New Realistic Fiction
Check out the new realistic fiction we’ve added since July!
December 1, 2020
Check out the new realistic fiction we’ve added since July!
Don’t miss out! Sign up for our Wowbrary newsletter and get a list of our newest books in your email inbox every Saturday.
The Bright Side Sanctuary for Animals
Becky Mandelbaum
The award-winning author of Bad Kansas traces an emotionally charged weekend at an animal sanctuary in Western Kansas, where personal and community bonds are tested in the wake of an estranged daughter’s homecoming.
The Brilliant Life of Eudora Honeysett
Annie Lyons
Wanting to organize an assisted death on her own terms, a world-weary octogenarian forges an unexpected bond with an exuberant 10-year-old who drags her to tea parties, shopping sprees and other social excursions.
The Butterfly Lampshade
Aimee Bender
Unable to explain bizarre phenomena that accompanied the most formative events of her youth, Francie reflects on how the perceptions of childhood can take on near-magical qualities that sometimes carry over into an adult world that fluctuates between realities.
Cobble Hill
Cecily von Ziegesar
Navigating private spats and embarrassing secrets in their upscale Brooklyn neighborhood, four families seek purpose and meaningful relationships until a raucous party combusts in a maelstrom of ego clashes, taboo desires and hidden cameras.
The Comeback
Ella Berman
Returning mostly sober to Los Angeles after a year of self-imposed exile, a teen star decides she can no longer stay silent when she is asked to present a lifetime achievement award to the man responsible for her trauma.
The Daughters of Erietown
Connie Schultz
A first novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of Life Happens explores the impact of forfeited dreams, long-kept secrets and evolving gender roles on a small family throughout the latter half of the 20th century.
The Daughters of Foxcote Manor
Eve Chase
Moving to 1970 Foxcote Manor when their London home burns down, a woman and her children take in an abandoned baby girl who is forced to investigate a murder and her own origin story 40 years later.
Daughters of Smoke and Fire
Ava Homa
A young Kurdish woman, Leila, investigates the disappearance of her younger brother, Chia, who was involved in increasingly risky social and political activism in Tehran in an unquenchable desire for justice to honor their father’s past torture and imprisonment.
The Death of Vivek Oji
Akwaeke Emezi
In the wake of a southeastern Nigerian mother’s discovery of her son’s body on her doorstep, a family struggles to understand the enigmatic nature of a youth shaped by disorienting blackouts, diverse friendships and a cousin’s worldly influence.
East Coast Girls
Kerry Kletter
Twelve years after a terrible trauma wrenched them apart, four childhood friends return to Montauk to rekindle their close bonds but end up having to confront their past and their decisions from that horrible night.
The End of the Day
Bill Clegg
The New York Times best-selling author of Did You Ever Have a Family delivers a novel about the bonds and breaking points of friendship, the corrosiveness of secrets, the heartbeat of longing and the redemption of forgiveness.
Everything Here Is Under Control
Emily Adrian
Compelling and engaging, Everything Here Is under Control is a raw, honest, occasionally hilarious portrait of the complexity, conflicting emotions, and physical trauma of both modern motherhood and the intense, intimate friendships that women forge in their youth.
Expectation
Anna Hope
In a novel set in and around London, three college friends, now in their 30s, must come to terms with the gap between the lives they imagined for themselves and reality in the face of marriage, fertility struggles and loss.
The Friendship List
Susan Mallery
After a devastating loss, two single moms, lifelong best friends, create a list of challenges, from skydiving to getting tattoos, before their prospects and perspectives are transformed by unexpected love.
A Girl is a Body of Water
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
Coming of age with the support of the women in her Ugandan village, a girl struggling with abandonment seeks answers at the side of a local witch who shares stories about their culture’s heritage of female strength.
Good Dogs Don’t Make It to the South Pole
Hans-Olav Thyvold
A heartwarming tale of aging, friendship and death is told from the perspective of a grumpy mutt who bonds with his late master’s widow during walks to the library, before their home is threatened by impatient relatives.
Grown Ups
Emma Jane Unsworth
In a novel told through prose, texts, emails, script dialogue and social media messages, a woman goes through a break-up … but is really having more of a breakdown.
The Harpy
Megan Hunter
A story of marriage, infidelity and power by the author of the #1 Indie Next Pick, The End We Start From.
Heaven and Earth
Paolo Giordano
Forging close ties with three brothers from a neighboring farm in Italy, Teresa discovers a dark secret when the brother she secretly loves commits a brutal act of revenge.
Hieroglyphics
Jill McCorkle
Bonding over the mutual losses of their parents in childhood, a couple determined to leave a history for their own children respectively sift through family records and obsess over a possible childhood home before uncovering troubling memories.
His Only Wife
Peace Adzo Medie
Enduring a life of minimal prospects among her uncles many wives, a young seamstress relocates to Accra when she is married in absentia to a wealthy man whose family would separate him from the woman he loves.
Homeland Elegies
Ayad Akhtar
A personal work about identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams. It blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque novel, at its heart it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home.
The House on Fripp Island
Rebecca Kauffman
Invited to join her wealthy friend for an all-expenses-paid vacation to South Carolina’s Fripp Island resort, a working-class woman turns suspicious in the face of an unscrupulous handyman, her host’s infidelities and the ambitions of the children in both families.
How Lulu Lost her Mind
Rachel Gibson
Lou Ann Hunter leaves her lucrative career as a relationship expert to take care of her mother, whose struggle with dementia threatens to take away the past before they can discover it together.
How the Penguins Saved Veronica
Hazel Prior
Determined to find a worthy cause where she can dedicate her millions, octogenarian Veronica rediscovers love, family and connection while bonding with an unknown grandson and infiltrating a scientific team on behalf of endangered penguins in Antarctica.
If I Had Your Face
Frances Cha
In Seoul, South Korea, four young women make their way in a world defined by impossibly high standards of beauty, secret salons catering to wealthy men, strict social hierarchies and K-pop fan mania.
If You Must Know
Jamie Beck
Two sisters, each content leading their separate lives in their separate styles, Amanda, who follows the rules, and Erin who is living a bohemian lifestyle, are forced together to confront disturbing truths about their family and themselves.
The Imperfects
Amy Meyerson
A family’s discovery of a priceless inheritance leads them on a pursuit for the truth that transforms their lives in unexpected ways.
Impersonation
Heidi Pitlor
A novel that wrestles with the ways that women are hamstrung by maternal demands and social expectations, showing the impossibility of doing it all, as a single mother is hired to ghostwrite a memoir for an aspiring politician and it takes both of them combined to be the ideal successful woman.
The Index of Self-Destructive Acts
Christopher Beha
Celebrated for his accurate media forecasts, a renowned data journalist profiles a disgraced political columnist and begins dating the man’s daughter before becoming entangled in complicated family dynamics involving investment losses, wartime trauma and baseball.
It is Wood, it is Stone
Gabriella Burnham
Accompanying her husband on a year professorship in Sô Paulo, an anxious American woman exasperates her socially conscious maid before the women are unexpectedly bonded by an encounter with a beguiling artist.
Jack
Marilynne Robinson
A conclusion to the story that began with the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead traces the story of prodigal son John Ames Boughton, who pursues a star-crossed, interracial romance with a high school teacher who is also the son of a preacher.
The Last Story of Mina Lee
Nancy Jooyoun Kim
Suspecting foul play in the wake of her mother’s accidental death, Margot Lee investigates her mother’s past as a Korean War orphan and undocumented immigrant before uncovering profound secrets.
The Lightness
Emily Temple
One year after her father leaves home for a meditation retreat and never returns, Olivia, yearning to make sense of his departure and to escape her overbearing mother, runs away and retraces his path to a place known as the Levitation Center.
The Lives of Edie Pritchard
Larry Watson
Objectified for her beauty through two failed marriages, a hard-working grandmother pursues a life on her own terms when she is harassed by a younger man.
Love
Roddy Doyle
Attending his father’s deathbed in hospice, a man reconnects with a drinking buddy from his Dublin youth while reflecting on a long-ago love, his wife’s role in upending his life and the truth about his departure from Ireland.
Luster
Raven Leilani
A young black artist falls into an affair with a man in an open marriage before gradually befriending his wife and adopted daughter against a backdrop of dynamic racial politics.
The Lying Life of Adults
Elena Ferrante
An Italian teen searches for a sense of identity and clear perspectives when she finds herself torn between the refinements and excesses of a divided Naples.
The Margot Affair
Sanaë Lemoine
Growing up in hiding in a small Left Bank apartment, the illegitimate daughter of an actress and a high-profile French politician bonds with a respected journalist who aids her reckless agenda to expose dangerous secrets.
Members Only
Sameer Pandya
First the white members of Raj Bhatt’s posh tennis club call him racist. Then his life falls apart. Along the way, he wonders: where does he, a brown man, belong in America?
Memoirs and Misinformation
Jim Carrey
A riotous semi-autobiographical novel follows the experiences of a successful but lonely, movie star who seeks to escape depression through a new romance and Oscar-worthy role, only to discover the universe’s alternate plans.
Memorial
Bryan Washington
A Japanese-American chef and a Black daycare teacher begin reevaluating their stale relationship in the wake of a father’s death and the arrival of an acerbic mother-in-law who becomes an unconventional roommate.
Migrations
Charlotte McConaghy
A woman who has dedicated her life to protecting the environment convinces a fishing captain and his salty crew to follow the world’s last flock of Arctic terns on a migration of dark revelations.
Man of My Time
Dalia Sofer
Set in Iran and New York City, tells the story of Hamid Mozaffarian, who is as alienated from himself as he is from the world around him. After decades of ambivalent work as an interrogator with the Iranian regime, Hamid travels on a diplomatic mission to New York, where he encounters his estranged family and retrieves the ashes of his father, whose dying wish was to be buried in Iran.
Mother Daughter Widow Wife
Robin Wasserman
Left with no memory of who she is, Wendy Doe arrives at the Meadowlark Institute of Memory Research, where she falls under the control of a doctor and his ambitious student. The daughter she left behind tries to make sense of it all.
Mother Land
Leah Franqui
An independent New York foodie accompanies her husband to his home in Mumbai, where her ex-pat sense of adventure is tested by the unexpected divorce of her headstrong mother-in-law.
Musical Chairs
Amy Poeppel
Envied for her close relationship with a famous music artist and Julliard classmate, a successful chamber group founder finds her summer plans riotously upended by sudden family upheavals, including her elderly father’s marriage.
Must I Go
Yiyun Li
Having outlived three husbands and raised five children, a grandmother of 17 begins annotating the diary of a long-ago former lover, recounting long-held secrets and memories about her daughter and her resolve to live life on her own terms.
My Kind of People
Lisa Duffy
A group of New England islanders come together for a recently orphaned girl, an act that reveals the power of community, as well as dredges up long-buried secrets. By the author of The Salt House.
Old Lovegood Girls
Gail Godwin
Separated by a devastating loss, two estranged college roommates reach out to each other years later in the face of unpredictable hardships before discovering the power of their unbreakable bond to transform their lives.
The Opposite of Fate
Alison McGhee
Rendered comatose and pregnant by a violent attack, a young woman emerges from her long state of unresponsiveness, only to find herself reckoning with the consequences of decisions that were made about her body without her consent.
The Other Family
Loretta Nyhan
From the bestselling author of Digging In comes a witty and moving novel about motherhood, courage, and finding true family.
Other People’s Pets
R.L. Maizes
Abandoned by her mother and thief father, a woman who empathically relates more to animals than people drops out of veterinary school and turns burglar, targeting houses where ailing pets can benefit from her care.
Out of Mesopotamia
Salar Abdoh
Abdoh’s powerful novel follows an Iranian war reporter who is torn between his wearying job on the front lines and a civilian existence that he finds increasingly alienating. The book is as much a reflection on memory and art as it is a war story, and Abdoh’s writing captures beautifully the absurdity of both the battlefield and modern life.
The Overdue Life of Amy Byler
Kelly Harms
Single mother Amy Byler grabs the chance to enjoy a child-free summer in New York City, but then a crisis forces her to make some difficult choices.
The Party Upstairs
Lee Conell
Tensions escalate throughout a single day in a genteel New York City apartment building where a superintendent and his adult daughter spark a crisis involving class distinctions, family bonds and the expectations of privilege.
Payback
Mary Gordon
A vengeful reality television star reconnects with a former teacher who she blames for her sexual assault years earlier, in a timely novel by the award-winning author of There Your Heart Lies.
Perestroika In Paris
Jane Smiley
A captivating, brilliantly imaginative story of three extraordinary animals–and a young boy–whose lives intersect in Paris. Jane Smiley’s beguiling new novel is itself an adventure that celebrates curiosity and ingenuity, and expresses the desire of all creatures for true friendship, love, and freedom.
Sisters
Daisy Johnson
Moving in the aftermath of a school bullying incident to an abandoned family home near the shore, two fiercely loyal siblings find the nature of their bond changing in the wake of a series of revelatory encounters.
Sisters and Secrets
Jennifer Ryan
As the Silva Sisters’ secrets are revealed, each realizes that there is more to their family than meets the eye, and forgiveness may be the only way to reclaim true happiness.
Some Go Home
Odie Lindsey
A pregnant Iraq War veteran, the son of a man undergoing retrial and a correction officer’s family navigate media hype, community secrets and racial tensions at the antebellum estate where a civil rights murder occurred half a century earlier.
The Son of Good Fortune
Lysley Tenorio
An undocumented teen, the son of a Filipina B-movie star-turned-con artist, joins a friend on a freedom-risking journey to a ramshackle desert town that offers him the first chance to define himself.
A Star is Bored
Byron Lane
A debut novel by Carrie Fisher’s former personal assistant follows the experiences of an assistant to an award-winning celebrity who becomes a close friend and possibly more as she conducts him through the wonders of Hollywood life.
Summer Longing
Jamie Brenner
When a baby girl is abandoned on her doorstep, Ruth Cooperman, new to Provincetown, turns to her neighbors for help and is drawn into the drama of the close-knit community as alliances are made, relationships are tested, and secrets are uncovered.
The Swap
Robyn Harding
The USA Today best-selling author of The Party delivers a tale about the toxic relationship between two couples after a night of sexual experimentation, and the manipulative teenager with an explosive secret at the center of it all.
Sweet Sorrow
David Nicholls
A man on the brink of marriage reevaluates his teen experiences with first love, a milestone that was complicated by his father’s depression, an unorthodox newcomer and a summer theater troupe performance of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
That Summer in Maine
Brianna Wolfson
When a woman claiming to be Hazel’s sister invites Hazel to visit her and the father she’s never met in Maine, Hazel hopes to finally discover her real self.
Thin Girls
Diana Clarke
Twins Rose and Lily Winters, close as the bond implies, battle insecurities and weight issues, which leads them both to extremes, endangering both of their lives, especially when Lily joins a cult diet group led by a social media faux feminist.
This Little Family
Inès Bayard
After being sexually assaulted by her new boss, Marie discovers that she is pregnant and, convinced the father is her rapist not her husband, is led to commit an irreparable act.
The Transatlantic Book Club
Felicity Hayes-McCoy
Setting up a transatlantic Skype book club to stay in touch with her grandmother on Ireland’s Finfarran Peninsula, Cassie uncovers tragic family secrets that reveal unexpected truths about her grandmother’s marriage.
Transcendent Kingdom
Yaa Gyasi
A follow-up to the best-selling Homegoing finds a sixth-year PhD candidate grappling with the childhood faith of the evangelical church in which she was raised while researching the science behind the suffering that has devastated her Ghanaian immigrant family.
Truth of the Matter
Jamie Beck
Moving to Potomac Point to start a new life with her troubled daughter, Anne Sullivan, while renovating her grandparents’ old house, discovers a vintage recipe box containing hints about her grandmother’s hidden past that force her to confront her greatest fears.
The View from Here
Hannah McKinnon
Three very different siblings are at the center of a novel about what it means to be a family, set over the course of one unforgettable Connecticut summer.
Want
Lynn Steger Strong
Reaching out to a friend after years of building a family and earning a PhD culminate in bankruptcy, Elizabeth discovers that her friend is enduring violent retaliation for wanting a life on her own terms.
Wednesday Walks & Wags
Melissa Storm
Striving to keep busy after losing her mother just months ago, Bridget, a vet tech, animal shelter volunteer and dog lover, finds comfort in her fellow members of the Sunday Potluck Club – and in her new neighbor, Wesley.
The Weekend
Charlotte Wood
Gathering to help renovate a late friend’s memory-filled home, Jude, Wendy and Adele ponder a collective lifetime of loves, grievances, disappointments and successes over the course of a transformative weekend.
Well-Behaved Indian Women
Saumya Dave
Three generations of women from the same Indian-American family struggle with disparate ambitions and beliefs about sacrifice that are brought into question by a non-traditional relationship, a colleague’s life-changing offer and a personal secret.
What Are You Going Through
Sigrid Nunez
A woman who is content to listen to the people she encounters talk about themselves is asked by one to do something extraordinary, in a novel by the New York Times-best-selling author.
When We Believed In Mermaids
Barbara O’Neal
When she discovers that her sister Josie, long thought dead, is alive, Kit, an ER doctor in Santa Cruz, beings a journey with the memories of her past to unearth the long-buried secrets and face the devastating truth that has kept them apart far too long.
With or Without You
Caroline Leavitt
A rock musician longing for stardom makes a difficult choice when his wife falls into a coma on the eve of his tour, before she wakes up with an incredible talent of her own.
The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop
Fannie Flagg
Taking a final visit to the ghost town where his mother Ruth’s Whistle Stop Café made its famous fried green tomatoes, Bud Threadgoode discovers new friends and surprises about the community’s women while triggering unexpected changes in his daughters’ lives.