Friendship, love, and forgiveness... The Maxwells and the Popes have been friends forever. The women were college roommates, their husbands are partners in the same law firm, their kids have grown up next door to each other, and the two families share both vacations and holidays. Like Wisteria Lane, the "perfect" suburban street of Desperate Housewives, all is beautiful and serene - until an accident forces these close neighbors to look beneath...

Interweaves the stories of a baby girl in India, the American doctor who adopted her, and the Indian mother who gave her up in favor of a son, as two families--one in India, the other in the United States--are changed by the child that connects them

"When the Great Depression hits, Florence Fein leaves Brooklyn College for what appears to be a plum job in Moscow--and the promise of love and independence. But once in Russia, she quickly becomes entangled in a country she can't escape. Many years later, Florence's son, Julian, will make the opposite journey, immigrating back to the United States. His work in the oil industry takes him on frequent visits to Moscow, and when he learns that Florence's...

In the wake of 9/11, Shadi, a child of Muslim immigrants, tries to navigate her crumbling world of death, heartbreak, and bigotry in silence, until finally everything changes. 2003: the US has officially declared war on Iraq, and the American political world has evolved. Hate crimes are on the rise, FBI agents are infiltrating local mosques, and the Muslim community is harassed and targeted more than ever. Shadi, who wears hijab, keeps her head down....

Chronicles the happiness pursuits of the Eriksons from their 1970s coming-of-age to the near-present day, in a story told from revolving viewpoints

Captains and the Kings: Joseph Francis Xavier Armagh is twelve years old when he gets his first glimpse of the promised land through a dirty porthole on an Irish immigrant ship. In America, his long journey will eventually catapult him from the bigoted, small town of Winfield, Pennsylvania, to the highest echelons of society, and grant him entry into the most elite political circles. And even as misfortune follows the Armagh family like an ancient...

"A deeply personal work about identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams, Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque novel, at its heart it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home. Ayad Akhtar forges a new narrative voice to capture a country in which debt has ruined countless...

" ... As the United States begins gearing up for war in the Middle East, twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin, the Midwestern daughter of a gentleman hill farmer--his 'Keltjin potatoes' are justifiably famous--has come to a university town as a college student, her brain on fire with Chaucer, Sylvia Plath, Simone de Beauvoir. Between semesters, she takes a job as a part-time nanny. The family she works for seems both mysterious and glamorous to her, and...

A family's deepest secrets are exposed in this "haunting domestic drama" from the award-winning author of A Wrinkle in Time (Publishers Weekly).   When her teenage granddaughter comes to her with a troubling question, Camilla Dickinson must confront the painful history she's long kept hidden. Forced to relive her past, she relates a complex saga involving her beautiful, adulterous mother, her troubled son, and the difficult choices that have affected...

The award-winning author "tackles the tribulations of an American family in crisis . . . Like Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections . . . a must-read" (Booklist). By way of Italy, the Felice family puts down new roots in Southern California, settling into a grand Victorian home and buying a share of the great American Dream. But for their five, first-generation children, an idyllic childhood didn't quite translate into success and happiness. Rather,...