Fresh Reads

Rosario Gomez gave up gang life after his brother was killed in a street fight. Now all he wants to do is finish night school, be a good father and work hard enough at his job at the supermarket to get promoted. But when an old friend shows up to ask him why he left the gang, Rosario realizes he was fooling himself if he thought his violent past would just go away. When his pregnant girlfriend is hit in a drive-by shooting, Rosario has to make some...

Jessica Vasquez had worked hard to get where she was. Though some in her family had despaired of her future, she put herself through cosmetology school and landed her dream job: overseeing the beauty department for a chain of drugstores. But her fortune abruptly changes. A manager's daughter, on a mission of her own, puts stolen makeup and perfume in Jessica's bag. The girl lies to her dad about what happened, and Jessica is fired. It seems that Jessica's...

When builders arrive to work on the deserted house next to Nan Ryan, her grown children think she will not get a moment's peace, but builder Derek Doyle helps her unravel the mystery of the previous residents' vanishing.

A woman discovers she has a rogue body part, one she's never heard of. As she prepares herself for surgery to remove the offense, she travels to London and finds answers to her questions in unexpected places--a locked room in a museum where jars of Victorian body parts are stored, an early 19th century operating room in the attic of a church, and a diary by a woman whose husband dissected a rhinoceros in their flat. Along the way, she ponders the...

Lisa's grandfather is turning 100. She wants to give him a very special gift. She hoped to tell him that his family would preserve the beloved apricot orchard he built with his own hands. The California orchard is the heart of Lisa's family and a reminder of its past. Like so many immigrants to America, Grandpa Joe and his wife fled from their country in one of the serial ethnic cleansings of the last century. Forced to leave Turkey for being Greeks,...

"Emelda is 46 years old. Her husband, Charlie, has left her for a 23-year-old dancer. Her five difficult sons worship their father and blame Emelda for his leaving. On top of everything else, she has to struggle with a new job at the local supermarket. For comfort, she turns to her only true friend--ice-cream. But lately, there's a handsome man driving the ice-cream van. Could romance be about to blossom?"--Page 4 of cover.