Saga American Family

The Cook, the Crook, and the Real Estate Tycoon, 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 worksite cook and small-time thief whose bag is stolen. In searching for it, he stumbles upon another bag, which contains a flash disk that chronicles high-level corruption.

It is 1685 and England is on the brink of a renewed civil war. King Charles II has died without an heir and his brother James is to take the throne. But the people are bitterly divided, and many do not welcome the new king or his young queen. Ned Ferryman cannot persuade his sister, Alinor, that he is right to return from America with his Pokanoket servant, Rowan, to join the rebel army. Instead, Alinor and her daughter Alys, have been coaxed by the manipulative Livia to save the queen from the coming siege. The rewards are life-changing.

It’s the summer of 1987 in Swift River, and Diamond Newberry is learning how to drive. Ever since her Pop disappeared seven years ago, she and her mother hitchhike everywhere they go. But that’s not the only reason Diamond stands out: she’s teased relentlessly about her weight, and since Pop’s been gone, she is the only Black person in all of Swift River. This summer, Ma is determined to declare Pop legally dead so that they can collect his life insurance money, get their house back from the bank, and finally move on.

"It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon..." This is how Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The Whitshanks are one of those families that radiate togetherness: an indefinable, enviable kind of specialness. But they are also like all families, in that the stories they tell themselves reveal only part of the picture.

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.

The Road Home lies in the shadows of Manifest Destiny and Wounded Knee; it is etched into the landscape of an old man’s memory and into the stubborn dreams of a young man’s heart. In one of Jim Harrison’s greatest works, five members of the Northridge family narrate the tangled epic of their history on the expanses of the Nebraska plains. They strive to understand their fates, to reconcile with demons of the past, to live in accordance with the land, and to die with grace.

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.

On a rainy day in May 1964, history professor Cecily Bridge-Davis begins to search for the sixty-five acres of land she inherited from her father’s family. The quest leads her to uncover a dark secret: In every generation, one offspring from each Bridge family unit vanishes—and is mysteriously whisked back in time. With only a family Bible and a map marked with the locations of mysterious containers to aid her, Cecily heads to the library, hoping to discover the truth of how this curse began, and how it might be ended.

Growing up poor in Texas, Vera Lomax used every gold-digging trick in the book to land a rich husband. Now living in the lap of luxury in San Francisco, her only job is to fawn over her much-older husband, so it's been easy for her to balance a life of shopping and affairs with younger men with a major secret: the 16-year bribery of one of her husband's mistresses to keep her pregnancy under wraps. Vera figures that a little hush money every month will ensure her husband's fortune is hers alone....

Time travel, once again, with award-winning author J.A. Snow as she takes us on another journey with her ancestors. You will go to war with Private Eddie Snow, visit the Sacrifice Rock with Mercy Snow of the Wampanoag tribe of old Cape Cod, and travel westward with Bertram Snow to the Great Dust Bowl of the Great Plains.

In earlier books in the series, we met the Snow family of Porlock, England, traveled with them through the bloody streets of London during Tudor times, crossed the Atlantic with the original Pilgrims and now stand with them in the American Revolutionary war. Based on over 30 years of genealogical research into the author's own ancestors, this is a story like no other. There is love and hardship; there is treachery and murder. There is honor and courage.

She's smart, gorgeous, and mysterious. For business executive Nathan Carver, a man with everything, Jessica Bolton is the first woman he can't simply charm, buy, or seduce. And even before Jessica gets a taste of his luxurious lifestyle and irresistible moves, she's determined to eliminate the competition and become this handsome bachelor's one and only. But Jessica's deceptive allure is just the beginning.

A solid marriage, a thriving business, and the esteem of their close-knit Alabama community - Joyce and Odell Watson have every reason to count their blessings. Their marriage has given well-off Joyce a chance at the family she's always wanted - and granted Odell a once-in-a-lifetime shot to escape grinding poverty. But all that respectability and status comes at a cost. Just once, Joyce and Odell want to break loose and taste life's wild side, without consequences.

Light-skinned Selina Standish lives a life of emotional pain and torment. In 1906, at the age of eight, she is convinced by her mother, actress Lavinia Standish, the daughter of a slave, to pass as white. Although Selina yields to her mother's insistence to pass, she refuses to cut ties completely with her Negro relatives, including her twin brother, a child her mother deems too dark. However, at age 17, in the year 1915, Selina meets wealthy Southerner Jack Cosgrove, the man of her dreams. Keeping her ancestry a secret, Selina is conflicted by Jack's negative attitude toward her race.

To keep their family ties strong, the five Reeves sisters meet regularly to give each other a reality check. But explosive family secrets begin to pour out like molten lava and forever change all they treasure most.

Set in California's lush Napa Valley and spanning four generations of a talented and visionary family, The House of Mondavi is a tale of genius, sibling rivalry, and betrayal. From 1906, when Italian immigrant Cesare Mondavi passed through Ellis Island, to the Robert Mondavi Corporation's 21st-century battle over a billion-dollar fortune, award-winning journalist Julia Flynn Siler brings to life both the place and the people in this riveting family drama.

When Matthew Kerney returns to his ranch in the beautiful San Andres Mountains after serving in Sicily during World War II, he must not only fight to recover physically and emotionally from a devastating war injury, but he must also battle attempts by the US Army to seize control of his land for expanded weapons testing.

Jenna Rosen returns to the place in Alaska where her young son, Bobby, disappeared without a trace two years before. Jenna is determined to lay to rest the aching mystery of his death. But ancient legends may have had a hand in Bobby’s fate, forcing Jenna to sift through her own Native American ancestry to uncover the truth.

Michael McGarrity returns with the second installment of his sweeping, richly authentic New York Times best-selling American West trilogy set in the raw, untrammeled New Mexico backlands during the Roaring '20s, the Great Depression, and World War II. Hard Country, the first novel in the Kerney family trilogy and the debut prequel to his national best-selling Kevin Kerney crime novels, was critically acclaimed for its authentic, gritty realism; its sprawling, engrossing story; and its compelling, engaging characters.

Tony Russo thought he had it all figured out. Fresh out of prison and leading his crew of skilled bank robbers, Tony's plans to start over in Tampa seemed airtight. But after a series of high-stakes heists, their latest job goes disastrously wrong, leaving Tony and his crew on the run, hunted by the cops and facing a city closing in around them. In an ironic twist of fate, Tony finds himself in the middle of an amateur robbery at a Tampa dive bar. When the situation turns violent, Tony steps in to stop the chaos and protect an innocent bystander.