"A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a search that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum"-- Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother's plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father's life in America was circumscribed by his work...

Kathleen Cheng has gone through a humiliating breakup, dropped out of her graduate program, and left everything behind. Now she's back in her childhood home in Oakland, wondering what's next. She finds her mother has been transformed by love: the new Marissa Cheng is sporty, perky, and planning a wedding to a Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur. Kathleen takes a job at a start-up that specializes in an unconventional form of therapy based on touch. An...

"Haunted by the death of her sister, Finola Shanahan has resolved that she's not worthy of a family of her own and commits to spending her days caring for immigrants in the slums. Unwilling to consider marriage, Finola has perfected the ability to sabotage the relationships her parents arrange for her. At wit's end, her father calls upon the local Irish matchmaker, who pairs her with successful wagonmaker Riley Rafferty. After her usual tricks fail,...

In this sequel to the award-winning post-Holocaust novel The Takeaway Men, the Lubinski twins struggle with their roles as women and coming to terms with their family's Holocaust legacy at the same time as political and social upheaval roils through the US.

With the Great Depression ending and Hitler's armies marching across Europe, the young in Canada are called upon to enlist. Though her children are not eligible to serve, Lukia Mazurec can't count on them to help her manage her farm in Manitoba. Her sons are at odds, their fights getting uglier every day, and her daughter, Dolly, has fallen in love with Peter, an intelligent but poor man uninterested in farming. Lukia's dream of family unity is crumbling,...

"In The Children of this Madness, Gemini Wahhaj pens a complex tale of modern Bengalis, one that illuminates the recent histories not only of Bangladesh, but America and Iraq. Told in multiple voices over successive eras, this is the story of Nasir Uddin and his daughter Beena, and the intersection of their distant, vastly different lives. As the US war in Iraq plays out a world away, and Beena struggles to belong to Houston's tony Bengali American...

"From the acclaimed author of Dreaming in Cuban, a new novel that follows three generations of a divided family against the tumultuous backdrops of Cuba, America, Germany, and Russia in the new millennium"--

"A staggering, tender epic about gay men in rural China and the women who marry them. For over thirty years, Old Second and Bao Mei have cobbled together a meager existence in New York City's Chinatown. But unlike other couples, these two share an unusual past. In rural Fuzhou, before they emigrated, they frequented the Workers' Cinema: a theater where gay men cruised for love. While classic war films played, Old Second and his countrymen found intimacy...

"A new novel that gives voice to the diverse residents of a Palestinian American community in Baltimore--from young activists in conflict with their traditional parents to the poor who clean for the rich--shows lives which intersect across divides of class, generation and religion"--

Lily Xiao can't wait to go to Camp Rock Out this summer, where she'll finally be able to shed her "class robot" good girl reputation and start her journey to becoming the next Eddie Vedder! And she can't wait to do it with her best friend and cousin, Vivian, who's just moved from Taiwan to Lily's California hometown. But as the two cousins work their way through seventh grade, Vivian struggles more and more with her schoolwork, which is all taught...