Showing results by publisher "Simon & Schuster Audio" in Family Life

Duc Tran, the eccentric founder of the Vietnamese sandwich chain Duc’s Sandwiches, has decided to retire. No one has heard from his wife, Evelyn, in two decades. She abandoned the family without a trace, and clearly doesn’t want anything to do with Duc, the business, or their kids. But the money has to go to someone. With the help of the shady family lawyer, Duc informs his five estranged adult children that to receive their inheritance, his four daughters must revitalize run-down shops in old-school Little Saigon locations across America: Houston, San Jose, New Orleans, and Philadelphia.

The breakout novel from the critically acclaimed author of the short story collections Who I Was Supposed to Be and Why They Run the Way They Do. When a middle school girl is abducted in broad daylight, a fellow student and witness to the crime copes with the tragedy in an unforgettable way.

Alice Pearse is a mostly happily married mother of three, an attentive daughter, an ambivalent dog owner, a part-time editor, a loyal neighbor, and a Zen commuter. She is not: a cook, a craftswoman, a decorator, an active PTA member, a natural caretaker, or the breadwinner. But, when her husband makes a radical career change, Alice is ready to lean in - and she knows exactly how lucky she is to land a job at Scroll, a hip, young start-up that promises to be the future of reading.

Josie may be the youngest sister, but she takes care of everyone. She is the left-brained scientist to her twin sisters’ right-brained artistic chaos. She makes sure their rent gets paid on time, they make their therapy appointments, and has also been their de-facto band manager since she was a teenager. When Ara, her middle sister (by a few minutes), calls from jail, it isn’t exactly a surprise, and Josie knows exactly how to snap into action.

Lucy Wakefield is a seemingly ordinary woman who does something extraordinary in a desperate moment: She takes a baby girl from a shopping cart and raises her as her own. It's a secret she manages to keep for over two decades - from her daughter, the babysitter who helped raise her, family, coworkers, and friends. When Lucy's now-grown daughter, Mia, discovers the devastating truth of her origins, she is overwhelmed by confusion and anger and determines not to speak again to the mother who raised her.

In this sharply funny solo debut, an aspiring lawyer is forced to work alongside the opposing counsel in her best friend’s divorce case, which leads to the biggest irreconcilable difference of all: love.

Perfect strangers Lucy and Greta have agreed to a house swap—and boy, are they going to regret it. Lucy’s hometown of Dallas has gone from home sweet home to vicious snake pit in the blink of an eye after her son makes a mistake he can’t undo. And Greta’s beloved flat in Berlin is suddenly up for grabs when her husband Otto takes a dream job in Texas without even telling her. In their rush to leave town, Lucy and Greta make a deal, pack their bags, and—thanks to martinis, desperation, and some very rusty German—have absolutely no idea what they’re getting themselves into.

At 23, Ruth Saunders headed west with her 70-year-old grandma in tow, hoping to be hired as a television writer. Four years later, she's hit the jackpot when she gets "The Call": the sitcom she wrote, The Next Big Thing, has gotten the green light, and Ruthie's going to be the show-runner. But her dreams of Hollywood happiness are threatened by demanding actors, number-crunching executives, an unrequited crush on a boss, and her grandmother's impending nuptials.

The last decade of Cannie's life has brought some surprises. Her life story, in fictional form, became an unexpected best-seller, and Cannie has since choosen to retreat from fame's fallout, writing science fiction under a pen name. Her daughter, Joy, has descended into the throes of moody adolescence, just in time for her bat mitzvah.

Pete and Jackie Hatch have been together for decades; they were high school sweethearts, although they didn’t marry until years after an explosive incident at the end of senior year broke them apart. Now in their 60s, with their only daughter grown and facing scary news about Jackie’s health, they travel to their Cape Cod hometown for Pete’s first book signing. But a disastrous encounter with an old schoolmate brings their long marriage to the breaking point and forces them to revisit the long-ago event that changed the trajectory of their lives.

Sally Proulx and her young boy have mysteriously disappeared in the stormy town of High River. Clare is hired to track them down, hoping against all odds to find them alive. But High River isn’t your typical town. It’s a place where women run to—women who want to escape their past. They run to Helen Haines, a matriarch who offers them safe haven and anonymity. Pretending to be Sally’s long-lost friend, Clare turns up and starts asking questions, but nothing prepares her for the swirl of deception and the depth of the lies.

George and Lizzie have radically different understandings of what love and marriage should be. George grew up in a warm and loving family - his father, an orthodontist, his mother, a stay-at-home mom - while Lizzie grew up as the only child of two famous psychologists who viewed her more as an in-house experiment than a child to love. Over the course of their marriage, nothing has changed - George is happy; Lizzie remains...unfulfilled.

From the time Brooke Green was seven years old, she has lived with the pain of losing her mother. Her father has done the best job he could in raising her, but a piece of her always felt empty. On the day of her father's funeral, her grandmother breaks the shocking news: Her mother, Sarah, is very much alive. She abandoned her family because she claimed she wasn't fit for motherhood. After doing some research, Brooke discovers her mother is living in Atlanta, enjoying a great career...and a brand-new family.

When Amanda Cooper steps foot out of jail, she's determined to never go back. Two years behind bars means she's missed her daughter, Taylor, turning into a teenager, and she doesn't want to lose another moment with her. But as a convicted con artist, Amanda has few options for getting out of Los Angeles and securing her dream life: predictable, boring, and bordered by a white picket fence. The trouble is Amanda's not the only one with a con. At every step of the way, someone is trying to pull her back into the game.

When World War II breaks out, Edith and Oskar Eberhardt move their family - their daughter, Marina; son-in-law, Franz; and granddaughters - out of Berlin and into a small house in the quiet town of Blumental, near Switzerland. A member of Hitler's cabinet, Oskar is gone most of the time, and Franz begins fighting in the war, so the women of the house are left to their quiet lives in the picturesque village. But life in Blumental isn't as idyllic as it appears.

In Toulouse, Louisiana, finding your one true love happens sometime around high school. If you're lucky, he might be the man you thought he was. But as four friends are about to find out, not every girl has luck on her side in this charming debut novel perfect for fans of The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and Desperate Housewives.

Carousel Court is the story of Nick and Phoebe Maguire, a young couple who move cross-country to Southern California in search of a fresh start for themselves and their infant son. They arrive at the worst possible economic time. Instead of landing in a beachside property, they find themselves cemented into the dark heart of foreclosure alley, surrounded by neighbors being drowned by their underwater homes. Nick and Phoebe each devise their own plan to claw their way back into the middle class and beyond.

Just hours after his wife and her entire family perish in the Christmas Eve tsunami in Brisbane, American expat and former police officer Frank Mercy goes out to join his volunteer rescue unit and pulls a little boy from a submerged car, saving the child's life with only seconds to spare. In that moment, Frank's own life is transformed. Not quite knowing why, Frank sidesteps the law when, instead of turning Ian over to the Red Cross, he takes the boy home to the Midwestern farm where he grew up.

A young mother surrenders her daughters. A loving family quickly adopts one while the other spends her turbulent youth in foster care. What happens when the sisters reunite 35 years later to find the woman who abandoned them? Amy Hatvany fearlessly explores complex family issues in her gripping, provocative new novel.

Would you live your life differently if you were given a second chance? Hannah, David, Connie, and Linda - four terminally ill patients - have been selected for the SUBlife pilot program, which will grant them brand-new, genetically perfect bodies that are exact copies of their former selves - without a single imperfection. Blemishes, scars, freckles, and wrinkles have all disappeared; their fingerprints are different; their vision is impeccable; and, most importantly, their illnesses have been cured.