| By Thorndike Staff |
’Tis the time of year for family! Whether your readers are making merry with theirs or finding solace in more singular celebrations, consider adding these four tales of intriguing families to your collection to delight them in the new year. It’s no surprise that three feature plots driven by secrets— “costly, devastating, and terrible”—for secrets so often test the limits of love and acceptance. Wrap up 2021 with these acclaimed large print titles, then stay tuned for more perfect picks in the new year!
Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson
9781432893071
“A glorious book—an assured novel that’s gorgeously told.” —The New York Times Book Review
“An incredibly moving epic about an unforgettable family.” —CBS Sunday Morning
Told in prose as clear as a spring-fed creek, Damnation Spring is an intimate, compassionate portrait of a family whose bonds are tested and a community clinging to a vanishing way of life. An extraordinary story of the transcendent, enduring power of love—between husband and wife, mother and child, and longtime neighbors. It’s an essential novel for our times.
L.A. Weather by María Amparo Escandón
9781432893040
New York Times Bestseller
Reese’s Book Club Pick
L.A. is parched, dry as a bone, and all Oscar, the weather-obsessed patriarch of the Alvarado family, desperately wants is a little rain. He’s harboring a costly secret that distracts him from everything else. His wife, Keila, desperate for a life with a little more intimacy and a little less Weather Channel, feels she has no choice but to end their marriage. Their three daughters are blindsided and left questioning everything they know. Each will have to take a critical look at her own relationships and make some tough decisions along the way.
The Last Dance of the Debutante by Julia Kelly
9781432893132
“The engrossing narrative dishes out the right amount of tension while moving the plot forward at a satisfying pace . . . Kelly succeeds at bringing a bygone world to life.” —Publishers Weekly
When it’s announced that 1958 will be the last year debutantes are to be presented at court, thousands of eager mothers and hopeful daughters flood the palace with letters seeking the year’s most-coveted invitation: a chance for their daughters to curtsy to the young Queen Elizabeth and officially come out into society.
In an effort to appease her traditional mother, aspiring university student Lily Nichols agrees to become a debutante. In doing so, she befriends two very different women: the cool and aloof Leana Hartford, whose apparent perfection hides a darker side, and the ambitious Katherine Norman, who dreams of a career once she helps her parents find their place among the elite.
But the glorious effervescence of the season evaporates once Lily learns a devastating secret that threatens to destroy her entire family. Faced with a dark past, she’s forced to ask herself what really matters: her family legacy or her own happiness.
Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy
9781432893156
New York Times Bestseller
#1 Indie Next Pick
Book of the Month Club Selection
Inti Flynn arrives in Scotland with her twin sister, Aggie, to lead a team of biologists tasked with reintroducing 14 gray wolves into the remote Highlands. She hopes to heal not only the dying landscape but Aggie too, unmade by the terrible secrets that drove the sisters out of Alaska.
Inti is not the woman she once was either, changed by the harm she’s witnessed―inflicted by humans on both the wild and each other. Yet as the wolves surprise everyone by thriving, Inti begins to let her guard down, even opening herself up to the possibility of love. But when a farmer is found dead, Inti knows where the town will lay blame. If the wolves didn’t make the kill, then who did? And what will Inti do when the man she is falling for seems to be the prime suspect?
Propulsive and spellbinding, Charlotte McConaghy’s Once There Were Wolves is the unforgettable story of a woman desperate to save the creatures she loves―if she isn’t consumed by a wild that was once her refuge.
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