QUIZ: Choose Your Favorite Fictional Families and Get a Book Recommendation About Family

As the end of Orquídea Divina’s life draws near, she summons her descendants to collect their secretive inheritance. Years later, her strange gifts have affected her family in unique ways. But when someone tries to destroy Orquídea’s line by picking them off one by one, the family travels to Ecuador to discover their matriarch’s secrets before it’s too late.

Ingrid Rojas Contreras’s family believes some of them are touched by magic, an ability to speak to the dead, see the future, heal, and move clouds. Part of the family sees what they call “the secret” as a gift, while others see it as a curse.

The women of the North family have had more than their share of tragedy — violent men, racism, and lynching, to name a few. But they also have incredible gifts. Some can heal through nursing. August has a singing voice that can blow people away. And Joan’s paintings might just change the world.

From the outside, wedding planner Olga and her politician brother Prieto are doing well. But the truth is that their family is dysfunctional, and their absent, radical mother’s help is only making things worse. As the various forces in Olga’s collide, she must reckon with her own family’s past and present.

College student Paloma returns to her home in Argentina for her diplomat father’s annual summer soirée. After hearing a strange comment from a party guest and college friend of her father’s, she decides to learn more about her father’s past. Paloma’s curiosity shows her a dark side of Argentina’s history, reveals her family’s hidden secrets, and puts her in grave danger.

From a young age, Kat Chow was fixated on death, particularly on the idea that her mother might die. And when she was a teenager, her fear was realized when her mother passed away quickly from cancer. In this memoir, she grapples with the loss of her mother, how it changed her relationships with her father and sisters, and the way death shapes what we know — and can never know — about our loved ones.

Abi Morgan’s life was upended one day when she found her partner Jacob unconscious in their home. She spent a hellish six months trying to hold their family together as Jacob was in a coma. When Jacob finally woke up, it seemed like their family had been granted a second chance — until they realized Jacob didn’t recognize Abi and was convinced she was an imposter.

Carmen Rita Wong always felt like an outsider in her community and in her own family. She was born to a Dominican mother and a Chinese father, but was mostly raised by an Italian stepfather in a tumultuous household full of half-siblings. Her understanding of herself and her background changed dramatically when she learned her mother had several long-held secrets about Carmen’s father.

In 1930s Denver, Luz is distraught when her older brother is run off by a white mob. She survives on her earnings as a laundress and tea leaf reader, but finds a new purpose when she starts having visions of her ancestors on the nearby Indigenous Lost Territory. As Luz pieces together her visions, she understands that she is the only person who can preserve her family’s history.