MESSY FAMILIES, HOLIDAY EDITION
If holiday gatherings have you searching for sanity-saving strategies, try these books about dysfunctional families—you may just feel better about your own.
If the main characters of
A Proposal They Can’t Refuse (Harlequin) don’t marry each other, their grandfathers promise to sell the building that houses both of their businesses. A romcom that delivers heat, humor and heart? We’re in. $16
Michael Leviton recounts growing up in a family
that never told lies (an “honesty cult”) in To Be Honest (Abrams Press), a memoir filled with laugh-out-loud moments and cringeworthy passages as Leviton tells the truth no matter the cost. $26
In Dava Shastri’s Last Day (Grand Central Publishing) by Kirthana Ramisetti, a terminal illness has forced one of the wealthiest women in the
In SANKOFA (Catapult) by Chibundu Onuzo, Anna is a 40-somethingyear-old mixedrace woman in Britain who discovers her absent father is the leader— some may say dictator—of a West African nation. It’s a beautiful and propulsive exploration of identity, belonging, race äñç aeòïòõìöð $26
world to summon her children to a remote island, where she discloses the news of her health and announces she’s already leaked her death to the press. Pick this up for an inventive plot, complex family dynamics and what it means to leave a legacy. $28
Three months after the Queen's death, royal biographer Andrew Morton (who wrote the bombshell 1992 book, Diana: Her True Story) is back with The Queen (Grand Central Publishing), a comprehensive, behind-the-scenes look at the sovereign’s relationship with her husband, children, grandchildren, corgis, horses and more. $30
After college, Chrysta Bilton learned her father was a prolific sperm donor, leaving her with dozens of half-siblings. Bilton’s memoir, Normal Family (Little, Brown and Company), chronicles that shocking experience, a childhood with her lesbian mother and her
own nuclear family, to show there’s no such thing as “normal.” $29
Korede is used to cleaning up her sister Ayoola’s messes— literally; she cleans up bloodstains from Ayoola’s murders. But after Korede learns Ayoola is eyeing her crush, she must reckon with her sister’s deadly actions and consider what she can do to prevent them in My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite. $16
Jessi Hempel’s family excelled at keeping secrets, until they all came out—she and her father as gay, her sister as bisexual, her brother as transgender and her mother as the survivor of a traumatic experience with an alleged serial killer. The Family Outing (HarperOne) is a searing memoir about transformation and the costs of secrecy. $28