The temperature doesn't often go down in Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer, which is good because it's the growing season. We've got Lusa learning about farming and bringing female scientific thinking to a very male practice. We've got Deanna, fighting to keep her mountainside clear of the bad stuff that will harm her animals, which might include a new man. And we've got Nannie Rawley who simply wants to grow her apples organically, but her grumpy old neighbour Mr Walker has all sorts of rigid ideas that need sorting out, both about her and about breeding. A hot and intensely absorbing novel about burgeoning life, for readers who crunch up their novels like apples.

Dramatic goings-on in the Knapp family in small-town America, where Eva's passion for housework is destroying her nervous family, and Lester's loathing of consumerism and office drudgery will lose him his job. Dorothy Canfield Fisher's novel The Home-Maker applies the arguments as to why women should keep house and men always be the breadwinners to their logical conclusions, and finds misery in the heart of the American family. Until, one winter's day, it all gets turned upside down and happiness comes back to the Knapps because Eva is a natural-born saleswoman, and Lester is a fantastic father. For those who want to buck the trend.

Willa Cather's The Song of the Lark is about Thea Kronborg's passion for music in turn-of-the-century Colorado, and her ferocious hard work in learning about music, how to sing, and how to be a singer. She travels from small-town Moonstone to Chicago, and then to Germany, bursting onto the New York stage as a new great American opera singer. The novel is also about the beauty of aspiration, of working hard and honestly, and taking chances when they are offered. For those who like taking the train to start a new life.

Undine Spragg climbs relentlessly upwards through American society in Edith Wharton's novel The Custom of the Country, marrying disastrously (for others), abandoning friends and useful people from back home in her dizzying ascent - until things go wrong and she needs the advice of those who have worked harder and longer, and paid more attention than she has to their life's work of learning to be the right kind of lady in turn-of-the-century New York society. For those interested in slippery slopes.

Remember when Meg in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women visits Vanity Fair, and has a sinfully happy time flirting at parties? An Old-Fashioned Girl inhabits that world, where Fanny Shaw shows her country mouse friend Polly Milton how to live the high life, with dances and ices and lots of boys. These girls are only 14 in 1870s Boston: things get so much more complicated when they grow up and learn what life is about. For Polly life is about work: earning her own living as a happy independent music teacher, while Fanny mopes at home, bored and depressed because Polly's busy example is drawing the attention of the man she loves. This is a novel about how work will cure all ills and make you a better person. For procrastinators everywhere.

It's the 1970s in the deep south of the USA, and Fay McKelva is shaking her aged husband because he just will not make an effort to get out of his hospital bed and get well. She is outraged when he dies from the sudden interference with his blood pressure, but she's also quite pleased because she can now sell that awful house in Mount Salus, Mississippi, and go off and do something with her life. Her step-daughter Laurel brings her father home for his funeral, and wanders about her childhood home not quite believing that she can't stop it being sold by the selfish widow. Secrets emerge, Texas invades, and Fay flings herself publicly onto her husband's coffin in funeral drama. For those who prefer their comportment to be southern, rather than Texan.

Storm Jameson's gripping novel The Hidden River drowns us in French correct behaviour, French honour and a family tragedy from the Second World War. Marie Regnier is the avenging angel of terror and implacable hate who refuses to allow any bygones or forgiveness in the reconstruction of family life, because her son was betrayed to the Gestapo, and she wants to know who condemned him to torture and death. For those who are left to clean up when the visitors have gone.

Clubland London between the wars, a secret codicil to a will, and a viciously unhappy marriage. The murderer, thief and lying she-devil Rowena is determined to make her husband divorce her so she can marry and dispose of a nobleman, keeping his title and money en route. Dornford Yates' This Publican is an attack on how men are failing to keep their women under control, and how society would be much improved by a bit more obedience all round. For fogeys who need their ideas confirmed.

The Jewish family saga of G B Stern's The Matriarch is dominated by the party-planning interfering head of the family, Anastasia the adored eldest sister, the engulfing wife, the admired mother, the bossy aunt and the totally dominating Grandmere. She's a monster of cheerful bullying, a delightful character you wouldn't want to live with, the life and soul of the the party you want to leave. She lacks reticence, justice, tact and no-one can teach her anything. Her recipes are divine, but only she can cook to perfection. For the underdogs in the family.

This is a splendidly entertaining novella by Jane Austen, written as 41 letters between the characters of a tightly-plotted farce, doninated by the towering figure of Lady Susan. She is a magnificently disloyal houseguest (she sleeps with the husband and seduces the daughter's suitor), a bullying mother (she torments and bosses her terrified 16 year old daughter), and a scheming sister-in-law (she dangles the heir to the estate for as long as she wants him). If only she could meet her match. For readers who snap their fans coolly in the face of disaster.