Contemporary Fiction

A suburban mother raising three teenage children and running a landscaping business has an ordinary life with ordinary problems until the family is engulfed in a violent tragedy.

In this novel of drama and satire, the bombing of the Great Ape Language Lab and the subsequent removal of their bonobo apes to a new life on reality TV brings together married reporter John Thigpen and primate-loving scientist Isabel Duncan.

Two couples, an undocumented Mexican husband and wife camping in a canyon and well-heeled Americans living in a gated community, cross paths repeatedly and usually unknowingly in this novel set in Southern California.

Sweet ghetto nerd Oscar dreams of being a famous writer… and of falling in love. He may not get either wish, due to a curse that’s dominated his Dominican family for generations. A Pulitzer Prize winner.

An autistic teen narrates this story of his adventure trying to solve a mystery surrounding the discovery of the murdered corpse of his neighbor’s pet poodle.

A college-aged woman is faced with difficult decisions when her boyfriend dives off a pier and becomes a quadriplegic. Set in Madison, with many small details local readers will love.

A literary thriller with a tricky, intriguing premise and a fictional backdrop from The Great Gatsby begins with the attempted rape and murder of a young woman bicyclist on a rural Vermont road and involves the mysterious past of a homeless man.

Young, independent Taylor heads west from Kentucky to Tucson, seeking a life change. Young, independent Taylor heads west from Kentucky to Tucson, seeking a life change.