Allegra Goodman Books in Order

Family tensions, religious politics, and academic rivalries unsettle ordinary gatherings in these stories. From a synagogue's missing money to an expert caught unprepared, characters struggle with private vulnerabilities beneath the rituals and expectations of communal life.

Three generations of the Markowitz family negotiate faith, ambition, aging, and disappointment through weddings, holiday meals, and hospital visits. Linked stories reveal affectionate loyalties and persistent conflicts as relatives struggle to understand one another's choices.

In a Catskills summer community, an Orthodox mother longs for a wider life while an aging religious leader weighs his succession. Family loyalties and conflicting ambitions test the traditions that hold the community together in 1976.

Abandoned by her boyfriend in Honolulu, Sharon begins a restless search for spiritual meaning. Her journey through successive beliefs eventually leads toward Judaism, but love and her independent temperament complicate the possibility of finally belonging.

A struggling cancer laboratory celebrates promising experimental results until a researcher's girlfriend suspects fraud. As private doubts become public accusations, ambition, scarce funding, and personal loyalties threaten careers and blur the boundary between discovery and deception.

Honor lives in a tightly controlled island colony where her parents refuse to conform. After their forbidden second child brings official punishment, she and her friend Helix investigate the Corporation and the secrets governing their world.

Two sisters pursue sharply different lives as a technology executive and a philosophy student working in a rare-book shop. Their ambitions and romantic choices explore what remains valuable amid financial success, idealism, and the attractions of a virtual world.

A teenage gamer becomes increasingly absorbed in an alternate reality controlled by a powerful company. His teacher suspects trouble, but her own romantic ties and family connections to the business complicate her efforts to help.

Four college students navigate reading, research, argument, and revision in a guide to academic writing. Their experiences demonstrate how to develop a thesis, strengthen reasoning, respond to feedback, and preserve an individual voice across assignments.

An orphaned heiress accompanies her guardian to New France, only to be abandoned on an isolated island with her lover. Stripped of privilege, Marguerite must confront brutal weather, hunger, and a profound test of faith.

After their sister dies, Sylvia and Helen Rubinstein turn a misunderstanding about cake into years of estrangement. Their children and grandchildren pursue complicated lives around the feud, revealing how stubbornness and affection shape a family across generations.