"Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family's Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge--until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children's Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents--but...

"A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" is the coming-of-age story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the turn-of-the-century Williamsburg slums of Brooklyn. This poignant and moving classic of American literature is filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and incident.

"From the beloved author of Dominicana, a GMA Book Club Pick and Women's Prize Finalist, an electrifying and indelible new novel about a woman who has lost everything but the chance to finally tell her story. Write this down: Cara Romero wants to work. Cara Romero thought she would work at the factory of little lamps for the rest of her life. But when, in her mid-50s, she loses her job in the Great Recession, she is forced back into the job market...

Now a grown man returning from Europe as a successful painter, Seth Quinn is settling down on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Still, a lot has changed in St. Christopher - and the most intriguing change of all is the presence of Dru Whitcomb Banks. But a secret Seth's kept hidden for years threatens to explode, destroying his new life and his new love.

A fatherless family, happy in spite of its impoverished condition, is befriended by a very rich gentleman. Adolescence.

John Harmon returns to England as his father's heir. Believed drowned under suspicious circumstances--a situation convenient to his wish for anonymity--John evaluates Bella Wilfer whom he must marry to secure his inheritance. The story is filled with colorful Victorian characters and incidents -- the faded aristocrats and parvenus gathered at the Veneering's dinner table, Betty Higden and her terror of the workhouse and the greedy plottings of Silas...

It is said that the canal will be the greatest feat of engineering in history. But first, it must be built. For Francisco, a local fisherman who resents the foreign powers clamoring for a slice of his country, nothing is more upsetting than the decision of his son, Omar, to work as a digger in the excavation zone. But for Omar, whose upbringing was quiet and lonely, this job offers a chance to finally find connection. Ada Bunting is a bold sixteen-year-old...

"Set in the 1980s in racially and politically turbulent Philadelphia and in the tiny town of Bonaparte, Alabama--about a mother fighting for her sanity and survival"-- From the moment Ava Carson and her ten-year-old son, Toussaint, arrive at the Glenn Avenue family shelter in Philadelphia 1985, Ava is already plotting a way out. She is repulsed by the shelter's squalid conditions: their cockroach-infested room, the barely edible food, and the shifty...

Set in Tucson's toughest neighborhoods during the late 1980s, this explosive debut follows the disintegration of the Nuñez family and the people whose paths they cross. From crooked cops to prostitutes plying their trade along the "Miracle Mile," each person's destiny is linked by crushing poverty, the brutal codes of the street, and the harsh nature of the desert. In this place of drought and flood, "civilization" is every bit as dangerous as its...

Brooklyn, the 1920s. Margy Shannon-- shy, eager, joyfully optimistic-- lives with her parents and has witnessed how a lifetime of work and poverty has worn them down. Unable to speak up to her overbearing mother, Margy takes refuge in dreams of finding a husband she loves, having children, and living in a nice home. When she meets Frankie Malone, she thinks at last her dreams might be fulfilled... until a devastating tragedy forces Margy to stand...