Helen Plum Library

"In this moving debut novel, two estranged siblings must set aside their differences to deal with their mother's death and her hidden past--a journey of discovery that takes them from the Caribbean to London to California and ends with her famous black cake. In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett's death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a traditional Caribbean black cake, made from a family recipe with...

A follow-up to Firefly Lane returns readers to the world of Tully, Kate, and Tully's mother, who explore their understandings about love, family, loss, and redemption while turning to each other in the hopes of salvaging their lives

"Down a narrow alley in the small coastal town of Mallow Island, South Carolina, lies a stunning cobblestone building comprised of five apartments. It's called The Dellawisp and it is named after the tiny turquoise birds who inhabit the building, alongside the human tenants, and imbue it with an air of magical secrecy. When Zoey Hennessey comes to claim her deceased mother's apartment at The Dellawisp, she meets her quirky, enigmatic neighbors, including...

"Two men. Thirty years. John Puller's mother, Jackie, vanished thirty years ago from Fort Monroe, Virginia, when Puller was just a boy. Paul Rogers has been in prison for ten years. But twenty years before that, he was at Fort Monroe. One night three decades ago, Puller's and Rogers' worlds collided with devastating results, and the truth has been buried ever since. Until now. Military investigators, armed with a letter from a friend of Jackie's,...

"The new novel from the critically acclaimed author of Want, told through the shifting voices of a family gathering for Christmas in upstate New York after the death of their beloved matriarch, at odds over the settling of her estate--a novel about art, grief, shame, ambition, joy, and the American safety net"-- It's December twenty-second and siblings Henry, Kate, and Martin have converged with their spouses on Henry's house in upstate New York....

The stories of four Chinese women and their American-born daughters are unraveled through a series of vignettes that reveal the lives of the four older women and the tragedies they endured before coming to America. The memories of the past are then linked to the present day to illuminate the sometimes difficult relationships between the mothers and daughters

"Aspiring playwright, Kate Gamble, is struggling to launch a script she's been secretly researching her entire life, mostly at the family dinner table. Her father is Christian Gamble, CEO of Buck Technologies, a private data integration company whose clients include the CIA and virtually every counter-terrorism organization in the Western World. Kate's father adores her, and a play about the dark side of Big Data would be the ultimate betrayal in...

"Right after the sudden death of her mother--her first and most devoted fan--and just before the launch of her high-stakes sophomore album, Greta James falls apart on stage. The footage quickly goes viral and she stops playing, her career suddenly in jeopardy--the kind of jeopardy her father, Conrad, has always predicted. Months later, Greta--still heartbroken and very much adrift--reluctantly agrees to accompany Conrad on the Alaskan cruise her parents...

When Caroline Wimbley Levine returned to Tall Pines Plantation, she never expected to make peace with long-buried truths about herself and her family

"As the older sibling to identical twins Violet and Lily, Cami Porter was always the odd sister out. The divide grew even wider when their parents split up--while the twins stayed in Cape Sanctuary with their free-spirited mother, Rosemary, fourteen-year-old Cami moved to LA with her attorney father. Nearly twenty years later, when Cami gets the terrible news that Lily has drowned saving a child s life, her mother begs her to return home to help untangle...