping the Velvet*, and *Here on Earth*. Perfect for readers seeking unique and engaging literary finds.
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Haveli
by Suzanne Fisher Staples
In this sequel to the Newbery Honor book "Shabanu, " Shabanu, the youngest ofRahim's four wives, flees with her daughter to Rahim's old family home in thecity to escape the cruelty and jealously of his other wives.
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Shabanu
by Suzanne Fisher Staples
When eleven-year old Shabanu, the daughter of a nomad in the Cholistan Desert of present-day Pakistan, is pledged in marriage to an older man whose money will bring prestige to the family, she must either accept the decision, as is the custom, or risk the consequences of defying her father's wishes.
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Shiva's Fire
by Suzanne Fisher Staples
In India, a talented dancer sacrifices friends and family for her art.
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Property of
by Alice Hoffman
At first contemptuous of the street gangs' world, a 17-year-old middle-class girl falls in love with McKay, the 22-year-old president of a gang called the Orphans, who counters her devotion with betrayals, violence, and addiction.
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Turtle Moon
by Alice Hoffman
Turtle Moon transports the listener to Verity, Florida, a place where anything can happen during the month of May, when migrating sea turtles come to town, mistaking the glow of the streetlights for the moon. A young single mother is murdered in her apartment and her baby is gone. Keith, a 12-year-old boy in the same apartment building - the self-styled "meanest boy" in town - also disappears. In pursuit of the baby, the boy and the killer, are Keith's divorced mother and a cop who himself was once considered the meanest boy in town. Their search leads them down the humid byways of a Florida populated almost exclusively by people from somewhere else; emotional refugees seeking sanctuary along the swampy coast.
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At Risk
by Alice Hoffman
An ordinary American family must come to terms with the fact that their eleven-year-old daughter has AIDs.
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Piece of My Heart
by Julia Watts
"To be honest, my friends were getting on my nerves. Here I was, trying to get my mind off a woman, and they bring me to a lesbian bar where they talk about nothing but lesbians and sex. It was like they were forcing me to think about the one thing I didn't want to think about. As though I'd said, 'Look, the only thing I don't want to think about is hippopotamuses, ' and so to distract me, they took me to the zoo". -- from the book
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The Sugar Island
by Ivonne Lamazares
Tanya is constantly at odds with her unreliable mother, so she is reluctant to follow her when she decides to move the family from Cuba to America.
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Nin
by Cass Dalglish
Nin Creed's quest becomes more than just a search for her late mother's lost writings: it evolved into a voyage of discovery into the enduring power of the written word in linking women to one another across the years, the centuries, even millennia."--BOOK JACKET.
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Vanished
by Mary McGarry Morris
Aubrey Wallace is the kind of man no one notices. Dotty Johnson is the kind of woman no one can ingore. One afternoon, they both disappear from the small Vermont town where they live. The next day, two hundred miles away, a toddler is snatched from her Massachusetts home. For the next five years, Aubrey, Dotty, and the kidnapped child--bound together by strange love and desperate need--are trapped in a nomadic existence governed by their constant fear of discovery. Canny, the little girl, becomes Aubrey's entire existence. But Dotty wants out. She is tired of being saddled with this fearful little man. When she meets Jiggy Huller, a brutal ex-convict, the wheels of Canny's return to her natural parents are wrenched fatally into motion.
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Here on Earth
by Alice Hoffman
A seductive and mesmerizing story of obsessive love from the New York Times bestselling author of The Rules of Magic. After nineteen years in California, March Murray returns to the small Massachusetts town where she grew up. For all this time, March has been avoiding her own troubled history, but when she encounters Hollis—the boy she loved so desperately, the man who has never forgotten her—the past collides with the present as their reckless love is reignited. This dark romantic tale asks whether it is possible to survive a love that consumes you completely. The answers March Murray discovers are both heartbreaking and wise, as complex as they are devastating—for in heaven and in our dreams, love is simple and glorious. But it is something altogether different here on earth...
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Cranberry Queen
by Kathleen Demarco
Diana Moore, a thirty-something professional in New York City, is brooding over rumors about her ex-lovers beautiful new girlfriend, when the unimaginable happens: a terrible car accident in which her entire family is killed. Seeking refuge from her well-meaning friends, Diana heads out of the city and ends up in the Pine Barrens, an oasis of simple living in New Jersey where cranberry bogs abound. There, in a place where no one knows her history, Diana is free to take a hard look at her life and to begin to explore avenues of change and renewal.
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Illumination Night
by Alice Hoffman
A modern chronicle of a marriage and a bittersweet exploration of an extraordinary passion from the New York Times bestselling author of The Rules of Magic. Beginning on the night of the Grand Illumination, a festival of lanterns held each summer on Martha’s Vineyard, Illumination Night follows the lives of a young blond giant who is as beautiful as he is frightening; an old woman at the end of her life whose last mission is to save her granddaughter’s soul; a family torn apart by a wife’s fears and a husband’s unrealized desires—and the high school girl who comes to Martha’s Vineyard against her will, who steals husbands and cars, and who will bring everyone together in a web of yearning, sin, and ultimate redemption. Both riveting and reflective, this is a story of “parenthood and friendship, self-protection and generosity, dream and disillusionment” (Newsday) that brings to light the talent that has made Alice Hoffman an acclaimed bestselling author.
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Atlas of the Human Heart
by Ariel Gore
Like Jack Kerouac's intrepid little sister, Ariel Gore spins the spirited story of a vulnerable drifter who takes refuge in fate and the shadowy recesses of a string of glittering, broken relationships. With just a few pennies and her I Ching, a change of clothes and a one-way ticket to Hong Kong, a perceptive, searching sixteen-year-old Gore makes her way from the sterile suffocation of the Silicon Valley through the labyrinthine customs of Cold-War China, wanders through bustling, electric Kathmandu, and hunkers down in an icy London squat with a prostitute and a boyfriend on the dole. Yet it is in the calm, verdant landscape of rural Italy where, pregnant and penniless, nineteen-year-old Gore's adventure truly begins. An illuminating glimpse into the boldly political Gore--creator of HipMama.com and Hip Mama magazine--this unflinching memoir offers a poignant exploration of the meaning of home and surveys the frontiers of both land and heart.
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Tipping the Velvet
by Sarah Waters
“Erotic and absorbing…Written with startling power.”—The New York Times Book Review Nan King, an oyster girl, is captivated by the music hall phenomenon Kitty Butler, a male impersonator extraordinaire treading the boards in Canterbury. Through a friend at the box office, Nan manages to visit all her shows and finally meet her heroine. Soon after, she becomes Kitty's dresser and the two head for the bright lights of Leicester Square where they begin a glittering career as music-hall stars in an all-singing and dancing double act. At the same time, behind closed doors, they admit their attraction to each other and their affair begins.
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Elegance
by Kathleen Tessaro
Louise Canova should be happy and in love. But her actor husband seems to be growing distant and she doesn't know why. Is it her fault? The uncertainty and insecurity she thought she'd left behind in adolescence now come back to haunt her. But when she discovers a faded volume titled Elegance in a secondhand bookshop, she believes she's found the answers. Written by the formidable French fashion expert Madame Dariaux, Elegance is an encyclopedia of style, that promises to transform plain women into creatures of grace and poise at all times. And from Accessories to Zippers, there's nothing Madame can't advise upon -- including inattentive husbands, false friends, and the absolute importance of good-quality seductive lingerie. Louise vows to follow Madame's advice, but the lessons she learns have a surprising effect and an outcome she never expected. Within its pages lie clues to her past. And as she begins to unravel them, she discovers that everything, even elegance, has its price. Starting with A and finishing with Z, Elegance is a unique alphabetical journey of timeless fashion, true friendship, and the rare, unexpected gift of love.
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The Center of Everything
by Laura Moriarty
n Laura Moriarty's extraordinary first novel, a young girl tries to make sense of an unruly world spinning around her. Growing up with a single mother who is chronically out of work and dating a married man, 10-year old Evelyn Bucknow learns early how to fend for herself. Offering an affecting portrayal of a troubled mother/daughter relationship, one in which the daughter is very often expected to play the role of the adult, the novel also gives readers a searing rendering of the claustrophobia of small town midwestern life, as seen through the eyes of a teenage girl. Evelyn must come to terms with the heartbreaking lesson of first love-that not all loves are meant to be-and determine who she is and who she wants to be. Stuck in the middle of Kansas, between best friends, and in the midst of her mother's love, Evelyn finds herself...in The Center of Everything.
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Lucia, Lucia
by Adriana Trigiani
The daughter of an Italian immigrant family in 1950 Greenwich Village, Lucia Sartori pursues a career in the fashion industry until she falls in love with a handsome stranger, who must win over her traditional family to marry her.
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Casa Rossa
by Francesca Marciano
The story of three generations of Italian women, from the 1930s to the present.
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Magdalenes
by Channing Hayden
Can a beautiful young woman's native wit and uncommon intelligence overcome an overpowering and deep-seated guilt that is destroying her life? That's the central question of Magdalenes, the story of Sarah Beth LaBranche's fall, rise and eventual triumph. When Sarah Beth rents a room from Annedette Cheramie and meets the regal Creole lady's grandson, Frank, her life is forever changed. Sarah Beth becomes Frank's nurse, accountant and research assistant. Collecting his bills, helping him with patients using the latest in Victorian medical treatments and seeking a cure for a blinding eye disease, she falls in love with him. Now her terrible secret must be kept from the two people she holds most dear—her mother and Frank. Ever fearful that Frank will discover the awful truth about her, Sarah Beth helps him battle the 1905 Yellow Fever Epidemic, fighting ignorance, corruption and bigotry in a heroic struggle to help Frank banish his own demons. But each victory brings Sarah Beth's secret closer to being discovered. Magdalenes is not a typical romance, nor the usual medical thriller. Scrupulously researched, it blends the best elements of these genres into a compelling historical novel of tragedy, betrayal and redemption.
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Breathing Room
by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Join the New York Times bestselling author on a journey to the sun-washed hills of Tuscany. Another sexy, wonderful, contemporary love story with all the heart, wisdom, and wit that have made Susan Elizabeth Phillips the gold standard for women's fiction. She's Dr. Isabel Favor, America's diva of self-help. He's Ren Gage, Hollywood's favorite villain. Sometimes you just know that God has a sense of humor. Dr. Isabel Favor, author of Four Cornerstones for a Favorable Life, has sacrificed everything to build her self-help empire. Then, in a matter of weeks, it all comes crashing down. She loses her money to an unscrupulous accountant, her fiancé to a frumpy older woman, and her reputation to headlines denouncing her as a fraud. America's diva of self-help soon discovers she can fix everyone's life but her own. Broke, heartsick, and soul-weary, she heads for Italy in search of a little breathing room. Lorenzo Gage makes his living killing people... on the silver screen, that is. He's viciously handsome and sublimely talented. But as he begins his vacation in Italy, he's also vaguely dissatisfied. Being a villain with a face to die for has its rewards, but he hates the feeling that everything he's neglected in life is catching up with him. Then he spots Isabel sipping a glass of wine in a sidewalk café. A good guy wouldn't think of seducing such a tidy-looking woman... but he'd never seen the fun in playing the hero. It doesn't take long for Isabel to realize she's escaped one kind of chaos only to be plunged into another. Even the shelter of a simple stone farmhouse nestled in a Tuscan olive grove can't provide her with the refuge she needs -- not when the townspeople are scheming to drive her away, and her plan to restore her reputation has come up empty. And especially not when the man who deceived her refuses to leave her in peace. Breathing Room is a book for any woman who's dreamed of wandering through a vineyard, of lazing under the Tuscan sky, or of reforming a deliciously wicked man. This is a story of hope and renewal, of love and redemption when it's needed the most. Sometimes it takes a special place... a special love... a little breathing room... for life to deliver all its glorious promise.
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Tumbleweed Fever
by L. J. Maas
In Oklahoma, Devlin Brown is trying to redeem herself working on a ranch. When a local widow needs help on her ranch, she enlists Devlin to help her.
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Curious Wine
by Katherine V. Forrest
The most popular lesbian novel in the world. Now available from Alyson.