Book List: Family Secrets

Family is one of the most important things. Blood runs thicker than water, they say. But sometimes a secret can tear a family apart….

• These Ghosts Are Family by Maisy Card

Genre: Historical Fiction

Average Goodreads Rating: 3.70

Stanford Solomon is actually Abel Paisley, a man who faked his own death and stole the identity of his best friend. Now, Stanford is dying and is about to meet his firstborn daughter who shows up to work as a home health worker.

• The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larrson

Genre: Mystery

Average Goodreads Rating: 4.15

Harriet Vanger dissapeared forty years ago. Her uncle hasn’t given up looking for the truth, though. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist, to investigate. He is aided by tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander.

• Ghost Wood Song by Erica Waters

Genre: Fantasy

Average Goodreads Rating: 3.77

Shady Grove inherited her father’s ability to call ghosts from their grave by playing the fiddle. But she knows that fiddle brings nothing but darkness. But when her brother is accused of murder, she knows she needs to play it.

• The Love of My Life by Rosie Walsh

Genre: Thriller

Average Goodreads Rating: 4.07

Emma loves her husband, Leo, and their daughter, Ruby. But everything she told Leo has been a lie. When Emma comes down with a life-threatining illness, Leo does what he does best: researches everything he can about Emma’s life so he can write about her. But he discovers even her name is a lie….

• The Lost Vintage by Ann Mah

Genre: Historical Fiction

Average Goodreads Rating: 4.04

Kate is trying to pass the Master of Wine examination. She travels to Burgundy, to spend time at her family’s vineyard and study. While there, she helps her cousin clean out the cellar where she discovers a hidden room containing a cot, some Resistance pamphlets, and an enormous cache of valuable wine. From this, she discovers so many family secrets, including a relative she didn’t even know she had.

• The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson

Genre: Humor

Average Goodreads Rating: 3.60

Performance artists Caleb and Camille Fang dedicate themselves to the art of subverting normality. Now that Buster and Annie Fang have grown up, they find it difficult with their parents’ oddities. When the kids are forced to return home, they get wrapped up in their parents last performance–their Magnum Opus.

• Gretchen by Shannon Kirk

Genre: Thriller

Average Goodreads Rating: 3.68

Lucy has been on the run with her mother since she was a toddler. Thirteen years later (and eleven states), they seem to find the perfect hideaway. An isolated place in the New Hampshire woods that they share with a pianist and his daughter, Gretchen. Lucy might finally have her first friend. But Gretchen and her father have secrets of their own—and an obsession with puzzles that draws Lucy into a terrifying new game of hide-and-seek.

• There’s a Word for That by Sloane Tannen

Genre: Contemporary

Average Goodreads Rating: 3.72

Meet the Keslers: Marty, a retired LA film producer with an opiod addiction; his daughter, Janine, former child star; the granchild Hailey, who always feels inferior to her twin sister; Bunny Small, Marty’s first wife who lives in London with writers block and a drinking problem. Between Marty’s pill popping and Bunny’s drinking, the family ends up coming together at Directions, Malibu’s most exclusive rehab center.