"Pacific Hills, California: Gated communities, ocean views, well-tended lawns, serene pools, and now the new home of the Shah family. For the Shah parents, who came to America twenty years earlier with little more than an education and their new marriage,this move represents the culmination of years of hard work and dreaming. For their children, born and raised in America, success is not so simple. For the most part, these differences among the five...

"A clever and propulsive debut novel tracing the complicated relationship between a larger-than-life actress who refuses to abandon her career for motherhood, and the daughter she chooses to abandon instead, as they confront one another once and for all"--

"Sisters Rose Tillman and Marvina Nash haven't spoken in decades -- not since Rose sent Marvina forty dollars to register their business and Marvina used that money for her own personal purposes. Now retired, Rose wants to open the restaurant they'd once dreamed of. But to her horror, Rose realizes she's forgotten their mother's secret spice mix recipe, known to only one other person in the world. With no other option, Rose embarks on a two-hour...

"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,...

"2008. The house Maxine and Seb have just bought was a bargain -- a huge Georgian townhouse on the edge of Peckham Rye, it needs a lot of work but Max couldn't resist it. Now they are in, though, nothing seems to be going right -- and as the problems mount up, Max starts to doubt her relationship as well as her decision. Is Seb all he seems to be? And why are the neighbours so evasive about the house's previous owner? 1994. Cookie and his parents...

"Taro Sakamoto was once a legendary hit man considered the greatest of all time. Bad guys feared him! Assassins revered him! But then one day he quit, got married, and had a baby. He's now living the quiet life as the owner of a neighborhood store, but how long can Sakamoto enjoy his days of retirement before his past catches up to him?! Shin faces off with a strange assassin who's targeting Mr. Sakamoto, but how will he manage against a foe whose...

"Sophia Alexander, the beautiful daughter of a famous surgeon in Berlin, has had to grow up faster than most young women. When her mother falls ill, Sophia must take charge of her younger sister, Theresa, and look after her father and the household, while also volunteering at his hospital after school. Meanwhile, Hitler's rise to power and the violence in her very own town have Sophia concerned, but only her mother is willing to share her fears openly....

Publisher Annotation: In this heartfelt story about how the places we run from hold the answers to our deepest challenges, the death of her grandmother brings a young woman home, where she must face the past in order to become the heir of not just the family restaurant, but her own destiny. DEBUT NOVEL 319pp.

"You'll be safe here. That's what the greasy tour guide tells the Farmer-Bowens when they visit Plymouth Valley, a walled-off company town with clean air, pantries that never go empty, and blue-ribbon schools. On a very trial basis, the company offers to hire Linda Farmer's husband, a numbers genius, and relocate her whole family to this bucolic paradise for the .0001%. Though Linda will have to sacrifice her medical career back home, the family jumps...