Fiction A to Z
August 2025
Recent Releases
What Kind of Paradise
by Janelle Brown

Teenage Jane lives isolated from the outside world in a remote cabin with her beloved father, an enigmatic genius. After discovering disturbing information about him, she flees, finding herself in Silicon Valley in the 1990s. This twisty coming-of-age novel offers intriguing looks at extremism, technology, and humanity. Read-alikes: What Mother Won't Tell Me by Ivar Leon Menger; Godshot by Chelsea Jean Bieker.
Maine characters : a novel
by Hannah Orenstein

From beloved author Hannah Orenstein, this love letter to lake life is "the Parent Trap for adults," the story of two half-sisters who meet for the first time at their father's cabin in Maine after his unexpected death.
Kakigori Summer
by Emily Itami

Three sisters -- ambitious London finance expert Rei; single mom Kiki, who works at a care home; and young pop star Ai -- reunite at their Japanese childhood home after Ai is caught up in a scandal. Over the summer, they support each other and navigate memories of their troubled mother and their early years, where being half-British and half-Japanese made them outsiders. For fans of: Emily Giffin's The Summer Pact. 
The Homemade God
by Rachel Joyce

Not long after their larger-than-life 76-year-old artist father suddenly marries a 27-year-old they've never met, the four Kemp siblings learn he has drowned in an Italian lake he'd swam in for decades. Descending on the vacation villa during a sweltering heatwave, they meet their enigmatic stepmother, question their dad's mysterious death, hunt for his unfinished masterpiece, and confront long-hidden familial wounds. Read-alike: Lynn Steger Strong's Flight.
The Accidental Favorite
by Fran Littlewood

Gathering to celebrate their mother's 70th birthday at a posh rented house in the English countryside, three middle-aged sisters, each with their own families and issues, are shocked when an unexpected event indicates who their father's favorite child is. Told from multiple points of view over various time periods, this is the moving latest by the author of Amazing Grace Adams. Read-alike: Catherine Newman's Sandwich.
These Summer Storms
by Sarah MacLean

After their billionaire patriarch's death, the Storms come together at their New England island. There, they are introduced to Jack, their father's right-hand man and daughter Alice's recent one-night-stand, who says they must all complete individual tasks or no one inherits anything. Bestselling historical romance author Sarah MacLean delivers a fun contemporary family novel that will please fans of HBO's Succession.
The Girls Who Grew Big
by Leila Mottley

In the Florida Panhandle, young mothers support each other amid upheavals while others judge and put obstacles in their paths. Three of them narrate: de facto leader Simone, a 20-year-old mother of twins who's pregnant again; newcomer Adela, a champion teen swimmer from Indiana who's been sent to live with her grandmother; and determined Emory, who brings her infant to high school with her. Read-alikes: Sarai Johnson's Grown Women; Brit Bennett's The Mothers.
The boxcar librarian : a novel
by Brianna Labuskes

During the Great Depression, Works Progress Administration editor Millie Lang is sent to Montana to investigate sabotage at her project and uncovers a mystery surrounding Alice Monroe, her Boxcar Library, and the disappearance of librarian Colette Durand years earlier.
The manor of dreams : a novel
by Christina Li

A haunting novel about the secrets that lie in wait in the crumbling mansion of a former Hollywood starlet, and the intertwined fates of the two Chinese-American families fighting to inherit it.
A promise to Arlette
by Serena Burdick

With the scope of a saga and the heart of a thriller, this is an evocative historical novel following a married couple whose idyllic 1950s suburban life is threatened by the promises they made during World War II. Sidney and Ida Whipple are living the suburban 1950s American dream, complete with two children and a white picket fence, which didn't seem possible when they first met at the height of WWII in France. Reveling in the present, they can almost convince themselves that their past is behind them. But when their neighbors show off a newly purchased Man Ray photograph, Ida comes face-to-face with the person she loved and lost in the war: Arlette. Only Ida knows the truth about the photograph, and why it can't possibly be authentic. In an attempt to right past wrongs, she travels to California vowing to confront Man Ray. Sidney wakes to find his wife is missing, the photograph in question stolen, and all the secrets they've tried to bury come rushing back. With his daughters in tow, he travels after Ida, hoping to forge a new path together. Instead, their sojourn leads to a shocking discovery that could pull their family apart in this sweeping, unforgettable story about love and friendship, trust and betrayal, and how promises made, broken, and ultimately renewed, can determine our fate.
Contact your librarian for more great books!
Plainfield Area Public Library
15025 S. Illinois St.
Plainfield, Illinois 60544
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