Family dramas of the best kind

Here are some books you might enjoy if you like warm, funny and achingly human family dramas:

*The Family Man by Elinor Lipman Find this book in our catalog
"An hysterical phone call from his ex-wife and a familiar face in a photograph upend Henry Archer’s well-ordered life. They bring him back into contact with the child he adored, a short-term stepdaughter from a misbegotten marriage long ago. Henry is a lawyer, an old-fashioned man, gay, successful, lonely. Thalia is now twenty-nine, an actress, hopeful, estranged from her newly widowed crackpot mother - Denise, Henry’s ex. Hoping it will lead to better things for her career, Thalia agrees to pose as the girlfriend of a former sitcom star and current horror-movie luminary who is down on his romantic luck. When Thalia and her complicated social life move into the basement of Henry’s Upper West Side townhouse, she finds a champion in her long-lost father, and he finds new life—and maybe even new love—in the commotion." (catalog notes)
*About a Boy by Nick Hornby Find this book in our catalog
"Inventing a son got Will into a single parents support group, but rather than a fabulous new sex life, he found someone else's very real son--a 12-year-old with a lot to teach about being a grown up." (catalog notes)
*Step-Ball-Change : a novel by Jeanne Ray Find this book in our catalog
"With a ringing phone, Jeanne Ray’s charming and amusing new novel gets off to a rollicking start that never lets up. Not for a minute. On the other end of the phone is Caroline’s daughter, Kay, a public defender like her father, sobbing at the improbably good news that the richest, most eligible boy in Raleigh, North Carolina, has asked her to marry him. While Caroline and Tom are trying to digest this, the other phone, the “children’s line,” rings; it is Caroline’s sister, Taffy, hysterical over her husband’s decision to leave her for a woman two years younger than her daughter. Soon Taffy is wending her way up from Atlanta to seek solace in her sister’s home, even though the two have been separated by more than just geography for the past forty years. With her is her little dog, Stamp, who has a penchant for biting ankles and stealing hearts. Tom and Caroline quickly realize that the wedding their future son-in-law’s family is envisioning for nine-hundred-plus guests is to be their fiscal responsibility. To top it all off, the foundation of their home is in danger of collapsing and their contractor and his crew have all but moved in. It’s a thundering whirlwind of emotion that finally boils down to: Who is in love with whom? and Who’s going to get the next dance? Wise, funny, and impossible to put down, Step-Ball-Change is peopled with characters you feel you have known your whole life. It’s the kind of book that you can’t bear to see end." (catalog notes)
*Busy Woman Seeks Wife by Annie Sanders Find this book in our catalog
"When Alex Hill's demanding mother moves in with her, Alex realizes she needs someone more committed than a maid--what she needs is a "wife." Someone distinctly male shows up, and Alex can't help wondering if her new "wife" could perhaps have husband potential." (catalog notes)

Orange Prize

Home by Marilynne Robinson (Find this book in our catalog) was the judges' unanimous choice for this year's £30,000 (US$48,893) Orange Prize for best novel written by a woman, which was recently announced in a ceremony at London's Royal Festival Hall.

This is what it says about the book in our catalog: "Hundreds of thousands were enthralled by the luminous voice of John Ames in Gilead, Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer Prize winning novel. Home is an entirely independent, deeply affecting novel that takes place concurrently in the same locale, this time in the household of Reverend Robert Boughton, Ames's closest friend. Glory Boughton, aged thirty-eight, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Soon her brother, Jack the prodigal son of the family, gone for twenty years comes home too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with tormenting trouble and pain. Jack is one of the great characters in recent literature. A bad boy from childhood, an alcoholic who cannot hold a job, he is perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his traditionalist father, though he remains Boughton's most beloved child. Brilliant, lovable, and wayward, Jack forges an intense bond with Glory and engages painfully with Ames, his godfather and namesake. Homeis a moving and healing book about families, family secrets, and the passing of the generations, about love and death and faith. It is Robinson's greatest work, an unforgettable embodiment of the deepest and most universal emotions."