"Hector Santinio is the youngest son of Alejo and Mercedes, who moved to New York from Cuba in the mid-1940s. The family of four shares their modest apartment with extended relatives in Harlem, where homesickness and nostalgia are dispelled by nights of dancing and raucous parties. But life's realities are nevertheless harsh in the Santinio family's adoptive land. When Mercedes takes Hector and his brother to visit Cuba, to better know her culture,...

Vega Gopalan is adrift. Still reeling from the death of her sister years earlier, she leaves South India to attend graduate school at Columbia University. In New York, Vega straddles many different worlds, eventually moving in and out of a series of relationships that take her through the striving world of academia, the intellectual isolation of the immigrant suburbs, and, ultimately, the loneliness of single motherhood. But it is the birth of Vega's...

"ESPAÑA, 1492: La familia de Benvenida huye de la Inquisición. Todos están en peligro si no renuncian a sus creencias religiosas. TURQUÍA, 1923: Después de la Guerra de Independencia, Reina confía en que tendrá más libertad. Pero su padre la castiga, exiliándola a Cuba. CUBA, 1961: Alegra, la hija de Reina, se ilusiona con el triunfo de la Revolución. No sospecha que sus días en la isla están contados. MIAMI, 2003: A Paloma, la hija de...

"Losing her mother to a hit-and-run at age 15 threw Beatrice "Beans" Bennett's life into turmoil. Bereft, she developed a life-threatening eating disorder, and went through a challenging recovery process which paved the way for her work as a clinical psychologist decades later. When a new patient arrives at her office and insists that Beans's mother is still alive-and in danger-Beans is forced to revisit her past in order to uncover the truth. She...

"Amelia Bae-Wood's life is falling apart. Unemployed, newly single and completely broke -- for reasons she hasn't told anyone yet -- she finds herself hitchhiking across California to deal with the fallout of her mother's eviction from the family estate. Amelia needs somewhere to live and time to figure out what to do with the rest of her life, so moving with her mother and sister to Arcadia, the cancer retreat center where her sister volunteers,...

"When Hazel Sharp, daughter of Mirror Lake's longtime local detective, unexpectedly inherits her childhood home, she's warily drawn back to the town--and people--she left behind almost a decade earlier. But Hazel's not the only relic of the past to return: a drought has descended on the region, and as the water level in the lake drops, long-hidden secrets begin to emerge . . . including evidence that may help finally explain the mystery of her mother's...

"Eddie Grant is happy with her life and her work as a personal assistant to Dinah Lavender, one of the most famous and renowned romance authors in the business. But being a spectator to notoriety and glamour isn't as fulfilling as she once thought. Thankfully, Eddie has the perfect excuse for a vacation: Her hardworking younger sister, Barrett, is opening her gift shop on Memorial Day weekend, and could use all the help she can get. But going home...

"Pippa Jones is a fortyish former literary sensation who fears she will be a one-hit wonder. After the follow-up book she was almost done writing, Podlusters, had to be tossed (it ended up sharing a plot and title with superstar author Ella Rankin’s summer blockbuster!), she couldn’t write a thing. Months of staring at a blank page made her confidence vanish like a one-night stand. When she finds out that she has only five days left to finish...

"Set in a West Country farming village, The House of Broken Bricks lays bare the complexities of day-to-day life for a mixed-race family. Jess is a Londoner whose relationship with Richard transports her from a Jamaican diaspora in a city where she easily blends in into a creaking house on a floodplain where predatory birds hover over fields, eels coil in the river mud, buses run twice a day, neighbors barter honey for cider and no one looks like...

"Nina is used to feeling like the odd one out, both at school and in her large family. But while trying to fit in at summer camp, she discovers something even more peculiar: two majestic birds have built a nest in the marsh behind an abandoned infirmary. They appear to be whooping cranes, but that's impossible--Nina is an amateur bird-watcher, and all her resources tell her that those rare birds haven't nested in Texas for over a hundred years. When...