American Saga

For decades, a quartet of Chinese women who have emigrated to San Francisco gather to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk—they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Over the years, their stories have informed the lives of four daughters who feel the weight of family and world history on their shoulders. With wit and sensitivity, this novel explores the deep, complicated, and sometimes painful connections between mothers and daughters.

So many stories begin the same way: With a prophecy. A chosen one. And the inevitable quest to slay a villain, save the kingdom, and fulfill a grand destiny. But this is not that kind of story. It does begin with a prophecy: A child will rise to defeat the Eternal Khan, a cruel immortal god-king, and save the kingdom. And that prophecy did anoint a hero, Jian, raised since birth in luxury and splendor, and celebrated before he has won a single battle.

After discovering a near-lifeless Eli at the base of the Great Tree, Morgan knows she doesn't have much time to save him. And it will mean asking for help—from friends old and new. Racing against the clock, and with Arik and Emily at her side, Morgan sets off to follow the trail away from the Great Tree to find Eli's soul before it's too late. As they journey deep into the northern woods, a place they've been warned never to enter, they face new challenges and life-threatening attacks from strange and horrifying creatures.

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.

In the opening pages of Jamie Ford's stunning debut, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle's Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. As Henry looks on, the owner opens a Japanese parasol.

The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the most memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant. Their lives fragmented and harrowed by history and legacy, the character’s voices and actions mesh to create what is arguably Faulkner’s masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.

This riveting, multigenerational epic tells the story of two families and the history of Puerto Rico through the eyes of Isabel Monfort and her husband, Quintn Mendizabal. Isabel attempts to immortalize their now-united families - and, by extension, their homeland - in a book. The tale that unfolds in her writing has layers upon layers, exploring the nature of love, marriage, family, and Puerto Rico itself.

San Francisco, 1938: A world’s fair is preparing to open on Treasure Island, a war is brewing overseas, and the city is alive with possibilities. Talented Grace, traditional Helen, and defiant Ruby, three young women from very different backgrounds, meet by chance at the exclusive and glamorous Forbidden City nightclub.

Palestine, 1948. Half a million Palestinians are forced from their homes. A mother clutches her six-month-old son as Israeli soldiers march through the village of Ein Hod. In a split second, her son is snatched from her arms and the fate of the Abulheja family is changed forever. Forced into a refugee camp in Jenin and exiled from the ancient village that is their lifeblood, the family struggles to rebuild their world.

In 1866, with the country barely recovered from the Civil War, new war breaks out on the western frontier - a clash of cultures between a young, ambitious nation and the Native tribes who have lived on the land for centuries. Colonel Henry Carrington arrives in Wyoming’s Powder River Valley to lead the US Army in defending the opening of a new road for gold miners and settlers. Carrington intends to build a fort in the middle of critical hunting grounds, the home of the Lakota.

Essence best-selling author Keith Lee Johnson’s fifth installment in his ongoing "Little Black Girl Lost" series picks up where the fourth book left off by continuing the diary of Josephine Baptiste. As more details about Josephine’s past come to light, the African heritage of modern-day Johnnie Wise is further explained.

Shanghai, 1912. Violet Minturn is the privileged daughter of the American madam of the city's most exclusive courtesan house. But when the Ching dynasty is overturned, Violet is separated from her mother in a cruel act of chicanery and forced to become a "virgin courtesan." Half-Chinese and half-American, Violet grapples with her place in the worlds of East and West - until she is able to merge her two halves, empowering her to become a shrewd courtesan who excels in the business of seduction and illusion, though she still struggles to understand who she is.

Years after her Chinese half-sister assails her with ghost stories set in the mysterious world of Yin, Olivia — a young woman from San Francisco — finds herself in China. Looking for a way to reconcile her past with dreams for her future, Olivia's American assumptions are shaken by Chinese ghosts, but she also finds reasons to hope.

While exploring World’s End, an area in Aski they've just discovered, Morgan and Emily delight in their developing relationship, while Eli struggles to understand his new-found power: the ability to locate a portal. A shocking turn of events leads them to a new village, Ministik, where the animal beings who live there are going missing. Horrified to discover who is responsible, the children vow to help and turn to friends, old and new. But it's getting harder and harder to keep the two worlds separate, especially when details of a traditional legend change everything. Forever.

Set 5,000 years ago and ranging through what is now Montana, Wyoming, northern Colorado, and Utah, People of the Earth follows the migration of the Uto-Aztecan people south out of Canada. It is the unforgettable tale of a woman torn between two peoples and two dreams, of the two men who love her and the third who must have her, and of the vision given to the peoples long ago by the spirit of the wolf.

Celie has grown up poor in rural Georgia, despised by the society around her and abused by her own family. She strives to protect her sister, Nettie, from a similar fate, and while Nettie escapes to a new life as a missionary in Africa, Celie is left behind without her best friend and confidante, married off to an older suitor, and sentenced to a life alone with a harsh and brutal husband. In an attempt to transcend a life that often seems too much to bear, Celie begins writing letters directly to God.

Tressie faithfully prays every night that God will send her a thug. It isn't long before her prayers are answered, and she meets a handsome ex-convict named Payce Boyd. He is a fine roughneck, everything Tressie imagined and more - that is until Tressie experiences firsthand the reality of being a thug's girl. Seeking solace and comfort in the sanctuary, Tressie soon learns valuable lessons and shocking truths about herself and others.

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.

Set in Mississippi at the height of the Depression, this is the story of one family's struggle to maintain their integrity, pride, and independence in the face of racism and social injustice. And it is also Cassie's story - Cassie Logan, an independent girl who discovers over the course of an important year why having land of their own is so crucial to the Logan family, even as she learns to draw strength from her own sense of dignity and self-respect.

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.