Addie has always been running--until she gets pregnant and makes a choice.

"North Carolina, 1960s. Lorraine has it all-the boyfriend, the good grades, the white picket fence, the ambition to become the first woman astronaut. But when she-the darling girl-next-door-becomes pregnant, she learns that love is conditional and ambition has its limits. In an effort to hide their daughter's secret shame, her parents send her away to a maternity home-a common solution for "wayward" girls during that time period. Lorraine soon realizes...

"Eighteen years old, pregnant, and working as a pizza delivery girl in suburban Los Angeles, our charmingly dysfunctional heroine is deeply lost and in complete denial about it all. She's grieving the death of her father (who she has more in common with than she'd like to admit), avoiding her supportive mom and loving boyfriend, and flagrantly ignoring her future. Her world is further upended when she becomes obsessed with Jenny, a stay-at-home mother...

"A dazzling debut novel from an exciting new voice, The Mothers is a surprising story about young love, a big secret in a small community--and the things that ultimately haunt us most. Set within a contemporary black community in Southern California, Brit Bennett's mesmerizing first novel is an emotionally perceptive story about community, love, and ambition. It begins with a secret. "All good secrets have a taste before you tell them, and if we'd...

"Cole Blake, son of Landon and Ashley Baxter Blake, is months away from going off to college and taking the first steps towards his dream--a career in medicine. But as he starts his final semester of high school he meets Elise, a mysterious new girl who captures his attention--and heart--from day one. Elise has her heart set on mending her wild ways and rediscovering the good girl she used to be. But not long after the semester starts, she discovers...

"Thirty-nine-year-old Adrienne is desperate to be a mother. And this time, nothing is going to get in her way. Sure, her husband, Gabe, is ambivalent about fatherhood. But she knows that once he holds their baby, he'll come around. He's just feeling a little threatened, that's all. Because once upon a time, it was Gabe that Adrienne wanted more than anything; she was willing to do anything. . . . But that was half a lifetime ago. She's a different...

"It's Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, and thirty-three-year-old unemployed Amadeo Padilla has been given the part of Jesus in the Good Friday procession. He is preparing feverishly for this role when his fifteen-year-old daughter Angel shows up pregnant on his doorstep and disrupts his plans. Their reunion sets her own life down a startling path. Vivid, tender, darkly funny, and beautifully rendered, The Five Wounds spans the...

In 1937 Ireland, unwed mothers were crimnals and giving birth was a considered a crime. Mary Margaret Joyce is one such child, lucky enough to have survived the harsh, cruel conditions of Certified Industrial School Saint Thomas, in Ballinasloe.

"A heartrending story about a young mother's fight to keep her daughter and the winds of fortune that tear them apart, by the New York Times bestselling author of The Nature of Fragile Things and The Last Year of the War. California, 1938--When she loses her parents in an accident, sixteen-year-old Rosanne is taken in by the owners of the vineyard where she has lived her whole life as the vinedresser's daughter. She moves into Celine and Truman Calvert's...

In the same vein of Kalisha Buckhanon's critically-acclaimed debut novel Upstate, again she shares an emotionally beautiful story about today's youth that magnifies the unforgettable power of hope and the human spirit. Buckhanon takes us to Chicago, 1992, and into the life of fifteen-year-old Shivana Montgomery, who believes all Black women wind up the same: single and raising children alone, like her mother. Until the sudden visit of her beautiful...