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THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS'CHOICE • The son of Ethiopian immigrants seeks to understand a hidden family history and uncovers a past colored by unexpected loss, addiction, and the enduring emotional pull toward home.After abandoning his once-promising career as a journalist in search of a new life in Paris, Mamush meets Hannah—a photographer whose way of seeing the world shows him the possibility of finding not only love but family. Now, five years later, with his marriage to Hannah on the verge of collapse, he returns to the close-knit immigrant Ethiopian community of Washington, DC, that defined his childhood. At its center is Mamush's stoic, implacable mother, and Samuel, the larger-than-life father figure whose ceaseless charm and humor have always served as a cover for a harder, more troubling truth. But on the same day that Mamush arrives home in Washington, Samuel is found dead in his garage.With Hannah and their two-year-old son back in Paris, Mamush sets out on an unexpected journey across America in search of answers to questions he'd been told never to ask. As he does so, he begins to understand that perhaps the only chance he has of saving his family and making it back home is to confront not only the unresolved mystery around Samuel's life and death, but his own troubled memories, and the years spent masking them. Breathtaking, commanding, unforgettable work from one of America's most prodigiously gifted novelists.

Jane recalls her carefree courtship in Ireland with promising poet Patrick. But their dreams sour after moving to America, where Patrick's literary ambitions flounder. As their funds dwindle, Jane sacrifices her jewelry and happiness to support his false pride. When a sturdy Western businessman proposes rescue from her now-loveless marriage, Jane agonizes: stay with Patrick from duty or duty to herself?

One of the Books Barack Obama Is Reading This Summer One of Vulture's Best Books of 2023 One of Goodreads'Buzziest Debut Novels of 2023 One of Essence's 31 Books You Must Read One of the most anticipated books by Town & Country and ElleAmerica is seen through the eyes and ambitions of three characters with ties to Africa in this gripping novel When siblings Jacob and Belinda Nti were growing up in Ghana, their goal was simple: to move to America. For them, the United States was both an opportunity and a struggle, a goal and an obstacle. Jacob, an awkward computer programmer who still lives with his father, wants a visa so he can move to Virginia to live with his wife—a request that the U.S. government has repeatedly denied. He envies his sister, Belinda, who achieved, as their father put it, “what Napoleon could not do”: she went to college and law school in the United States and even managed to marry Wilder, a wealthy Black businessman from Texas. Wilder's view of America differs markedly from his wife's, as he's spent his life railing against the racism and marginalization that are part of life for every African American living here. For these three, their desires and ambitions highlight the promise and the disappointment that life in a new country offers. How each character comes to understand this and how each learns from both their dashed hopes and their fulfilled dreams lie at the heart of what makes What Napoleon Could Not Do such a compelling, insightful read.

They went to Cairo, leaving behind the adobe houses built along the edge of the Nile and the villagers who all knew each other and who had lived on this land for more centuries than their names could count. Behind them, they left the imprint of their footsteps for others who might follow. This family saga begins when Salim, the eldest of three brothers, moves to Cairo at the start of the twentieth century with dreams of opening his own bakery. His decision to leave his ancestral village of Kom Ombo despite his parents'objections reverberates across generations, kicking off a series of migrations that shape the lives of his family and their descendants throughout the decades that follow. These migrations only intensify after the revolution of 1952—with Misha, Salim's eldest grandchild, being the first to flee to “Amreeka,” his annual phone calls home becoming briefer and briefer with each passing year. Culminating with the 2011 protests in Tahrir Square, Pauline Kaldas's The Measure of Distance is a detailed portrait of immigration against the backdrop of an Egypt in constant flux and an America that is always falling short of the fantasy. Alternating between tales of those who migrate and those who stay, this expansive novel follows its characters as they determine the course of their lives, often choosing one uncertainty over another as they migrate to new lands or plant their roots more firmly in their homeland.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Winner of the David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction • The epic tale of a brilliant woman who must reinvent herself to survive, moving from Mussolini's Italy to 1940s Los Angeles—a timeless story of love, deceit, and sacrifice from the award-winning author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena“A genuinely moving and life-affirming novel that's a true joy to read.”—Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere“A gorgeous book... sublime.”—The New York Times (Editors'Choice)ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR, The Guardian, BooklistLike many before her, Maria Lagana has come to Hollywood to outrun her past. Born in Rome, where every Sunday her father took her to the cinema instead of church, Maria immigrates with her mother to Los Angeles after a childhood transgression leads to her father's arrest.Fifteen years later, on the eve of America's entry into World War II, Maria is an associate producer at Mercury Pictures, trying to keep her personal and professional lives from falling apart. Her mother won't speak to her. Her boss, a man of many toupees, has been summoned to Washington by congressional investigators. Her boyfriend, a virtuoso Chinese American actor, can't escape the studio's narrow typecasting. And the studio itself, Maria's only home in exile, teeters on the verge of bankruptcy.Over the coming months, as the bright lights go dark across Los Angeles, Mercury Pictures becomes a nexus of European émigrés: modernist poets trying their luck as B-movie screenwriters, once-celebrated architects becoming scale-model miniaturists, and refugee actors finding work playing the very villains they fled. While the world descends into war, Maria rises through a maze of conflicting politics, divided loyalties, and jockeying ambitions. But when the arrival of a stranger from her father's past threatens Maria's carefully constructed facade, she must finally confront her father's fate—and her own.Written with intelligence, wit, and an exhilarating sense of possibility, Mercury Pictures Presents spans many moods and tones, from the heartbreaking to the ecstatic. It is a love letter to life's bit players, a panorama of an era that casts a long shadow over our own, and a tour de force by a novelist whose work The Washington Post calls “a flash in the heavens that makes you look up and believe in miracles.”

Based on the remarkable true story of the Carpathia—the only ship and her legendary captain who answered the distress call of the sinking Titanic. Just after midnight on April 15, 1912, the passenger steamship Carpathia receives a distress signal from the largest passenger liner ever built, RMS Titanic, which is on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York. Captain Arthur Rostron is awakened to an enormous maritime emergency with little information to guide his actions in answering the call for help. Is the dire threat to the unsinkable Titanic accurate? His ship is more than four hours away; will Carpathia hold together if pushed to never-before-tested speeds? What if his ship also strikes an iceberg? How many of Titanic's 2,200 passengers will the Carpathia be able to accommodate? And with the freezing temperatures, will there be any survivors by the time the Carpathia arrives? Kate Connolly is excited to join her sister in America and proud to be traveling on the grand Titanic, which was built in her Irish homeland. As a passenger in third-class accommodations, she is among the last to receive instruction and help after Titanic hits an iceberg. Among the chaos of abandoning ship, the chances of her securing a spot in a lifeboat appear grim. With the help of several men, also from Ireland, Kate finally reaches the upper decks and feels lucky to board Lifeboat 13, although no one knows if or when a rescue ship will come. She fears the icy water and wonders if they'll all freeze to death. After seeing their magnificent ship submerge into the abyss, and hearing the cries of hundreds of fellow passengers drowning, it is almost too much to bear and Kate fleetingly thinks succumbing to her ordeal is the easiest escape. Told in alternating chapters from the perspective of Captain Rostron on the Carpathia and Kate Connolly on the Titanic, this historical novel is a compelling, heart-pounding account of two eyewitnesses to an epic disaster. Rostron's heroic and compassionate leadership, his methodical preparations for rescue, and his grit and determination to act honorably and selflessly to save lives and care for the survivors, sets the course for this awe-inspiring story.

Outcast Darcy Willickers doesn't care what the 1930's coal mining town of Galen, Pennsylvania thinks of her. She, along with her unusual mother and sisters, live at The Hospitality Inn. A dilapidated hotel they own and operate which tends to mysteriously attract misfit wayfarers, instead of actual paying guests. Trying to keep her family fed and a roof over their heads is hard enough for Darcy without having to fend off the obsessive attentions of the local sinister minister's son. Into Darcy's precarious life steps Luca D'Angeli, a handsome young Italian immigrant with no idea that loving Darcy may well destroy them both...

'A dazzling collection of stories based in part on his/her life... Readers will want to consume these bonbons slowly because they are so rich and delicious.'– Gay City News'Chilean American writer Ojeda dazzles and devastates in this rich collection about a group of trans Latinx immigrants as they try to make it in New York City.'– Publishers WeeklyDrawing from his/her own experience as a trans performer, sex worker, and undocumented immigrant, Iván Monalisa Ojeda chronicles the lives of Latinx queer and trans immigrants in New York City. Whether she is struggling with addiction, clashing with law enforcement, or is being subjected to personal violence, each character choses her own path of defiance, often responding to her fate with with irreverent dark humor. What emerges is the portrait of a group of friends who express unquestioning solidarity and love for each other, and of an unfamiliar, glittering and violent, New York City that will draw readers in and swallow them whole.On every page, Iván Monalisa's unique narrative talent is on display as he/she artfully transforms the language of the streets, making it his/her own -- rich with rhythm and debauchery. This bold new collection positions Ojeda as a fresh and necessary voice within the canon of world literature.

A Recommended Read from: Entertainment Weekly • Buzzfeed • Good Morning America • USA Today • Harper's Bazaar • Fortune • A.V. Club • The Millions • Lit Hub • International Examiner • Publishers WeeklyWhen her husband suddenly disappears, a young woman must uncover where he went—and who she might be without him—in this striking debut of immigration, identity, and marriage.After another taxing day as the sole female employee at her New York City tech startup, Edwina comes home to find that her husband, Marlin, has packed up a suitcase and left. The only question now is why. Did he give up on their increasingly hopeless quest to secure their green cards and decide to return to Malaysia? Was it the death of his father that sent him into a tailspin? Or has his strange, sudden change in personality finally made Marlin and Edwina strangers to each other?As Edwina searches the city for traces of her husband, she simultaneously sifts through memories of their relationship, hoping to discover the moment when something went wrong. All the while, a coworker is making increasingly uncomfortable advances toward her. And she can't hide the truth about Marlin's disappearance from her overbearing, eccentric mother for much longer. Soon Edwina will have to decide how much she is willing to sacrifice in order to stay in her marriage and in America.Poignant and darkly funny, Edge Case is a searing meditation on intimacy, estrangement, and the fractured nature of identity. In this moving debut, YZ Chin explores the imperfect yet enduring relationships we hold to country and family.“Chin's specificity and wonderfully drawn minor characters add depth and richness…. Not only a subtly provocative depiction of the tech industry, and this country, as tilting ever more off-kilter; but also a realistic portrayal of a woman in crisis.” —Lauren Oyler, The New York Times Book Review

This Is Not Your Country by Amin Ahmad won the G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize from BkMk Press, selected by Stephanie Powell Watts. America has upended the lives of these Indian immigrants: a doctor addicted to the adrenaline rush of the ER, a genius computer programmer who always gets fired, a high-level bureaucrat outshone by his young wife, a teenage runaway, and a lonely livery driver who befriends a troupe of street acrobats. As they desperately seek solace in love, sex, and status, they discover that the journey to real belonging is much stranger than they had ever imagined. Stories in This Is Not Your Country have appeared in such places as The Missouri Review, Slice, and Asian American Literary Review.

••WINNER OF THE MAYA ANGELOU AWARD•• A Massachusetts Book Award'Fiction Honor'An extraordinary literary debut about a Nigerian boy's secret intersex identity and his desire to live as a girl.Oto leaves for boarding school with one plan: excel and escape his cruel home. Falling in love with his roommate was certainly not on the agenda, but fear and shame force him to hide his love and true self. Back home, weighed down by the expectations of their wealthy and powerful family, the love of Oto's twin sister wavers and, as their world begins to crumble around them, Oto must make drastic choices that will alter the family's lives for ever. Richly imagined with art, proverbs and folk tales, this moving and modern novel follows Oto through life at home and at boarding school in Nigeria, through the heartbreak of living as a boy despite their profound belief they are a girl, and through a hunger for freedom that only a new life in the United States can offer. An Ordinary Wonder is a powerful coming-of-age story that explores complex desires as well as challenges of family, identity, gender, and culture, and what it means to feel whole.

A New York Times Book Review Editors'Choice'Intelligent, honest, and full of heart,'My Heart is an intimate work of autobiographical fiction by one of ex-Yugoslavia's greatest writers about his family's experience as refugees from the Bosnian war—a timeless story of love, memory, and the resilience of the human spirit that'has all the qualities one might seek in a friend'(Etgar Keret, author of The Seven Goods Years).'Today, it seems, was the day I was meant to die.'When a writer suffers a heart attack at the age of fifty, he must confront his mortality in a country that is not his native home. Confined to a hospital bed and overcome by a sense of powerlessness, he reflects on the fragility of life and finds extraordinary meaning in the quotidian. In this affecting autobiographical novel, Semezdin Mehmedinovic explores the love he and his family have for one another, strengthened by trauma; their harrowing experience of the Bosnian war, which led them to flee for the United States as refugees; eerie premonitions of Donald Trump's presidency; the life and work of a writer; and the nature of memory and grief.Poetically explosive and pure to the core, My Heart serves as a kind of mirror, reflecting our human strengths and weaknesses along with the most important issues on our minds--love and death, the present and the past, sickness and health, leaving and staying.

Named a Best Book of the Year by Time, The Washington Post, and Harper's Bazaar“A tender, spiky family saga about love in all its mysterious incarnations.” —Lorrie Moore, author of A Gate at the Stairs and Birds of America“Absolutely luminous... Weaves the transience of suburbia between the highs and lows of a family saga... Shocks, awes, and delights.” —Bryan Washington, author of Memorial From the outside, the Chengs seem like so-called model immigrants. Once Patty landed a tech job near Dallas, she and Liang grew secure enough to have a second child, and to send for their first from his grandparents back in China. Isn't this what they sacrificed so much for? But then little Annabel begins to sleepwalk at night, putting into motion a string of misunderstandings that not only threaten to set their community against them but force to the surface the secrets that have made them fear one another. How can a man make peace with the terrors of his past? How can a child regain trust in unconditional love? How can a family stop burying its history and forge a way through it, to a more honest intimacy? Nights When Nothing Happened is gripping storytelling immersed in the crosscurrents that have reshaped the American landscape, from a prodigious new literary talent.

Following two families from Pakistan and Iraq in the 1990s to San Francisco in 2016, The Bad Muslim Discount is an inclusive, comic novel about Muslim immigrants finding their way in modern America.“Masood's novel presents a stereoscopic, three-dimensional view of contemporary Muslim America: the way historical conflict in the Middle East lingers in individual lives, the way gossip travels in a close-knit immigrant community.” —The New York Times Book ReviewIt is 1995, and Anvar Faris is a restless, rebellious, and sharp-tongued boy doing his best to grow up in Karachi, Pakistan. As fundamentalism takes root within the social order and the zealots next door attempt to make Islam great again, his family decides, not quite unanimously, to start life over in California. Ironically, Anvar's deeply devout mother and his model-Muslim brother adjust easily to life in America, while his fun-loving father can't find anyone he relates to. For his part, Anvar fully commits to being a bad Muslim.At the same time, thousands of miles away, Safwa, a young girl living in war-torn Baghdad with her grief-stricken, conservative father will find a very different and far more dangerous path to America. When Anvar and Safwa's worlds collide as two remarkable, strong-willed adults, their contradictory, intertwined fates will rock their community, and families, to their core. The Bad Muslim Discount is an irreverent, poignant, and often hysterically funny debut novel by an amazing new voice. With deep insight, warmth, and an irreverent sense of humor, Syed M. Masood examines universal questions of identity, faith (or lack thereof), and belonging through the lens of Muslim Americans.

One of the Best Books of the Year: Elle, Harper's Bazaar, Vulture • This uncompromising look at the immigrant experience, and the depravity of one man, is an electrifying page-turner rooted in a magical reality • “Impossible to stop reading” —VultureWhen Lucien flees Haiti with his wife, Marie-Ange, and their three children to New York City's South Ozone Park, he does so hoping for reinvention, wealth, and comfort. He buys a run-down house in a quickly changing community, and begins life anew. Lucien and Marie-Ange call their home La Kay—“my mother's house”—and it becomes a place where their fellow immigrants can find peace, a good meal, and necessary legal help. But as a severely emotionally damaged man emigrating from a country whose evils he knows to one whose evils he doesn't, Lucien soon falls into his worst habits and impulses, with La Kay as the backdrop for his lasciviousness. What he can't begin to fathom is that the house is watching, passing judgment, and deciding to put an end to all the sins it has been made to hold. But only after it has set itself aflame will frightened whispers reveal Lucien's ultimate evil.

This'profound and provocative'work by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Disgraced and American Dervish followsan immigrant father and his son as they search for belonging—in post-Trump America, and with each other (Kirkus Reviews).'Passionate, disturbing, unputdownable.'—Salman Rushdie ​ 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 lives and the gods of finance rule, where immigrants live in fear, and where the nation's unhealed wounds wreak havoc around the world. Akhtar attempts to make sense of it all through the lens of a story about one family, from a heartland town in America to palatial suites in Central Europe to guerrilla lookouts in the mountains of Afghanistan, and spares no one—least of all himself—in the process. One of the New York Times 10 Best Books of the YearOne of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2020Finalist for the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in FictionA Best Book of 2020 • Washington Post • O Magazine • New York Times Book Review • Publishers Weekly

'[A] searing debut.'—i>O, The Oprah MagazineIn her powerful collection, first published in 2016 and now featuring new stories, Vanessa Hua gives voice to immigrant families navigating a shifting America. Tied to their ancestral and adopted homelands in ways unimaginable in generations past, these memorable characters span both worlds but belong to none, illustrating the conflict between self and society, tradition and change. This all–new edition of Deceit and Other Possibilities marks the emergence of a remarkable writer.

The Chandaria family—emigrants from the Indian-enclave of Nairobi—have managed to flourish in America. Premchand, the father, is a doctor who has worked doggedly to grow his practice and give his family security; his wife, Urmila, runs a business importing artisanal Kenyan crafts; and their son, Sunil, after quitting the pre-med track, has gotten accepted to a PhD program in philosophy at Harvard. But the parents have kept a very important secret from Sunil: his cousin, Bimal, is actually his older brother. And when this previously hidden history is revealed by an unforeseen accident, and the entire family is forced to return to Nairobi, Sunil reveals his own well-kept, explosive secret: his Jewish-American girlfriend, who has accompanied him to Kenya, is, in fact, already his wife. Spanning four generations and three continents, The Limits of the World illuminates the vast mosaic of cultural divisions and ethical considerations that shape the ways in which we judge one another's actions. A dazzling debut novel—written with rare empathy and insight—it is a powerful depiction of how we prevent ourselves, unwittingly and otherwise, from understanding the people we are closest to.

“A quietly powerful addition to the canon of émigré literature” —The Moscow TimesNo longer at home in Russia, but not quite assimilated into the American mainstream, the daily lives of Russian immigrants are fueled by a combustible mix of success and alienation. Simon Reznikov, the Boston-based immigrant protagonist of Maxim D. Shrayer's A Russian Immigrant, is restless. Unresolved feelings about his Jewish (and American) present and his Russian (and Soviet) past prevent Reznikov from easily putting down roots in his new country. A visit to a decaying summer resort in the Catskills, now populated by Jewish ghosts of Soviet history, which include a famous émigré writer, reveals to Reznikov that he, too, is a prisoner of his past. An expedition to Prague in search of clues for an elusive Jewish writer's biography exposes Reznikov's own inability to move on. A chance reunion with a former Russian lover, now also an immigrant living in an affluent part of Connecticut, unearths memories of Reznikov's last Soviet summer while reanimating many contradictors of a mixed, Jewish-Russian marriage.Told both linearly and non-linearly, with elements of suspense, mystery and crime, these three interconnected novellas gradually reveal many layers of the characters'Russian, Jewish, and Soviet identities. Vectors of love and desire, nostalgia and amnesia, violence and forgiveness, politics and aesthetics guide Shrayer's immigrant characters while also disorienting them in their new American lives. Set in Providence, New Haven and Boston, but also in places of the main character's pilgrimages such as Estonia and Bohemia, Shrayer's book weaves together a literary manifesto of Russian Jews in America.

Aging and homesick, Nur Ali is living in America, seeking asylum. Though ex¬iled from his Swat, Pakistan, homeland and inaccurately labeled as a Taliban sympathizer by the US government, he's determined to keep his position as family patriarch. So Nur Ali leads and provides for his beloved family clan in Pakistan from half a world away. Using prepaid phone cards and a landline in the inner-city 7-Eleven where he works as night shift manager, Nur Ali manages food, gifts, marriages, births, and deaths, all the events that glue a family together. Culturally accurate, this work of fiction is a page-turning journey that will give you new insight into the lives of immigrants who come to America seeking a better life while still clinging to the culture and traditions of their homeland. Post 9-11 America is not the melting pot many thought it could be. This is the daily reality Nur Ali and his friends live. They are exiled from home and living in yet another hostile country. These immigrants find themselves homeless both at home and abroad. This suspenseful struggle of Nur Ali, his family in Pakistan, and his friends in America, will both entertain and inform you.

From activist to family matriarch, Barbara Lavette takes center stage in the final three volumes of the New York Times–bestselling Immigrants saga. New York Times–bestselling author Howard Fast's immensely popular Immigrants saga spanned six novels and more than a century of the Lavette family history. The series was considered one of the crowning achievements of the prolific author, who also penned Spartacus, Freedom Road, and April Morning. The Legacy: In this New York Times bestseller, Barbara, the daughter of self-made Italian immigrant Dan Lavette, navigates the turmoil of the 1960s, including the Vietnam War, the feminist and civil rights movements, and Israel's Six Day War with Egypt. “A wonderful book.” —Los Angeles Times The Immigrant's Daughter: At sixty, Barbara is living a quiet life in San Francisco, grieving after the death of a longtime male friend. But when she mounts an unexpectedly competitive congressional campaign, she reconnects with her past as a journalist and human rights activist, and her spirits revive, in this New York Times Bestseller. An Independent Woman: In this emotional farewell, Barbara, the rock and matriarch of her family, marries a Unitarian priest, and together they travel the world—until she faces the toughest challenge of her life. “Eventful and well-crafted... Loyal fans of Fast's opus will welcome this bittersweet reunion with a woman they have come to know and admire.” —People

Anchored in the community of first-, second-, and third-generation Welsh Americans in Utica, New York, during the 1960s, the stories in David Lloyd's The Moving of the Water delve into universal concerns: identity, home, religion, language, culture, belonging, personal and national histories, mortality. Unflinching in their portrayal of the traumas and conflicts of fictional Welsh Americans, these stories also embrace multiple communities and diverse experiences in linked, innovative narratives: soldiers fighting in World War I and in Vietnam, the criminal underworld, the poignant struggles of children and adults caught between old and new worlds. The complexly damaged characters of these surprising and affecting stories seek transformation and revelation, healing and regeneration: a sometimes traumatic'moving of the water.'

From an immensely talented new voice in international fiction, this “fascinating, ambitious” (The New York Times Book Review) and epic novel seamlessly interweaves five love stories that, together, chronicle sixty years of Bangladeshi history—for fans of Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner and Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance.Shahryar, a recent PhD graduate and father of nine-year-old Anna, must leave the United States when his visa expires. In their last remaining weeks together, we learn Shahryar's history, in a vil­lage on the Bay of Bengal, where a poor fisherman and his wife are preparing to face a storm of historic proportions. That story intersects with those of a Japanese pilot, a British doctor stationed in Burma during World War II, and a privileged couple in Calcutta who leaves everything behind to move to East Pakistan following the Partition of India. Inspired by the 1970 Bhola cyclone, in which half a million-people perished overnight, the structure of this riveting novel mimics the storm itself. Building to a series of revelatory and moving climaxes, it shows the many ways in which families love, betray, honor, and sacrifice for one another. At once grounded in history and fantastically imaginative, The Storm “moves us deftly through time and across borders, beautifully illustrating the strange intersections we call fate, and reminding us how the past shapes the present” (Rumaan Alam, author of Rich and Pretty). Exploring the human­ity that connects us beyond the surface differences of race, religion, and nationality, “this powerful and important debut is a story for our time” (Library Journal, starred review).

Longlisted for the Aspen Literary Prize, 2019 Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, 2018 Longlisted for Elle's Big Book Award, 2018 Evening Standard's Wander List Guide to 2019 Getaways A giant debut novel about the redemptive, restorative power of love; about trust and fear; hair and makeup; food and sex; it's about belonging and...not belonging. It's a soulful literary saga set in the early nineties of San Francisco; a coming-of-age about leaving home and, sometimes, the necessity of turning back. How many lives can one person lead in a single lifetime? When Hero De Vera arrives in America, disowned by her parents in the Philippines, she's already on her third. Her uncle, Pol, who has offered her a fresh start and a place to stay in the Bay Area, knows not to ask about the first and second. And his wife, Paz, has learned enough about the might and secrecy of the De Vera family to keep her head down. Only their daughter Roni asks Hero why her hands seem to scream with hurt at the steering wheel of the car she drives to collect her from school, and only Rosalyn, the fierce but open-hearted beautician, has any hope of bringing Hero back from the dead.'This book is it: one of the best debut novels (and novels, period) of recent years'Elle'Blazingly fearless'Observer'Radical... I was startled at how moved I was'Guardian

A New York Times Book Review Editors'Choice'A radiant first novel.... [Neon in Daylight] has antecedents in the great novels of the 1970s: Renata Adler's Speedboat, Elizabeth Hardwick's Sleepless Nights, Joan Didion's Play It as It Lays.... Precision—of observation, of language—is Hoby's gift. Her sentences are sleek and tailored. Language molds snugly to thought.'—Parul Sehgal, The New York TimesNew York City in 2012, the sweltering summer before Hurricane Sandy hits. Kate, a young woman newly arrived from England, is staying in a Manhattan apartment while she tries to figure out her future. She has two unfortunate responsibilities during her time in America: to make regular Skype calls to her miserable boyfriend back home, and to cat–sit an indifferent feline named Joni Mitchell.The city has other plans for her. In New York's parks and bodegas, its galleries and performance spaces, its bars and clubs crowded with bodies, Kate encounters two strangers who will transform her stay: Bill, a charismatic but embittered writer made famous by the movie version of his only novel; and Inez, his daughter, a recent high school graduate who supplements her Bushwick cafe salary by enacting the fantasies of men she meets on Craigslist. Unmoored from her old life, Kate falls into an infatuation with both of them.Set in a heatwave that feels like it will never break, Neon In Daylight marries deep intelligence with captivating characters to offer us a joyful, unflinching exploration of desire, solitude, and the thin line between life and art.

Named one of the best books of 2018 by NPR, Real Simple, Lit Hub, The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Post, Kirkus Reviews, and The New York Public Library'A saga rich with origin myths, national and personal... Castillo is part of a younger generation of American writers instilling literature with a layered sense of identity.'--Vogue How many lives fit in a lifetime? When Hero De Vera arrives in America--haunted by the political upheaval in the Philippines and disowned by her parents--she's already on her third. Her uncle gives her a fresh start in the Bay Area, and he doesn't ask about her past. His younger wife knows enough about the might and secrecy of the De Vera family to keep her head down. But their daughter--the first American-born daughter in the family--can't resist asking Hero about her damaged hands. An increasingly relevant story told with startling lucidity, humor, and an uncanny ear for the intimacies and shorthand of family ritual, America Is Not the Heart is a sprawling, soulful debut about three generations of women in one family struggling to balance the promise of the American dream and the unshakeable grip of history. With exuberance, grit, and sly tenderness, here is a family saga; an origin story; a romance; a narrative of two nations and the people who leave one home to grasp at another.

Un imprescindible de la literatura latinoamericana. Horacio Castellanos Moya es una de las voces más provocadoras, originales y relevantes de la generación de Bolaño. José Zeledón, hombre silencioso y huraño, vive atormentado por su violento pasado. Tras huir de El Salvador con una nueva identidad después de la guerra civil, ha logrado pasar desapercibido durante años en Estados Unidos. Ahora debe dejar atrás Texas y empezar de nuevo en Wisconsin, donde un antiguo compañero de la guerrilla le ha conseguido una habitación amueblada en la ciudad universitaria de Merlow City y un trabajo de conductor de autobús escolar. Su anodina nueva vida se verá alterada al descubrir que otro compatriota salvadoreño, el experiodista Erasmo Aragón, ejerce como profesor en el Merlow College mientras busca esclarecer la muerte del poeta revolucionario Roque Dalton. Castellanos Moya es uno de los autores más incisivos y singulares de su generación y el único que, según Roberto Bolaño, ha sabido narrar «el horror, el Vietnam secreto que durante mucho tiempo fue Latinoamérica». Al igual que otros personajes de Moronga, Zeledón y Aragón son supervivientes del horror, seres paranoicos y en permanente estado de alerta. Ambos nos cuentan en primera persona historias en las que asoma su pasado, la guerrilla y el narco, mientras el autor entreteje una intrincada telaraña de violencia que atrapa al lector hasta alcanzar un trepidante final en el que todos los caminos se unen. Reseñas: «Castellanos Moya es una figura estelar en el todavía en marcha segundo boom de la literatura latinoamericana.» The New York Review of Books «Es un melancólico y escribe como si viviera en el fondo de alguno de los muchos volcanes de su país.» Roberto Bolaño «El instinto de Castellanos Moya por el humor también marca su trabajo: captura el absurdo noir que surge en los escenarios más mordaces o improbables.» The New York Review of Books «Castellanos Moya tiene esa excepcional capacidad de escribir novelas aceleradas y completas, que lo desbordan a uno pero que también están bella y dramáticamente modeladas.» George Saunders «Castellanos Moya demuestra la alta calidad de la narrativa en lengua castellana, consecuencia de sus dotes y de sus experiencias personales.» Joaquín Marco, El Cultural «Es uno de los escritores más auténticos de Centroamérica, capaz de trasladar a su ficción el ambiente de violencia que se ha respirado en El Salvador bajo formas que escapan a toda tradición y con una voluntad de estilo tan potente como original.» Diego Gándara, La Razón

Er wäre in einer Welt zu Hause, in der es gerecht zuginge. Das scheint nicht viel verlangt, und Karl kann auch nicht viel verlangen, denn er ist ein einfacher Bursche, der nicht einmal höhere Schulkenntnisse besitzt und gewiß keine besonderen Ansprüche stellt. Hauptperson ist der junge, sechzehnjährige Karl Rossmann, der von seinen armen Eltern nach Amerika geschickt worden war, weil ihn ein Dienstmädchen verführt und ein Kind von ihm bekommen hatte, in dem schon langsam gewordenen Schiff in den Hafen von New York einfuhr, erblickte er die schon längst beobachtete Statue der Freiheitsgöttin wie in einem plötzlich stärker gewordenen Sonnenlicht. Ihr Arm mit dem Schwert ragte wie neuerdings empor, und um ihre Gestalt wehten die freien Lüfte. Karl Rossmann bricht in die Neue Welt auf, um die Freiheit zu suchen...

This eBook features the unabridged text of ‘The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)'from the bestselling edition of ‘The Complete Works of Gertrude Stein'. Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. The Delphi Classics edition of Stein includes original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of the author, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.eBook features: • The complete unabridged text of ‘The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)'• Beautifully illustrated with images related to Stein's works • Individual contents table, allowing easy navigation around the eBook • Excellent formatting of the text Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to learn more about our wide range of titles

From the American author and immigrant civil activist, Mary Antin, The Lie is an enlightening short story that illustrates what life was like for young immigrants in early twentieth-century America. David is the son of Mr. Rudinsky, an immigrant living in America. To keep his son in the school system for a further two years, Mr. Rudinksy lies about David's age. Although David works hard and performs well in school, his father's lie is constantly nestled in the back of his mind and weighs heavy on his shoulders. Will their lie eventually catch up with them? Mary Antin was a Jewish immigrant in the late 1800s whose writing was inspired by her own experiences. In this short story, she captures the emotions of many young people who have had to leave their birth countries for a new life. The Lie, originally published shortly after Antin's seminal autobiography, The Promised Land, provides incredible insight into the lives and struggles of immigrants in the early 1900s. Still as relevant as it was upon first publication, The Lie has been republished by Read & Co. Books for future generations to enjoy. This new edition is a must-read for those who enjoy the work of Mary Antin, and are interested in the history of immigration in twentieth-century America.

A compulsively readable debut novel about marriage, immigration, class, race, and the trapdoors in the American Dream—the unforgettable story of a young Cameroonian couple making a new life in New York just as the Great Recession upends the economyNew York Times Bestseller • Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award • Longlisted for the PEN/Open Book Award • An ALA Notable BookNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • The New York Times Book Review • San Francisco Chronicle • The Guardian • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • Chicago Public Library • BookPage • Refinery29 • Kirkus Reviews Jende Jonga, a Cameroonian immigrant living in Harlem, has come to the United States to provide a better life for himself, his wife, Neni, and their six-year-old son. In the fall of 2007, Jende can hardly believe his luck when he lands a job as a chauffeur for Clark Edwards, a senior executive at Lehman Brothers. Clark demands punctuality, discretion, and loyalty—and Jende is eager to please. Clark's wife, Cindy, even offers Neni temporary work at the Edwardses'summer home in the Hamptons. With these opportunities, Jende and Neni can at last gain a foothold in America and imagine a brighter future. However, the world of great power and privilege conceals troubling secrets, and soon Jende and Neni notice cracks in their employers'façades. When the financial world is rocked by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the Jongas are desperate to keep Jende's job—even as their marriage threatens to fall apart. As all four lives are dramatically upended, Jende and Neni are forced to make an impossible choice.Praise for Behold the Dreamers“A debut novel by a young woman from Cameroon that illuminates the immigrant experience in America with the tenderhearted wisdom so lacking in our political discourse... Mbue is a bright and captivating storyteller.”—The Washington Post “A capacious, big-hearted novel.”—The New York Times Book Review“Behold the Dreamers'heart... belongs to the struggles and small triumphs of the Jongas, which Mbue traces in clean, quick-moving paragraphs.”—Entertainment Weekly “Mbue's writing is warm and captivating.”—People (book of the week) “[Mbue's] book isn't the first work of fiction to grapple with the global financial crisis of 2007–2008, but it's surely one of the best.... It's a novel that depicts a country both blessed and doomed, on top of the world, but always at risk of losing its balance. It is, in other words, quintessentially American.”—NPR “This story is one that needs to be told.”—Bust “Behold the Dreamers challenges us all to consider what it takes to make us genuinely content, and how long is too long to live with our dreams deferred.”—O: The Oprah Magazine“[A] beautiful, empathetic novel.”—The Boston Globe “A witty, compassionate, swiftly paced novel that takes on race, immigration, family and the dangers of capitalist excess.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch “Mbue [is] a deft, often lyrical observer.... [Her] meticulous storytelling announces a writer in command of her gifts.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune

A widow and her two grown children search for answers about the past in both America and China, in this insightful novel of an immigrant family's journey. After a lifetime of sacrifice, Ling's husband has passed away. Though she has both a son and a daughter to comfort her, she has struggled to understand how they live their lives—Emily, an immigration lawyer in New York City, inexplicably refuses to have children; and Michael is unable to commit to a relationship or a career. Michael yearns for a deeper connection to his family, but has never been able to find the courage to come out to them as gay. But when he finds a letter to his father from a long-ago friend—written mostly in Chinese except for a mysterious line at the end: Everything has been forgiven—he impulsively travels to China in the hopes of learning more about a man he never really knew. In this rapidly modernizing country, he begins to understand his father's decisions—including one that reverberates into the present day. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Ling and Emily question their own choices, trying to forge a path that bends toward new loves and fresh beginnings. From the author of Happy Family, named one of the top ten debuts of the year by Booklist, this is a powerfully honest novel that captures the complexity of the immigrant experience, exploring one family's hidden history, unspoken hurts, and search for a place to call home.

As the sequel to Morkan's Quarry, The Teeth of the Souls tells the story of a marriage betrayed, a lifelong and secret love, and an Ozarks city riven by an Easter lynching. The story begins just after the Civil War when Leighton Shea Morkan, son of Irish immigrants, marries Patricia Grünhaagen Weitzer, daughter of a German banking family. Yet he can't let go of his childhood love and wartime confidante, the house hand and former slave, Judith. Both unions produce children, one a shrouded secret, and one the heir to the Morkan legacy: the limestone quarries of Springfield, Missouri, and the bloody past, what Judith calls “The Teeth of the Souls.” Grounded in broad historical research and spanning Missouri's reconstruction, vigilantism, and fall from grace, The Teeth of the Souls chronicles the violent melding of immigrant strains—Irish, German, Scots-Irish, and African American—into the fabric of the Ozarks.

Ifi and Job, a Nigerian couple in an arranged marriage, begin their lives together in Nebraska with a single, outrageous lie: that Job is a doctor, not a college dropout. Unwittingly, Ifi becomes his co-conspirator—that is until his first wife, Cheryl, whom he married for a green card years ago, reenters the picture and upsets Job's tenuous balancing act.Julie Iromuanya has short stories and novel excerpts appearing or forthcoming in the Kenyon Review, Passages North, the Cream City Review, and the Tampa Review, among other journals. She is a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. Mr. and Mrs. Doctor is her first novel.

Adam Saffron—builder, patriarch, and autocrat—has built a family empire. The Saffron family is successful, prestigious, and closely knit, and their great Windflower estate has kept them safe from the dangerous and enticing world beyond its gates for many years. The Windflower is superior and all-inclusive, much like the Saffrons themselves—but how long can their dynasty last? Family Secrets is an epic three-generational saga that follows the fascinating Saffron family as they strive to keep their legacy alive, despite the separate paths each family member will inevitably take.

A USA TODAY BESTSELLER!'A powerful debut that proves the threads that interweave our lives can withstand time and any tide, and bind our hearts forever.'—Susanna Kearsley, New York Times bestselling author of Belleweather and The Vanished DaysA historical novel inspired by true events, Kelli Estes's brilliant and atmospheric debut is a poignant tale of two women determined to do the right thing, highlighting the power of our own stories.The smallest items can hold centuries of secrets...While exploring her aunt's island estate, Inara Erickson is captivated by an elaborately stitched piece of fabric hidden in the house. The truth behind the silk sleeve dated back to 1886, when Mei Lien, the lone survivor of a cruel purge of the Chinese in Seattle found refuge on Orcas Island and shared her tragic experience by embroidering it.As Inara peels back layer upon layer of the centuries of secrets the sleeve holds, her life becomes interwoven with that of Mei Lein. Through the stories Mei Lein tells in silk, Inara uncovers a tragic truth that will shake her family to its core—and force her to make an impossible choice. Should she bring shame to her family and risk everything by telling the truth, or tell no one and dishonor Mei Lien's memory?A touching and tender book for fans of Marie Benedict, Susanna Kearsley, and Duncan Jepson, The Girl Who Wrote in Silk is a dual-time period novel that explores how a delicate piece of silk interweaves the past and the present, reminding us that today's actions have far reaching implications.Praise for The Girl Who Wrote in Silk:'A beautiful, elegiac novel, as finely and delicately woven as the title suggests. Kelli Estes spins a spellbinding tale that illuminates the past in all its brutality and beauty, and the humanity that binds us all together.'—Susan Wiggs, New York Times bestselling author of The Beekeeper's Ball'A touching and tender story about discovering the past to bring peace to the present.'—Duncan Jepson, author of All the Flowers in Shanghai'Vibrant and tragic, The Girl Who Wrote in Silk explores a horrific, little-known era in our nation's history. Estes sensitively alternates between Mei Lien, a young Chinese-American girl who lived in the late 1800s, and Inara, a modern recent college grad who sets Mei Lien's story free.'—Margaret Dilloway, author of How to Be an American Housewife and Sisters of Heart and Snow

En un principio, Camelia tolera los sufrimientos que conlleva su condición de inmigrante humilde en los Estados Unidos; sin embargo, a pesar de ser una chica noble y sencilla, constantemente se siente atraída por el lado salvaje de la vida, inclinación que no alcanza a comprender hasta que conoce al elegante seductor Emilio Varela. Juntos emprenden una emocionante odisea por el norte de México, plagada de pruebas mortales, enemigos por conocer, traiciones imperdonables y aliados invaluables. Gracias a este intenso viaje, Camelia se descubre a sí misma, vuelve a conectar con sus raíces mexicanas, conoce el verdadero origen de su carácter indomable, y obtiene su legendario alias: La Texana, como será conocida en las más altas esferas del mundo del crimen. En realidad, la historia apenas comienza.

Patti Sheehy continues Frank Mederos's true-life story of romance, suspense, and intrigue in The Boy Who Said No: An Escape to Freedom. After defecting from Cuba's Special Forces and making a harrowing escape from his homeland, Frank faces new challenges in America. With five dollars in his pocket and a boatload of determination, he rejects an offer to join the CIA and takes his chances on achieving the American dream. Frank and his sweetheart, Magda, want nothing more than marriage, children, and a nice life for themselves. Frank dreams of celebrating milestone anniversaries with Magda, but his dreams are dashed. Instead, the couple faces a challenge neither of them could ever imagine. Meanwhile, sinister forces in Cuba plan to avenge Frank's escape. Can Frank outwit Cuban operatives bent on killing him? Will he again overcome the forces of evil? A tale of tender love, devastating loss, and the life-saving power of friendship.

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, the pressures of living up to expectations drove a wide rift through the family.After decades apart, the five siblings find themselves together again at their ailing mother's bedside, caught in a deadlocked feud over her hospice care. Into the morass steps Murron Teinetoa, one of their bastard children, who carries an idealistic hope of finally fitting in among her estranged relatives.In an interweaving narrative, Malae portrays the Felices in their formative years of the fifties; he excavates the personal lives of the siblings in the eighties and nineties; and he follows Murron in the present as she raises her son as a single mother. A powerful and fiery multi-generational story, Our Frail Blood captures the beauty and horror, the strength and fragility, the selfishness and love comprising the threads of familial bonds.“This magnificent novel depicts dysfunction and dissolution across three generations... Malae taps an underground reservoir of grief and rage beneath our multicultural democracy that finally explodes in a terrible geyser.” —Anthony DiRenzo, author of Trinacria: A Tale of Bourbon Sicily“The novel's heart is true... Malae is at his best: depicting the throbbing pain and joy of an American family.” —Publishers Weekly

Loners, families, fathers, wives—anyone who lives on the border between Mexico and the United States also lives on a border of violence and complexity. Here a master of Chicano noir explores that world in lean and haunting stories that you will never forget.

Across two critically acclaimed linked novels, now together in this eBook bundle, Lisa See unfolds a captivating saga of the bonds between women—mothers and daughters, sisters and friends—while illuminating the events of China's tumultuous history. SHANGHAI GIRLS “As in Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Peony in Love, [See] has... created ordinary women who, through willfulness and resiliency, accomplish extraordinary things.”—Miami Herald In 1937 Shanghai—the Paris of Asia—twenty-one-year-old Pearl Chin and her younger sister, May, are beautiful, modern, and carefree... until the day their father tells them that he has gambled away their wealth. To repay his debts, he must sell the girls as wives to suitors from Los Angeles. As Pearl and May set out from the Chinese countryside to the shores of America, they face impossible choices and confront a life-changing secret, but through it all the two sisters hold fast to who they are—Shanghai girls. DREAMS OF JOY “Astonishing... a story with characters who enter a reader's life, take up residence, and illuminate the myriad decisions and stories that make up human history.”—Los Angeles Times Reeling from newly uncovered family secrets, Pearl's nineteen-year-old daughter, Joy, runs away to Shanghai in early 1957 to find her birth father—an artist with whom both May and Pearl were once in love. Dazzled by him, and blinded by idealism, Joy throws herself into the New Society of Red China, heedless of the dangers in the Communist regime. Terrified for Joy's safety, Pearl returns to Shanghai, determined to save her daughter. Yet even as Joy's and Pearl's journeys converge, one of the most tragic episodes in China's history threatens their very lives. Praise for Lisa See “Explores the bonds of sisterhood while powerfully evoking the often nightmarish American immigrant experience.”—USA Today, on Shanghai Girls “As compulsively readable as it is an enlightening journey.”—The Denver Post, on Shanghai Girls “See is a gifted historical novelist.... The real love story, the one that's artfully shown, is between mother and daughter, and aunt and daughter.”—San Francisco Chronicle, on Dreams of Joy “See's research feels impeccable, and she has created an authentic, visually arresting world.”—The Washington Post, on Dreams of Joy

This novel is the story of an immigrant, Mikha Midas, who came to the U.S. in quest of a life animated by the ideals of love, justice, freedom, and peace; of a romantic whose will to love never weakens in spite of devastating experiences of deception, betrayal, and abandonment; of a dreamer who swims in a sea of wisdom without learning how to walk in the streets of practical life. It is also the story of a nurse, Amy Wright, who learned what it means to stand on her feet and rebuild herself from the ashes of betrayal, hypocrisy, and social oppression. By a gentle touch of fortune Amy meets and nurses Mikha, a patient on nature's death row at Baptist Hospital in Southaven, Mississippi, during the last few months of his life without knowing that he was her biological father. She has daily conversations with him, in which they reveal their inner selves to each other and discuss some of the enduring questions of human life. She learned from him that the human heart is made from bricks of love; it is always smiling, always youthful, always giving, and always hopeful. She also learns that love, not biology, is the foundation of the family. My Father the Immigrant is an exhilarating adventure into the mystery of love, life, and death.

Leo Rosten wrote his first tale of Hyman Kaplan when he was 24 and it was published to great applause by the''New Yorker''. Over the next two years the magazine ran all 15 of the original stories that were eventually published in 1937 as''The Education of Hyman Kaplan''

Tres destinos separados por el tiempo y el espacio pero interconectados por la violencia, el desarraigo, la creación y la locura; tres vidas extraviadas en el cruce de mundos y fronteras que caracteriza a nuestra época. En un pequeño pueblo del norte de México, Jesús deja el colegio y se une a una pandilla. Para impresionar a sus nuevos compañeros apuñala a una prostituta, iniciando así una carrera criminal que le llevará a ser uno de los psicópatas más buscados por FBI; En California, Martín, un inmigrante indocumentado, es ingresado en un psiquiátrico donde se convertirá en uno de los grandes pintores del siglo xx. Y en Texas, Michelle trabaja de camarera mientras intenta seguir su vocación de dibujante. Al mismo tiempo, su profesor, Fabián, con quien mantuvo una aventura, sueña con escribir su obra definitiva. Un día, los dos se reencuentran por casualidad y retoman su relación, apasionada pero condenada al fracaso. Una mirada ambiciosa y com­pleja a la forma en que Estados Unidos está siendo reinventado por la inmigración latinoamericana, Norte conso­lida a Edmundo Paz Soldán como una de las voces más inquietantes, originales y arriesgadas de la narrativa latinoamericana contemporánea

An unflinching portrayal of the Korean immigrant experience from an extraordinary new talent in fiction. Spanning Korea and the United States, from the postwar era to contemporary times, Krys Lee's stunning fiction debut, Drifting House, illuminates a people torn between the traumas of their collective past and the indignities and sorrows of their present.In the title story, children escaping famine in North Korea are forced to make unthinkable sacrifices to survive. The tales set in America reveal the immigrants'unmoored existence, playing out in cramped apartments and Koreatown strip malls. A makeshift family is fractured when a shaman from the old country moves in next door. An abandoned wife enters into a fake marriage in order to find her kidnapped daughter.In the tradition of Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker and Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies, Drifting House is an unforgettable work by a gifted new writer.

“A beautifully written novel, laced with history and music.” —Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station ElevenA LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF THE YEARA BOOKPAGE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAREverything he'd seen had been unimaginably different from the dry, dour streets of home, and to his surprise he was not sorry in the slightest. He was smitten by the beguiling otherness of it all. And so began my grandfather's rapturous love affair with America—an affair that would continue until the day he died.This is the story of the Meisenheimer family, told by James, a third-generation American living in Beatrice, Missouri. It's where his German grandparents—Frederick and Jette—found themselves after journeying across the turbulent Atlantic, fording the flood-swollen Mississippi, and being brought to a sudden halt by the broken water of the pregnant Jette. A Good American tells of Jette's dogged determination to feed a town sauerkraut and soul food; the loves and losses of her children, Joseph and Rosa; and the precocious voices of James and his brothers, sometimes raised in discord…sometimes in perfect harmony. But above all, A Good American is about the music in Frederick's heart, a song that began as an aria, was jazzed by ragtime, and became an anthem of love for his adopted country that the family still hears to this day.

Gaétan Soucy sets this acclaimed novel in a parallel-universe New York, just before the great stock market crash of 1929. Xavier X. Mortanse is an apprentice demolition worker who believes he's an immigrant from Hungary. By the time Xavier finds a singing frog in a miniature coffin, tries his luck on the vaudeville stage, and upsets a grandmaster chess match, Soucy has seduced readers into a netherworld of unforgettable eccentrics that riffs on chaos, corruption, and the surprising light of the human spirit.

Clara Lugo grew up in a home that would have rattled the most grounded of children. Through brains and determination, she has long since slipped the bonds of her confining Dominican neighborhood in the northern reaches of Manhattan. Now she tries to live a settled professional life with her American husband and son in the suburbs of New Jersey—often thwarted by her constellation of relatives who don't understand her gringa ways. Her mostly happy life is disrupted, however, when Tito, a former boyfriend from fifteen years earlier, reappears. Something has impeded his passage into adulthood. His mother calls him an Unfinished Man. He still carries a torch for Clara; and she harbors a secret from their past. Their reacquaintance sets in motion an unraveling of both of their lives and reveals what the cost of assimilation—or the absence of it—has meant for each of them. This immensely entertaining novel—filled with wit and compassion—marks the debut of a fine writer.

This is a journey through nine countries of a young innocent globalized immigrant to find a new life and settle in the USA. An autobiography of different cultures, societies and people. This is not about good luck or good fortune but struggle to success. This story is about birth and death and rebirth, rising and falling like our breath, moment by moment. This story is about loneliness, homelessness, opportunity, uncertainty, drugs, prison-life and the American dream.

Rich Man's War - Poor Man's Fight, is the story of two Scot - Irish families who left Ireland for the promise of a better life in America. While accurately set in time and place, this is not a battle by battle account of Civil War history. It is the story of a determined people who were pressed into a war by a country who spurned their kind and used them as pawns so their wealthy sons could be kept out of harm's way.