Realistic Fiction Adults

Do you remember how Steel Magnolias made you cry? Grab a box of tissues and settle in for a story about broken hearts, an overbearing mother, and a young man's path to redemption. After receiving devastating news, rising adjunct professor, Gabby Sullivan, returns to her hometown to be there for her family. But fate has other plans when she bumps into her high school sweetheart, Brock Carter-Banks. As they reconnect, old feelings resurface, and they both realize that they never stopped loving each other. However, their path to happiness is anything but easy. Gabby's successful career is in ...

B’onca always knew how to get by. And then her daughter is born. She wouldn’t trade Mia for anything, but there is never enough cash to go around. When their gentrifying Memphis neighborhood results in higher prices and then an eviction notice, B’onca’s already fragile world spirals. Desperate to make things right, B’onca forges a risky plan to help pay the bills. But one wrong move could cost B’onca—and her family—everything.

Cassie Perera is a star student in St. Luke's junior class. But the new school year brings an unwelcome surprise—the return to St. Luke's of Cassie's former friend, Ben, who left a few years ago after a homophobic bullying incident Cassie knows she didn't do enough to prevent. Still harboring guilt from her inaction, Cassie decides, in her usual, overzealous way, to team up with the neighboring public school to found an underground Gender and Sexuality Alliance—as a complicated strategy for making things up to Ben.

You don't know who you are. But they do. You wake up on the subway tracks in Los Angeles with no memory of who you are. A backpack is at your feet. Inside is a fresh set of clothes, $1,000 in cash, a phone number, and the instructions "Do not call the police." As you try to figure out your identity, the questions swirl. What is your name? How did you get here? What is the meaning of the tattoo on your wrist of a blackbird and the code FNV02198? There is only one thing you know for sure: People are trying to kill you.

If Susie Jamieson can't take a selfie, she checks her reflection in windows, spoons, car chrome - anything available, really. So when her mother gives her an exquisite full-length mirror that once belonged to her grandmother, Sukie is thrilled. So thrilled that she doesn't listen to her mother's warning: "This mirror will be your best friend and worst enemy."

The ups and downs mean you’re alive. Sometimes, life knocks you down and it gets harder to pick yourself back up. Whether it’s for family, friends or themselves, these realistic characters continue on. The rollercoaster of life is harsh to them, but they persevere in their own ways. Stories by Toni Mobley, Laura Ruth Loomis, Katie Kent, Douglas Allen Gohl, Deborah Henley, and J.E. Feldman.

It's been six months since Cassidy Rain Berghoff’s best friend, Galen, died, and up until now she has succeeded in shutting herself off from the world. But when controversy arises around Aunt Georgia’s Indian Camp in their mostly white midwestern community, Rain decides to face the outside world again, with a new job photographing the campers for her town’s newspaper.

Samantha Taylor is not your average teenager. From the moment she could speak, her first words were filled with questions of the way things worked around her. With a father who fostered her love of science, mirroring his own, Sam is fascinated with genetics and computer programming, two things that have been known to get her into trouble from time to time. While her eccentricities might make it difficult to make friends at her school, she does have one friend, Charlie, a teenage boy who dreams of one day becoming a paleontologist due to his obsession with all things primordial. Especially ...

This wasn't the way it was supposed to go. You're just a typical 15-year-old sophomore, an average guy named Kyle Chase. This can't be happening to you. But then, how do you explain all the blood? How do you explain how you got here in the first place? There had to have been signs, had to have been some clues it was coming. Did you miss them, or ignore them? Maybe if you can figure out where it all went wrong, you can still make it right. Or is it already too late? Think fast, Kyle....

After Kiran Noorani’s mom died, Kiran vowed to keep her dad and sister, Amira, close—to keep her family together. But when Amira announces that she’s dating someone, Kiran’s world is turned upside down. Deen Malik is thrilled that his brother, Faisal, has found a great girlfriend. Maybe a new love will give Faisal a new lease on life, and Deen can stop feeling guilty for the reason that Faisal needs a do-over in the first place.

16-year-old, Irish-born Niamh has just arrived in London for the summer, and quickly discovers that girls who look frighteningly like her are being attacked. Determined to make it through her Drama Course, Niamh is placed at the Victorian Museum to put her drama skills to the test, and there she meets Tommy: he’s kind, fun, attentive, and really hot! Nonetheless, there's something eerie about the museum... As present-day serial attacker and sinister Victorian history start to collide, Niamh realizes that things are not as they seem. Will she be next?

Josh's father has gone missing without a trace, and Gran's ready to call social services. If Josh wants to keep himself and and his little brother, Twig, out of the system, he'll have to take to the streets and track down his dad. But when Josh digs too deep, his dad's old accomplices catch up to Josh and plunge him into a dangerous underground where putting his trust in the wrong person could number Josh in a growing pile of bodies.

Set in a futuristic New York City after a catastrophic flood called the Wash Out, The Ward is the story of 16-year-old Renata Dane, a daredevil champion racer who will risk everything she has to take care of her sick foster sister, Aven. Ren's sister is suffering from the Blight, an incurable, deadly illness thought to be caused by years of pollution. The disease is ripping through the Ward - formerly known as downtown Manhattan - and since the region is home to the poor and the vagrant, little is being done to help the sick.

Gilmore Girls meets vibrant New Delhi in this thoughtful and hilarious new novel about a teen facing family expectations, relationship complications, and hidden secrets in a new country - sprinkled with Sheba Karim’s signature wit and steamy romance, and perfect for listeners who loved Mary H. K. Choi’s Emergency Contact and Adib Khorram’s Darius the Great Is Not Okay.

Candace used to be the one to take the easy way—but after three seasons working at a crazy amusement park, challenge seems to be her middle name. Then why does the idea of leaving her hometown to attend college on the other side of the country scare her so much? It doesn’t help that her boyfriend, Kurt, and her friend Tamara are both encouraging her to attend the local college and just relax. Or that the more she dreams about her future, the less she sees Kurt being a part of it.

Queer actor Lily Ashton has found fame playing lesbian warrior Morgantha on the hit TV show Galaxy Spark. Lily knows how little representation queer girls have, so when the showrunners reveal that Morgantha’s on-screen love interest, Alietta, is going to be killed off, Lily orchestrates an elaborate fake-dating scheme with the standoffish actress who plays her, to generate press and ensure a happy ending for the #Morganetta ship.

This summer is going to be different. After getting her heart shattered, multiplatinum pop icon Lily Ross is taking herself out of the spotlight and heading to a small island in middle-of-nowhere Maine with her closest friends. She has three months to focus on herself, her music, her new album. Anything but guys.

Sixteen-year-old Mafi Shahin is well-aware that life is not always fair. If it was fair, her parents might allow her to hang out with a member of the male species, other than her cat Mr. Meowgi. If it was fair, her crush and basketball hottie Jalen Thomas might see her as more than just her brother's kid sister. And if it was fair, her baba’s brother and wife would be able to leave Afghanistan and come to America.

In the early morning hours of June 5, 1968, The Girl in the Polka-Dot Dress ran down a fire escape, exclaiming, “We shot him! We shot him!” “Who?” asked a witness. “We’ve shot Senator Kennedy.” 2018 – Fifty Years Later. Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Frank Caron is enjoying a highpoint in his career and the excitement of his new relationship with Sasha Frye. An amateur hypnotist, Sasha convinces him to let her treat his mother’s dementia with hypnotherapy. It’s supposed to do wonders for dementia-sufferers, but it backfires. Horribly. Under hypnosis, his ...

Tech leaders warned AI is an existential threat to humanity, but not in the way you've heard until now. (Science Fiction AI Artificial Intelligence Action Adventure Crime Mystery Futuristic Technology - Book 1) (Winner – 2025 Pacific Book Award - Best Science Fiction) (Firebird Award Honorable mention 4/15/25 – Science Fiction) In the near future, the world has changed in wonderful and dangerous ways. Tara invented a sentient AI, but it was lost in a fire. Many accidental deaths are happening throughout the country. The only problem is that many of them are government agents or ...