Raised by parents so intentionally isolated that they speak their own hybrid dialect, abused youth Marjorie witnesses her parents' submission to a sadistic cult leader before she is rescued by another abuse survivor who teaches her stoneworking skills.

"From an award-winning young author, a novel following a feisty heroine's idiosyncratic quest to reclaim her past by mining the wisdom of her literary icons--even as she navigates the murkier mysteries of love...Zebra is the last in a line of anarchists, atheists, and autodidacts. When war came, her family didn't fight; they took refuge in books. Now alone and in exile, Zebra leaves New York for Barcelona, retracing the journey she and her father...

"Acclaimed author Sonya Lalli is back with a delightfully modern look at what happens for a young woman when tradition, dating, and independence collide. Adulting shouldn't be this hard. Especially in your thirties. Having been pressured by her tight-knit Indian community to get married at a young age to her first serious boyfriend, Anu Desai must now start from the beginning: learning who she is and what she truly wants. But Anu doesn't have time...

"A woman whose looks have always defined her, who has spent a lifetime trying to prove that she is allowed to exist in her own sphere, tries to be herself even as multiple men try to categorize and own her"--

"Before Jodie Rattler became a star, she was a girl growing up in St. Louis. One day in 1955, when she was just six years old, her Uncle Drew took her to the racetrack, where she got lucky - and that roll of two-dollar bills she won has never since left her side. Jodie thrived in the warmth of her extended family, and then - through a combination of hard work and serendipity - started a singing career, which catapulted her from St. Louis to New York...

"Twenty-five-year-old Melanie Carvajal, a hardworking but struggling journalist for a Miami newspaper, loves her Colombian mother but regularly ignores her phone calls, frustrated that she never quite takes the time to understand Melanie's life. When the opportunity arises for a big assignment that might save her flagging career, Melanie follows the story to the land of her mother's birth. She soon realizes Colombia has the potential to connect her,...

"Jo March--family member of an Evangelical Christian Dynasty and early questioner of her own faith--knows that there is something she is not being told about her own past. She intends to find out. Told from multiple generational and cultural viewpoints, The Sweetness of Tears skillfully interweaves the lives and stories of Jo's relatives, many of whom she never knew existed. She travels from California to Chicago, Pakistan to Iraq, chasing loose threads...

Three women--Holly, Nicola, and Lexi--learn the path to true contentment and save each other in this humorous story about old rivalries, deep secrets, and the three things all women wish they were.

"When April Vogt's boss tells her about the discoveries in a cramped, decrepit ninth arrondissement apartment, the Sotheby's continental furniture specialist does not hear the words "dust" or "rats" or "shuttered for seventy years." She hears Paris. She hears escape. Once in France, April quickly learns the apartment is not merely some rich hoarder's repository. Beneath the dust and cobwebs and stale perfumed air is a goldmine and not because of the...