"After the death of her beloved grandmother, a Cuban-American woman travels to Havana, where she discovers the roots of her identity--and unearths a family secret hidden since the revolution ... Havana, 1958. The daughter of a sugar baron, nineteen-year-old Elisa Perez is part of Cuba's high society, where she is largely sheltered from the country's growing political unrest--until she embarks on a clandestine affair with a passionate revolutionary...

"A young woman from Nigeria leaves behind her home and her first love to start a new life in America, only to find her dreams are not all she expected"--

"A missing painting. A mysterious woman. Her husband and her lover... A brilliant and naïve young lawyer's life is changed forever when a painter and his subject--a breathtakingly beautiful woman--appear at his office in Frankfurt. The woman's husband is deliberately marring the painting of his wife he commissioned the artist to make. Now the woman and the artist want the painting back. Simple enough--or so it seems before the lawyer becomes enmeshed...

A fierce debut novel about mothers and daughters, haves and have-nots, and the stark realities behind the American Dream. A waitress at the Betsy Ross Diner in Waterbury, Connecticut, Elsie hopes her nickel-and-dime tips will add up to a new life. Then she meets Bashkim, who is at once both worldly and naive, a married man who left Albania to chase his dreams-- and wound up working as a line cook in Waterbury, Connecticut. When Elsie she learns that...

"An epic tale of love, loyalty, and war from the acclaimed author of Monkey Bridge Half a century after it began, the Vietnam War still has a hold on our national psyche. Lan Cao's now-classic debut, Monkey Bridge, won her wide renown for "connecting ... the opposite realities of Vietnam and America" (Isabel Allende). In her triumphant new novel, Cao transports readers back to the war, illuminating events central to twentieth-century history through...

"A richly moving new novel--the first since the author's Booker Prize-winning, internationally celebrated debut, The God of Small Things, went on to become a beloved best seller and enduring classic. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness transports us across a subcontinent on a journey of many years. It takes us deep into the lives of its gloriously rendered characters, each of them in search of a place of safety--in search of meaning, and of love. In...

Four American women become unexpected friends during a magical year in Tuscany marked by a writer's complicated relationship with the subject of her biography, long-postponed dreams, and shifting senses of adventure and bravery. Kit Raine, an American writer living in Tuscany, is working on a biography of a friend. Her work is interrupted by the arrival of Julia, Camille, and Susan, all of whom have launched a recent and spontaneous friendship. Susan,...