The Christmas season offers little cheer for Eileen Dunlop, an unassuming yet disturbed young woman trapped between her role as her alcoholic father's caregiver in a home whose squalor is the talk of the neighborhood and a day job as a secretary at the boys' prison, filled with its own quotidian horrors. Consumed by resentment and self-loathing, Eileen tempers her dreary days with perverse fantasies and dreams of escaping to the big city. In the meantime,...

Little Red Chicken wants Papa to read her a bedtime story, but interrupts him almost as soon as he begins each tale.

On the hot Texas army base she calls home, Katie spends the lazy days of her summer waiting: waiting to grow up; waiting for Dickie Mack to fall in love with her; waiting for her breasts to blossom; waiting for the beatings to stop. Since their mother died, Katie and her older sister, Diane, have struggled to understand their increasingly distant, often violent father. While Diane escapes into the arms of her boyfriend, Katie hides in her room or...

"Astrid is training to go to space! But as she builds her shuttle, cooks astronaut food, and practices floating in zero gravity, Dad tells Astrid that the ship's construction is too dangerous, she's too little to cook alone, and she's not allowed to flood the bathroom. That night, when Astrid dreams she's an astronaut, the challenges she encounters are overwhelming. Astrid realizes she isn't as ready as she thought. Back on Earth, Astrid turns to...

"When tragedy strikes, Tess drops out of school and moves in with her funeral director dad, forcing her to examine life, death, and the boy she thought she knew and loved in a brand new light"--

The family routine is upset during Ramona's year in second grade when her father unexpectedly loses his job.

Though Yeva grew up with the city's highest aristocrats, far from her father's old lodge, she knows that the forest holds secrets and that her father is the only hunter who's ever come close to discovering them. So when her father loses his fortune and moves Yeva and her sisters back to the outskirts of town, Yeva is secretly relieved. Out in the wilderness, there's no pressure to make idle chatter with vapid baronessas...or to submit to marrying...

"A resonant new novel about a father's efforts to rescue his young daughters by the critically-acclaimed author of the New York Times bestseller A Land More Kind Than Home"--

"Madysen Powell has always been a forgiving person, but when her supposedly dead father shows up in Nome, Alaska, her gift for forgiveness is tested. With the recent loss of her mother, she searches for answers, leaning on Granny Beaufort, a neighbor in town, who listens with a kind heart. Still, Madysen is restless and dreams of performing her music around the world. The arrival of a traveling show could prove just the chance she needs, and the manager...

"A short epic novel about art, grief, and love by Sheila Heti, the author of Motherhood and How Should A Person Be"--