Esperanza and her mother are forced to leave their life of wealth and privilege in Mexico to go work in the labor camps of Southern California, where they must adapt to the harsh circumstances facing Mexican farm workers on the eve of the Great Depression.

"His first-ever collection of stories, Jaime Cortez's Gordo is set in a migrant workers camp near Watsonville, California, in the 1970s. A young boy named Gordo fights back tears underneath a wrestler's mask as he is forced to fight other boys and grow into his father's expectations of manhood. As he comes of age, Gordo learns about sex, poverty, and discovers the wrenching divides between documented and undocumented immigrants. Fat Cookie, high schooler...

"After getting rejected from her dream college, sixteen-year-old Filipino American Perla Perez forges her own acceptance and commits to living a lie at university"-- Provided by publisher. As the youngest graduating senior at her hypercompetitive high school, Perla Perez is certain all the late nights and crushing stress will be worth it when she gets into the college of her (and her parents') dreams: Delmont University. When she's rejected, Perla...

The poor but proud Dunne family and their friends struggle to survive on the dust-plagued prairies of the Oklahoma Panhandle, but discover bitter disappointment in the orchards and vineyards of the so-called promised land of California.

"A story, set in the Sonoma wine valley, about the messy realities of family, the strength (and weaknesses) of romantic love, and the importance of finding a place to call home"-- Provided by publisher. Growing up on her family's Sonoma vineyard, Georgia Ford learned the secret number of grapes it takes to make a bottle of wine: eight hundred. The secret ingredient in her mother's lasagna: chocolate. The secret behind ending a fight: hold hands....

"Thirty years ago, a teenage Vincent King was sent to prison. But now, he's served his sentence and is returning to his hometown. The hometown where his childhood best friend, Walk, is now the chief of police. The town where his childhood sweetheart, Star Radley, still lives. The same Star Radley whose sister he killed. Duchess, Star's daughter, is a self-proclaimed outlaw. She needs to be. Who else is going to take care of her and her five-year-old...

Third-grader EllRay dreads the upcoming Winter Wonderland school assembly in which he must emcee and sing "Jingle Bell Rock."

4 cassettes / 4 hours
Read by Judy Kaye
"There are few writers able to sustain the solid mixture of detection, narrative energy and cultural observations that one finds in Grafton." — Washington Post Book World
In N is for Noose, Kinsey Millhone is about to put herself in the gravest jeopardy of her career as she becomes the target, and an entire town seems in for the kill.
When Tom Newquist, a tough, honest, and respected...

An English scholar, his Indian bride, their triplets, and a randy ex-cabbie grandfather look for a sense of home and family in a sunny Northern California suburb. In 1974, the young and callow Englishman George Armitage goes to Madras in the hopes of returning with at least the beginning of his Ph.D. dissertation. Instead, he comes home with a bride named Viji, an Indian woman he barely knows. This seemingly unlikely pair eventually wind up in

...

"Nothing brings an estranged family together like a murder next door. High-powered businesswoman Lana Rubicon has a lot to be proud of: her keen intelligence, impeccable taste, and the L.A. real estate empire she's built. But when she finds herself trapped 300 miles north of the city, convalescing in a sleepy coastal town with her adult daughter Beth and teenage granddaughter Jack, Lana is stuck counting otters instead of square footage--and hoping...