Looking for heartfelt, multigenerational family stories? These five books grapple with loss, heritage, sibling dynamics, motherhood, and childhood.
BACKSTITCH by Idrissa Simmonds-Nastili
9781250422712 | 2/23/27
Brooklyn, 1996. Serenity Marcelin and her six-year-old daughter, Jouvay, have spent the summer reeling from an unexpected, devastating loss. Just when the two of them are beginning to find solace within their new family dynamic, Jouvay disappears into a crowd over Labor Day weekend and Serenity’s entire world changes in an instant.
In order to understand the events leading to Jouvay’s sudden disappearance, Serenity must unearth the long-buried secrets—and ghosts—of her family’s shocking past.
Told through the eyes of the unforgettable Marcelin women and the people closest to them, Idrissa Simmonds-Nastili’s BACKSTITCH embroiders a profound tale of hope and resistance, transporting readers to the city of Jérémie during the years of the US occupation of Haiti and to the vibrant streets of New York. A sweeping story of motherhood, sisterhood, resistance, generational trauma, and liberation, this novel charts the lives of the ghosts, secrets, and languages we can’t escape from—even when we try to bury them.
MINBAK by Ela Lee
9781250448262 | 2/16/27
Korea, 1985: Hana Park’s future is bright. A star student and beloved daughter, she dreams of a life beyond working at her family’s local minbak. After a devastating encounter with a foreign guest, Hana sheds her past and flees to London to capture the future she so desperately desires, leaving her heartbroken mother Youngja to pick up the pieces.
London, 2008: When her husband dies unexpectedly in the midst of the global financial crisis, Hana is left with a pile of debt and no way to pay it off. With her teenage daughter Ada and a declining Youngja relying on her, she has no choice but to move her family into one bedroom and open the rest of their home to paying guests as a minbak.
As tragedy brings the three women together, old tensions surface, and the family’s long-hidden secrets threaten to erupt. With no one to turn to but each other, Hana, Youngja, and Ada must confront their complex history, crossing continents and generations to find truth, forgiveness, and compassion.
MOTHERSICK by Lottie Hazell
9781250456847 | 4/27/27
Mara and Nell will never be able to forget the day their parents’ marriage fell apart. They declared their family of origin wrecked, and the traditional structure a complete farce. From then on, all they had was each other. So, in their twenties, they made a pact: no marriages, no babies, and no repeating their parents’ mistakes.
But a few years later, Mara does the unthinkable—she falls in love and becomes a mother, leaving Nell behind. Mara wishes that Nell could relate to her new life—its terrifying claustrophobia and unexpected joys—but Nell hardly recognizes her sister or the path she has chosen. Their pact now irrevocably broken, Nell throws herself into a relationship with an undeniable catch of a man without asking whether they want the same things or if she’s willing to compromise her hard-won independence. A cosmic fork in the road has changed everything between the sisters, and just when they need her the most, they’re confronted by the shadow of their mother’s absence and the secrets they’ve all been keeping from each other.
From the acclaimed author of PIGLET comes a profound intergenerational family story about the life altering question of whether to embrace, reject, or redefine motherhood. For fans of Claire Lombardo and Lily King, MOTHERSICK explores the enduring and infuriating spell of sisterhood and the beauty, captivity, and optimism of family in its many forms.
THE HOUSE AT HANGER HILL by Ashleigh Mounser
9781250452498 | 2/16/27
For as long as Betty can remember, Hanger Hill has been more than a house: it’s a place haunted by whispers. Some of the rumors are vague. Others are disturbingly specific. She remembers only some of it… the flick of a cat’s tale. The smell of rot. Screams coming from below the kitchen floor. Pages of old diaries curling amongst flames.
On Betty’s eighteenth birthday, she finds the courage to ask her strange, reclusive mother to tell the real story of her family: her mother had been a young woman, reeling from the suicide of her grandmother, when she inherited her family home in the town where her troubled sister drowned. Moving from the city with her long-term boyfriend, she began renovating the house in which she spent so much of her childhood. At first, she was convinced that the project would lift her out of her debilitating grief, but instead she found herself isolated, soon overcome by creeping solitude as her relationship broke down and tensions within the house rose.
As her mother spins her story, Betty evades questions from the police officer who is circling, convinced that the case of the deaths at Hanger Hill should be reopened. Then, she discovers her great-grandmother’s diaries, and the passages inside reveal a terrible truth at the heart of her family.
DUMPLING THERAPY by Miranda Brown
9781250396853 | 1/5/27
As a teen growing up in San Francisco, Miranda Brown noticed her outspoken immigrant mother didn’t act—or cook—like other Chinese mothers. Butter invaded coffee. Stinky fruits found their way into ice cream. Brown dreamed of making dumplings the way “normal” Chinese moms did.
Years later, after her mother’s death, Brown became a mother herself. Determined to master the classic Chinese cooking her mother never taught her, she discovered something unexpected: even the dumpling may have foreign roots. The revelation propelled her deep into the hidden histories of China’s most beloved dishes, tracing the lineage of everything from the chewy noodles of Beijing to her favorite braised Cantonese tofu to the chop suey she once scorned as a teenager.
But the search for culinary origins unlocked a more intimate mystery. From the fields of ancient China to the kitchens of 1980s San Francisco, Brown pieces together her family story across two millennia. Through secret letters and centuries-old recipes, she uncovers not just the histories behind beloved dishes, but her mother’s own mixed heritage and adventurousness. The woman who once seemed to cook “wrong” left a richer inheritance than Brown had ever imagined.
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