Including More Than 450 Adoptee-Recommended Titles!

Fiction

  • In a Country of Mothers

    In a Country of Mothers

    by A. M. Homes

    No relationship is more charged than that between a psychotherapist and her patient—unless it is the relationship between a mother and her daughter. This disturbing literary thriller explores what happens when the line between those relationships blurs. Jody Goodman enters psychotherapy with questions of career…

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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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  • 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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  • Jack

    Jack

    by A. M. Homes

    In Jack, A. M. Homes gives us a teenager who wants nothing more than to be normal—even if being normal means having divorced parents and a rather strange best friend. But when Jack’s father takes him out in a rowboat on Lake Watchmayoyo and tells…

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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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  • Keurium

    Keurium

    by JS Lee

    Shay Stone lies in a hospital bed, catatonic—dead to the world. Her family thinks it’s a ploy for attention. Doctors believe it’s the result of an undisclosed trauma. At the mercy of memories and visitations, Shay unearths secrets that may have led to her collapse.…

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  • Kimchi & Calamari

    Kimchi & Calamari

    by Rose Kent

    There are worse things in the world than being adopted. But right now Joseph can’t think of one. Joseph Calderaro has a serious problem. His social studies teacher has given him an impossible assignment: an essay about ancestors. Ancestors, as in dead people you’re related…

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  • Little Fires Everywhere

    Little Fires Everywhere

    by Celeste Ng

    From the bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You, a riveting novel that traces the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives. In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned – from…

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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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  • May We Be Forgiven

    May We Be Forgiven

    by A. M. Homes

    In this vivid, transfixing new novel, A. M. Homes presents a darkly comic look at twenty-first-century domestic life and the possibility of personal transformation. Harold Silver has spent a lifetime watching his more successful younger brother, George, acquire a covetable wife, two kids, and a…

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  • Mixed Korean: Our Stories

    Mixed Korean: Our Stories

    Edited by Cerrissa Kim, Sora Kim-Russell, Mary-Kim Arnold, Katherine Kim

    From the struggles of the Korean War, to the modern dilemmas faced by those who are mixed race, comes an assortment of stories that capture the essence of what it is to be a mixed Korean. With common themes of exclusion, and recollections of not…

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  • Music for Torching

    Music for Torching

    by A. M. Homes

    As A.M. Homes’s incendiary novel unfolds, the Kodacolor hues of the good life become nearly hallucinogenic. Laying bare the foundations of a marriage, flash frozen in the anxious entropy of a suburban subdivision, Paul and Elaine spin the quit terrors of family life into a…

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  • Nearer Home: A Novel

    Nearer Home: A Novel

    by Joy Castro

    The irresistible, razor-sharp second book in the post-Katrina New Orleans-set crime series featuring unforgettable and gutsy reporter Nola Céspedes Early one morning, Times-Picayune crime reporter Nola Céspedes goes for her regular run in Audubon Park. More than the heat of the dawning New Orleans day, she’s trying…

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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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  • Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

    Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

    by Jeanette Winterson

    Winner of the Whitbread Prize for best first fiction, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a coming-out novel from Winterson, the acclaimed author of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. The narrator, Jeanette, cuts her teeth on the knowledge that she is one of…

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  • Perilous Passage: A Boots Beaumont Mystery (Volume 3)

    Perilous Passage: A Boots Beaumont Mystery (Volume 3)

    by Joe Soll

    Five raptor lovers meet on Facebook and decide to go on an adventure. They travel to the Caribbean and become modern day pirates. They board sailboats in the middle of the night, killing the occupants and then selling the boats. Boots Beaumont, a retired private…

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  • Perpetual Child: Dismantling the Stereotype

    Perpetual Child: Dismantling the Stereotype

    Edited by Diane René Christian and Amanda H.L. Transue-Woolston

    A collection of stories, poems, and essays aimed at confronting the “perpetual child” stereotype faced by adult adoptees. The pieces contained within this anthology implore readers to look deeply into their own ideas about what it means to be adopted and to empathize with the…

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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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  • Pretty: A Novel

    Pretty: A Novel

    by Jillian Lauren

    Bebe Baker is an ex-everything: ex-stripper, ex-Christian, ex-drug addict, ex-pretty girl. It’s been one year since the car accident that killed her boyfriend left her scarred and shaken. Flanked by an eccentric posse of friends, she is serving out a self-imposed sentence at a halfway…

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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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  • Remedies

    Remedies

    by Patricia Cotter-Busbee

    Remedies is a deeply original autobiographical fiction that chronicles the lives of five generations of women. It is beautifully layered and brought to life through image-driven vignettes that have been paired down into razor-sharp scenes. The stories convey tragedy and comedy in equal portions. Wombs…

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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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  • 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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  • Sacrificial Animals: A Novel

    Sacrificial Animals: A Novel

    by Kailee Pedersen

    Inspired by Kailee Pedersen’s own journey being adopted from Nanning, China in 1996 and growing up alongside her family’s farm in Nebraska, this rich and atmospheric supernatural horror debut explores an ancient Chinese mythology. The last thing Nick Morrow expected to receive was an invitation…

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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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  • Scoop Baby: . . . It Is Time

    Scoop Baby: . . . It Is Time

    by H.T. Sawyer

    They said her baby died… Baby Scoop Era: Once upon a time, unwed mothers were trained to care for their babies, largely by Christian women. In the 1940’s, however, maternity wards began to gain favor, as did the idea of relinquishing babies to well-meaning strangers.…

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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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  • See No Color

    See No Color

    by Shannon Gibney

    Despite some teasing, being a biracial girl adopted by a white family didn’t used to bother Alex much. She was a stellar baseball player, just like her father—her baseball coach and a former pro athlete. All Alex wanted was to play ball forever. But after…

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