15 Books About Family Secrets

Bookseller Graham and photographer Annie were seemingly the perfect couple and Graham a devoted husband. On the cusp of their 30th wedding anniversary, Graham dies suddenly and leaves Annie lost without him. But when Annie discovers that Graham was unfaithful to her for years, she struggles to mourn a man that she perhaps never fully knew.

DNA testing companies like 23andMe are uncovering the skeletons in so many families’ closets, it’s becoming a phenomenon. Many of its users get tested for innocuous reasons and end up uncovering secrets they were in no way prepared to face. Copeland follows the story of one woman whose DNA results raised unexpected questions while exploring the issue as a whole.

When Nicole Chung was born, her Korean parents placed her up for adoption. Raised by a white family who didn’t experience the same prejudices as her, she became increasingly curious about her biological parents. As Nicole searches for the parents who let her go, she discovers that some of the things her adoptive family told her about them might not have been true.

While helping her mother move after her father’s death, Jasmin Darznik discovers a perplexing photograph of her mother. In it, she is wearing a wedding veil—but the man standing next to her is not Jasmin’s father. At first, her mother refuses to discuss the photo or how it relates to her past. But then, her mother sends a series of ten cassette tapes that reveal her troubled and abusive first marriage, as well as a sister Jasmin never knew she had.

After her grandfather died, Sarah Wildman found a file among his things labeled “Correspondence: Patients A–G.” But inside, she found love letters—and not to her grandmother but to a woman named Valerie. As Sarah searches through her grandfather’s past, she pieces together a life—and love—lost in pre–World War II Vienna.

Steve Luxenberg always thought his mother Beth was an only child. But at an otherwise routine doctor’s appointment, his mother mentioned that she had a sister. This revelation—accidental or otherwise—astonished Steve. As he unravels his mother’s past, he embarks on a journey that takes him through the United States and Europe while uncovering ghosts of the past.

Shortly after her honeymoon, Paula Allende falls into a coma due to her worsening liver disorder. Her mother Isabel begins writing Paula letters with the hope that she’ll be able to read what she missed if she recovers. But as she writes, Isabel compiles the story of her family and ancestors—their greatest stories and their deepest secrets included.

In 2016, Dani submitted her DNA to a genetic testing organization on a whim. But she uncovered a secret that left her floored: her father was not her biological parent. Inheritance explores Dani’s childhood—in a home that she never felt she belonged to—and the aftermath of uncovering a secret that shocks her and yet puts together the missing pieces from her youth.

As a child, Nadja was so mesmerized by her mother—New Yorker director Françoise Mouley—that she was almost more of a giant than a person. But when Nadja grew up, her relationship with her mother grew tense for reasons she did not understand. Years later, Nadja’s mother finally revealed the secrets of her turbulent youth. Determined to meet the grandmother who had caused her mother so much grief, Nadja moves to Paris in search of the truth behind the painful memories.