American Saga

When Ann Tran gets the call that her fiercely beloved grandmother, Minh, has passed away, her life is already at a crossroads. In the years since she’s last seen Minh, Ann has built a seemingly perfect life—a beautiful lake house, a charming professor boyfriend, and invites to elegant parties that bubble over with champagne and good taste—but it all crumbles with one positive pregnancy test. With both her relationship and carefully planned future now in question, Ann returns home to Florida to face her estranged mother, Huơng.

I Am Liu Yuejin, by prize-winning Chinese novelist Liu Zhenyun, is a novel of Beijing that paints a microcosm of contemporary China, dealing with classes at the two extremes: the super rich and the migrant workers who make them rich through deceit and corruption. The protagonist, Liu Yuejin, is a work site cook and small-time thief whose bag is stolen. While searching for it, he stumbles upon another bag, which contains a flash disk that chronicles high-level corruption, and sets off a convoluted chase.

When G Double D, the founder of the gangsta rap label Explicit Content, seduces her singing partner, Leila "Fatal Beauty" Aponte, into splitting up their act to pursue solo stardom, Cassie Rivers is driven to find her own path to success, but her competitive nature could lead to danger when she uncovers dark secrets about G and his Explicit Content company.

It is a time of fire. A small band of pioneers struggle valiantly to keep their ancestors' dreams alive in an unforgiving, drought-stricken land. Driven by the promise of an awesome vision, a heroic young dreamer and a fearless woman warrior unite to lead their people to a magnificent destiny. A towering epic filled with tragedy and triumph, courage and conflict, People of the Fire is the second compelling novel in a majestic saga of America's first peoples.

As an Indian wedding gathers a family back together, parents Rafiq and Layla must reckon with the choices their children have made. There is Hadia, their headstrong eldest daughter, whose marriage is a match of love and not tradition. Huda, the middle child, determined to follow in her sister’s footsteps. And lastly, their estranged son, Amar, who returns to the family fold for the first time in three years to take his place as brother of the bride.

In 1824, on the island of Trinidad, Marie Ursule, queen of a secret society of militant slaves, plots a mass suicide—a quiet, passionate act of revolt. But she cannot bring herself to kill her small daughter, Bola, whom she smuggles away in the early dawn light. As Bola's children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren spill out across the world to America, Canada and Europe, they find their lives both haunted and vindicated by the dreams and passions of their defiant ancestor.

The beloved #1 Essence best-selling authors of Tryin' to Sleep in the Bed You Made now deliver a novel in which you'll meet their most unforgettable characters yet. Carmen, Jewel, and Regina could not be more different. When they meet as freshmen at Columbia University, they're pretty confident that a friendship among them isn't in the cards.

For the tourists traveling on Henry Flagler’s legendary Overseas Railroad, Labor Day weekend is an opportunity to forget the economic depression gripping the nation. But one person’s paradise can be another’s prison, and Key West-native Helen Berner yearns to escape. After the Cuban Revolution of 1933 leaves Mirta Perez’s family in a precarious position, she agrees to an arranged marriage with a notorious American.

The Hale family is obsessed with status, power, and control. No problem is too big their money can’t solve. Royce Hale manipulated me into giving him everything. My virginity. My hand in marriage. My heart. And as soon as he got what he wanted, he callously sold me off for a cool $10 million. In the boardroom and the twisted game his family plays, he says the only rule is to win at all costs. Yesterday I learned a painful lesson not to trust the prince of Cape Hill. Today I’ll destroy his carefully laid plans and show him just how badly he’s already lost.

Joseph Armagh was 13 when he first saw America through a dirty porthole on the steerage deck of The Irish Queen. It was the early 1850s, and he was a penniless orphan cast on a hostile shore to make a home for himself and his younger brother and infant sister. Some 70 years later, from his deathbed, Joseph Armagh last glimpsed his adopted land from the gleaming windows of a palatial estate. A multimillionaire, one of the most powerful and feared men, Joseph Armagh had indeed found a home.

Ever since running away at the age of fourteen, Paul-Edward, the son of a white landowner and a black slave, has had one dream: to own land every bit as good as his daddy's. While growing up, Paul-Edward loved, and feared, his father, but he loved the land unconditionally. Then, after a rash act of youthful rebellion, he leaves his family behind and vows to succeed on his own. However, for anyone black coming of age in 1880's Mississippi, this is no simple goal.

In 1916, Celia Coleman and Lucy Grimes flee the racism and poverty of their homes in the post-Civil War South for the “Promised Land” of the North. But soon they learn that even in Vauxhall, New Jersey, black women are mainly hired for domestic work, money is scarce, children don’t progress in school, and black men die young. Within a few short years, both women’s husbands are dead. Left to navigate this unwelcoming place alone, Celia and Lucy turn to one another for support in raising their children far from home.

New York heiress Catherine Dohan seemingly has it all. There’s only one problem. It’s a lie. As soon as the Morro Castle leaves port, Catherine’s past returns with a vengeance and threatens her life. Joining forces with a charismatic jewel thief, Catherine must discover who wants her dead—and why.

Two families from different social classes are joined together by an unexpected pregnancy and the child that it produces. Moving forward and backward in time, with the power of poetry and the emotional richness of a narrative 10 times its length, Jacqueline Woodson's extraordinary new novel uncovers the role that history and community have played in the experiences, decisions, and relationships of these families, and in the life of this child.

In 1850, as her mother lay dying and a priest stood by, Santa Fe Cameron was named by her Scottish father after the town in which she had just been born. At seven years old, she would also lose her father. Shortly thereafter, a Navajo shaman recognized psychic power in the orphan girl, and gave her a turquoise pendant as a keepsake. This turquoise, the Indian symbol of the spirit, will dominate her life - even after she leaves the simple beauty of her native New Mexico to search for happiness in the glamorous New York of the 1870s.

Four destinies collide in a unique fantasy world of war and wonders, where empire is won with enchanted steel and magical animal companions fight alongside their masters in battle. A band of rogues and royals should all be enemies, but they unite for a common purpose: to defeat an unstoppable killer who defies the laws of magic. In this battle, they will forge unexpected bonds of friendship and love that will change their lives - and begin to change the world.

They were women whose lives began in slavery, who weathered the Civil War, and who grappled with the contradictions of emancipation through the turbulent early years of the 20th century. Through it all, they fought to unite their family and forge success on their own terms.

Back in the 1860s, Ghost Horse, a handsome young sacred clown, loved and lost to death the beautiful warrior woman Red Dress. As their spirits seek desperately to be reunited, they influence the sometimes violent fate of those who have followed them. Now in the 1980s, Red Dress's teenage descendant Charlene Thunder has fallen hopelessly in love with Harley Wind Soldier, the dashing traditional dancer of Ghost Horse's lineage.

Disappearing Moon Café was a stunning debut novel that has become a Canadian literary classic. An unflinchingly honest portrait of a Chinese-Canadian family that pulses with life and moral tensions, this family saga takes the listener from the wilderness in 19th-century British Columbia to late 20th-century Hong Kong, to Vancouver's Chinatown. Intricate and lyrical, suspenseful and emotionally rich, it is a riveting story of four generations of women whose lives are haunted by the secrets and lies of their ancestors.

Based on historical characters and events, A Sweetness to the Soul recounts the captivating story of young, spirited Oregon pioneer Jane Herbert who at the age of 12 faces a tragedy that begins a life-long search for forgiveness and love. In the years that follow, young Jane finds herself involved in an unusual and touching romance with a dreamer 16 years her senior, struggles to make peace with an emotionally distant mother, and fights to build a family of her own.