• Genre Guide
  • Staff-Created List

Book Links: Relationship Fiction

These character-driven stories emphasize the importance of people's relationships, whether with lovers, family, friends, colleagues, or community. Storylines range from issue-driven and thought-provoking to lighter and more humorous. Romantic love may be present, but it is not the main driver of the story.

20 items

  • Struggling to evacuate Savannah as a Category Four hurricane bears down, Ramona, along with her entourage, navigates police check points, bathroom emergencies, demands from her boss, torrential downpours and calls from her cheating ex,…
    BookNew York : Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, 2022. — F Pru
  • Twenty years after secretly causing panic in her hometown through the written word and artwork, along with a fellow loner named Zeke, famous author, mom and wife Frances Eleanor Budge gets a call that brings her past rushing back,…
    BookNew York, NY : Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2022] — F WILSON, Kevin
  • Two best friends who grew up in Karachi must confront their differences 30 years later when two troubling figures from their past resurface.
    BookNew York : Riverhead Books, 2022. — FICTION SHAMSIE Kamila
  • After her mother's death, the narrator, a writer, recalls all that made her complicated mother extraordinary and even though she wants to respect her mother's nearly pathological sense of privacy, must decide whether chronicling this…
    BookNew York, NY : Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2022] — FICTION McCracken, Elizabeth
  • In Edmonton, Alberta, a queer Indigenous doctoral student steps away from his dissertation to write a novel. Returning home, Billy-Ray Belcourt's unnamed narrator chronicles a series of encounters: a heart-to-heart with fellow doctoral…
    BookNew York, NY : W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., [2022] — FIC BEL
  • Visiting an octogenarian relative in Italy who declares that she will break a family curse that has prevented all second-born daughters from marrying, three second daughters embark on a journey to help their great-aunt fulfill her final…
    BookNew York : Berkley, 2020. — F SPI
  • A haunting novel about a couple dealing with the aftermath of a disastrous deep-sea mission.
    BookNew York : Flatiron Books, 2022. — F Arm
  • After the death of their parents, three Muslim American sisters are left to raise one another, and as the youngest, Kausar, grows up, she must choose whether to remain in the life of love, sorrow and codependency she's known or carve out a…
    BookNew York : One World, [2022] — F ASGHAR, Fatimah
  • In a deeply emotional novel of family, cultural heritage, and forgiveness, estranged sisters wrestle with the choices they’ve made and confront circumstances beyond their control.
    BookSeattle : Lake Union Publishing, [2022] — FICTION BENTLEY Cade
  • A kaleidoscopic debut about a tight-knit community of Mexican and Filipino American families on the Texas coast.
    BookNew York : Henry Holt and Company, 2022. — FICTION GARZA Kimberly
  • Getting to know Penny, the daughter she placed for adoption 16 years ago, 35-year-old Mika Suzuki finds unexpected love with Penny's widowed father and finally has a chance to have the life and family she's always wanted until her…
    BookNew York, NY : William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2022] — FICTION JEAN Emiko
  • Five cousins must band together to decide the future of their shared inheritance—the family’s sprawling property in Stowe, Vermont—but with each at a different place in life, reaching a unanimous decision seems unlikely. With little in…
    BookSeattle : Lake Union Publishing, [2022] — FICTION PARKER Liz
  • Three sets of parents become intertwined after adopting four biological siblings and making a commitment to keep the children connected.
    BookNew York : G. P. Putnam's Sons, an imprint of Penguin Random House, [2022] — FIC BRO
  • Riley Brighton, always eclipsed by her older sister, leaves her biracial Chinese American family after a calamity rocks their world and sets off across the globe in search of answers about the people she thought she knew best.
    Book[New York] : Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, [2022] — FICTION WONG Cecily
  • Each navigating love, sex and the one night that changes it all, three Muslim best friends, Malak, Kees and Jenna, as their lives begin to take different paths, must find a way back to each other as they reconcile faith, family and…
    BookNew York : Grand Central Publishing, 2022. — FICTION El-WARDANY
  • One night in New York City's Chinatown, a woman is at a work reunion dinner with former colleagues when she excuses herself to buy a pack of cigarettes. On her way back, she runs into a former boyfriend. And then another. And . . .…
    BookNew York : MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022. — FIC CROSLEY
  • Constantly compared to her white middle-class peers, a young Jamaican-British woman in London makes a series of questionable decisions in the aftermath of a messy breakup before challenging herself to figure out who she wants to be.
    BookNew York : Scout Press, 2019. — F CAR
  • Losing her firefighter father in a school tragedy, Ginny hides what she knows about the incident for decades before a scandal involving her husband threatens to destroy everything.
    BookNew York, NY : William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2020] — F DEL
  • After inheriting her grandmother's restaurant, Natalie Tan returns home to discover her childhood neighborhood in rough shape. She devises a plan to save the place she loves, and with a little magic and her grandmother's recipes, she might…
    BookNew York : Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2019. — F LIM
  • Confident that her best days are still ahead, a successful businesswoman relies on close friends and her resourcefulness when an unexpected loss turns her world upside down.
    BookNew York : Ballantine Books, [2020] — FICTION MCMILLAN Terry