Including More Than 450 Adoptee-Recommended Titles!

Category: Fiction

  • When the Ocean Flies

    When the Ocean Flies

    by Heather G. Marshall

    An email from a stranger tells Alison Earley that her natural father, whom she has known for only six years, has died suddenly. What begins as a short trip back to Scotland for a funeral soon becomes a journey that puts adoption, sexuality, and identity…

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  • Second Choices: A Story of Belonging and Finding Home

    Second Choices: A Story of Belonging and Finding Home

    by June Wright

    Elise, an adoptee, had always felt like a second choice. When she fell in love with and married Evan, she believed she was finally someone’s first choice. She longed for a place to feel validated, loved, and, most importantly, fit in. But Evan had demons…

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  • Phantom Parents: Memoir of an Adoptee

    Phantom Parents: Memoir of an Adoptee

    by David Enker

    An unusual adoption, a gruesome family discovery, a lonesome journey through North America, a miraculous death escape at the 7/7 bombings in the London Underground and a life-altering diagnosis are just some of the ingredients in this collection of short stories and illustrations. This book will…

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  • Sanctuaries

    Sanctuaries

    by Vince Sgambati

    Gianni, a gay adoptee, comes of age in a time when adoption and same-sex love are not easily discussed or accepted. Sanctuaries is a tender story of love and healing, set against the larger turmoil of the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, Stonewall, and the…

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  • Seoulmates

    Seoulmates

    by Jen Frederick

    When Hara Wilson lands in Seoul to find her birth mother, she doesn’t plan on falling in love with the first man she lays eyes on, but Choi Yujun is irresistible. If his broad shoulders and dimples weren’t enough, Choi Yujun is the most genuine,…

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  • The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption

    The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption

    by Shannon Gibney

    Part memoir, part speculative fiction, this novel explores the often surreal experience of growing up as a mixed-Black transracial adoptee. Dream Country author Shannon Gibney returns with a new book woven from her true story of growing up as the adopted Black daughter of white parents…

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  • The Sense of Wonder

    The Sense of Wonder

    by Matthew Salesses

    An Asian American basketball star walks into a gym. No one recognizes him, but everyone stares anyway. It is the start of a joke but what is the punchline? When Won Lee, the first Asian American in the NBA, stuns the world in a seven-game…

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  • Jules Fae: A Story of Adoption and Reunion

    Jules Fae: A Story of Adoption and Reunion

    by Terrie Novak

    First mother, teenage Claire Jordan, enters college in 1965. Intending to be Nebraska’s Ideal Coed, she discovers she’s pregnant just weeks into her freshman year. Expelled from school and disowned by her family, Claire turns to Child Horizons adoption agency. They’ll help her and the…

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  • Everyone Hates Kelsie Miller

    Everyone Hates Kelsie Miller

    by Meredith Ireland

    There’s no one Kelsie Miller hates more than Eric Mulvaney Ortiz—the homecoming king, captain of the football team, and academic archrival in her hyper-competitive prep school. But after Kelsie’s best friend, Briana, moves across the country and stops speaking to her, she’ll do anything, even…

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  • Finding Faith: A Memoirish Novel (The Birth-Fathers’ Club Series)

    Finding Faith: A Memoirish Novel (The Birth-Fathers’ Club Series)

    by Michele Kriegman

    Like a twisting double helix of DNA, these two satisfying stories of compelling and complex father-daughter pairs entwine with life-altering surprises. They bring compassion, humor, and understanding to the question of whether it is ever too late for paternal instinct. Each year thousands of men…

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  • No Names to Be Given

    No Names to Be Given

    by Julia Brewer Daily

    1965. Sandy runs away from home to escape her mother’s abusive boyfriend. Becca falls in love with the wrong man. And Faith suffers a devastating attack. With no support and no other options, these three young, unwed women meet at a maternity home hospital in New Orleans…

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  • Sleepwalk: A Novel

    Sleepwalk: A Novel

    by Dan Chaon

    Sleepwalk’s hero, Will Bear, is a man with so many aliases that he simply thinks of himself as the Barely Blur. At fifty years old, he’s been living off the grid for over half his life. He’s never had a real job, never paid taxes, never…

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  • Probably Ruby

    Probably Ruby

    by Lisa Bird-Wilson

    This is the story of a woman in search of herself, in every sense. When we first meet Ruby, a Métis woman in her thirties, her life is spinning out of control. She’s angling to sleep with her counselor while also rekindling an old relationship…

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  • In My Heart: The Adoption Story Project

    In My Heart: The Adoption Story Project

    by Alan Berks and Leah Cooper; illustrated by Becca Hart

    BACKGROUND: In My Heart: The Adoption Story Project began in 2014 in collaboration with 200+ people in the adoption community sharing their true stories with Wonderlust Productions. In 2016, the play, written and directed by Alan Berks and Leah Cooper, was performed to enthusiastic, sold-out audiences at…

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  • Lyncoya: Andrew Jackson’s Adopted Indian Son

    Lyncoya: Andrew Jackson’s Adopted Indian Son

    by Mary S. Payne

    When an American soldier plucks two-year-old Lyncoya from an Indian battlefield in 1813, General Andrew Jackson adopts him. He sends the youngster to his plantation home, where he can grow up with Andrew Jackson, Jr. A lifelong conflict erupts between the two brothers. Isolated from…

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  • Reprieve

    Reprieve

    by James Han Mattson

    On April 27, 1997, four contestants make it to the final cell of the Quigley House, a full-contact haunted escape room in Lincoln, Nebraska, made famous for its monstrosities, booby-traps, and ghoulishly costumed actors. If the group can endure these horrors without shouting the safe…

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  • The Jasmine Project

    The Jasmine Project

    by Meredith Ireland

    Jenny Han meets The Bachelorette in this effervescent romantic comedy about a teen Korean American adoptee who unwittingly finds herself at the center of a competition for her heart, as orchestrated by her overbearing, loving family. Jasmine Yap’s life is great. Well, it’s okay. She’s about to…

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  • Rose’s Locket

    Rose’s Locket

    by Shannon Quist

    Adopted teenager Izzie grew up with an incomplete story about her past. That is, until her eighteenth birthday, when her parents reveal a set of documents that give Izzie more answers about her origin than she had ever anticipated. Intent on discovering who her birthmother…

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  • The Dime Box

    The Dime Box

    by Karen Grose

    Greta Giffen barely escaped being murdered by the man she grew up with. She’s not sure who Ian is, or who she is, but she’s determined to find out. When she bolts from their secluded cabin in northern Ontario and flees to Toronto, her new…

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  • Heart and Seoul

    Heart and Seoul

    by Jen Frederick

    As a Korean adoptee, Hara Wilson doesn’t need anyone telling her she looks different from her white parents. She knows. Every time Hara looks in the mirror, she’s reminded that she doesn’t look like anyone else in her family—not her loving mother, Ellen; not her…

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  • The Ones Who Misbehave

    The Ones Who Misbehave

    by Hanna Lee

    Ever felt like you’re about to explode but you don’t know why? Like they say, sometimes we have to lose ourselves to find the true self. Follow this tale through the eyes of a woman of color (Vanessa aka Van) who is brimming with frustration…

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  • The Adoption (two volumes)

    The Adoption (two volumes)

    by Zidrou; illustrated by Arno Monin; translated by Jeremy Melloul

    Vol. 1: Gabriel’s retired life is turned upside down when his son and daughter-in-law adopt an orphaned girl from Peru. He was barely much of a father to his own son… how is he going to take to being a grandfather to a kid from…

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  • The How and the Why

    The How and the Why

    by Cynthia Hand

    Cassandra McMurtrey has the best parents a girl could ask for; they’ve given Cass a life she wouldn’t trade for the world. She has everything she needs—but she has questions, too. Like, to know who she is. Where she came from. Questions her adoptive parents…

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  • Y: A Novel

    Y: A Novel

    by Marjorie Celona

    Growing up in foster homes, Shannon chooses to define life on her own terms, but she never stops wondering why she was abandoned. Brilliantly interwoven with Shannon’s story is the tale of her mother, Yula, a girl herself who is facing a desperate fate in…

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  • Before Houdini (2)

    Before Houdini (2)

    by Jeremy Holt; illustrated by John Lucas

    The exciting second volume of the After Houdini saga explores the origins of the elusive master of magic, the man who would become…Houdini. London, 1888. A shadowy killer stalks the streets of London, his appetite for blood unleashed upon the city’s lower classes. To defeat him, MI6…

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  • After Houdini (1)

    After Houdini (1)

    by Jeremy Holt; illustrated by John Lucas and Adrian Crossa

    Harry Houdini, master magician and covert spy for the United States, has been kidnapped. The only man who can save him is his estranged son Josef, who, like his father, knows the power of magic—and how it can be more than just an illusion. Josef…

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  • Everyone Was Falling

    Everyone Was Falling

    by JS Lee

    On the weekend of July Fourth, shots are fired at a twentieth high school reunion in a small US town, killing fifty-six. Three survive. So begins Everyone Was Falling, an empowering novel of friendship and violence on the verge of Trump’s election. Lucy–a queer, Asian…

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  • Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear

    Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear

    by Matthew Salesses

    Matt Kim is always tired. He keeps passing out. His cat is dead. His wife and daughter have left him. He’s estranged from his adoptive family. People bump into him on the street as if he isn’t there. He is pretty sure he’s disappearing. His…

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  • Inconvenient Daughter

    Inconvenient Daughter

    by Lauren J. Sharkey

    Rowan Kelly knows she’s lucky. After all, if she hadn’t been adopted by Marie and Joseph, she could have spent her days in a rice paddy, or a windowless warehouse assembling iPhones–they make iPhones in Korea, right? Either way, slowly dying of boredom on Long…

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  • For Black Girls Like Me

    For Black Girls Like Me

    by Mariama J. Lockington

    Makeda June Kirkland is eleven-years-old, adopted, and black. Her parents and big sister are white, and even though she loves her family very much, Makeda often feels left out. When Makeda’s family moves from Maryland to New Mexico, she leaves behind her best friend, Lena―…

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