Listicle: 10 books to read if you like dramatic family sagas

Renee Goh’s father is retiring, and she can take over the family business, but only if she gives up the company she built in London and moves back to Singapore. She cut ties for a reason. But she still is conflicted about wanting her father’s approval. Plus, her first love is on a revenge mission, tied to her family’s shady past. Zen Cho knows how to wield family conflict so the barbs always land.

The Owens family has been cursed since 17th-century Salem. To fall in love is to literally bring harm to the object of their affection. Each generation has dealt with the legacy in their own way—fighting, defying, ignoring and dodging it. One thing’s certain, the curse cannot be outrun, only broken. And yet, in the fourth instalment in Alice Hoffman’s books, three generations of women get together to try.

Elizabeth Acevedo’s novel begins with summons sent out to the Martes family and friends by Flor, who can predict when someone will die. Has she foreseen her own death, or someone elses? Can her daughter Ona, an anthropologist, record and research the family’s story from the Dominican Republic to modern-day New York City in the three days leading up to the “living wake”? It’s family drama on another level.

Robin Garrett owns a plumbing supply store. His wife, Mercy, is a stay-at-home mom to three. By the time the Garretts take their first and last family vacation, Mercy is already feeling the pull of the artist life, making her and Robin unintentionally distant parents. Through the trip, author Anne Tyler unravels their story slowly, imperceptibly, purposely. But braids, as everyone knows, are hard to untangle.

Lila Macapagal is back in Shady Palms after a tumultuous break-up. Life gets even more dramatic when she is accused of murdering an infamous food critic, who just happens to be an old flame. The first of Mia P Manansala’s mystery series introduces readers to Tita Rosie and the Calendar Crew (aunts April, May and June), who are chaotic as any loving Asian family. They solve the murder too.

Nino Haratischwili’s novel begins with a secret chocolate recipe, passed down a family of Georgians. It has the power to heal, prevent, bestow and must be used with caution. Niza Jashi, the fifth of six generations of Jashis, narrates the family lore to her 12-year-old runaway niece Brilka in the hope that it gives her a fresh start. What does legacy mean? Can toxic cycles be broken? Is chocolate really so powerful?

In Tashan Mehta’s fantasy novel, sisters Myung and Laleh are keepers of the whale of babelsomewhere in the vast Black Sea. Myung escapes in search of something she can’t yet elaborate. Until she stumbles onto a children’s fairy tale and realises it may hold all the answers she seeks.Her quest will eventually bring her to the sentient island of Ojda where things are more than a little familiar.

Jordan Baker was a minor character in The Great Gatsby. In Nghi Vo’s magic-fuelled sharp retelling, Baker is queer, Asian and adopted, and is telling the story from her POV. Like original narrator, Nick Carraway, she has a close-up view of the excesses of the American Jazz Age, but doesn’t truly belong. And yet she’s pulled into Gatsby’s world, a complicated family of one’s own making.

In 1868, Desiderya Lopez rescues and raises an abandoned baby in Colorado’s Lost Territory. Kali Fajardo Anstine’s story jumps to segregated 1930s Denver, to the baby’s descendants: Luz “Little Light” Lopez (tea leaf-reader and laundress), her aunt Maria Jose, and her older brother Diego. It’s a hostile, racist world. Can she protect five generations of history for those to come?

Joan’s grandfather Mryon was the city’s first Black detective… for a few days, until he was lynched. Years after the murder, ten-year-old Joan, her sister and her mother escape domestic violence and return to Myron’s home in Memphis, to live with a grandmother, an aunt and a cousin. Joan will eventually realise that other violences aren’t so easy to flee. Tara Stringfellow’s novel is about the painful, sticky process of healing.