"At twenty-two, Bibi Blair's doctors tell her that she's dying. Two days later, she's impossibly cured. Fierce, funny, dauntless, she becomes obsessed with the idea that she was spared because she is meant to save someone else. Someone named Ashley Bell. This proves to be a dangerous idea. Searching for Ashley Bell, ricocheting through a Southern California landscape that proves strange and malevolent in the extreme, Bibi is plunged into a world of...

Sabrina Castro is a wealthy, attractive woman with a strong New England heritage who is married to an older California physician who no longer fulfills her dreams. As she seeks the meaning of love, an almost accidental misstep leads her down the path of moral disintegration, until there is no place for her to go except up and out. How she comes to terms with her life is the theme of this absorbing personal drama played out against the backdrop

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From #1 New York Times bestselling author Danielle Steel, a moving novel of families separated and lives shattered by prejudice during one of the most shameful episodes in American history.
 
A man ahead of his time, Japanese college professor Masao Takashimaya of Kyoto had a passion for modern ideas that was as strong as his wife’s belief in ancient traditions. His eighteen-year-old daughter, Hiroko, torn between...

Best-selling author Jennifer Chiaverini's delightful Elm Creek Quilts series features strong women who face life head-on and chronicle their triumphs and tragedies in elaborate quilts. Here, listeners meet Rosa Diaz Barclay, a woman fighting for her family's survival in Prohibition-era Southern California.

"From the New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Wife comes an atmospheric novel of intertwined fate and heart-wrenching suspense: A detective hiding away from the world. A series of disappearances that reach into her past. Can solving them help her heal? Anna Hart is a seasoned missing persons detective in San Francisco with far too much knowledge of the darkest side of human nature. When unspeakable tragedy strikes her personal life, Anna,...

"1812: A Christmas in paradise: To save nurse Laura Ortiz from destitution, British naval surgeon Thomas Wilkie offers her a marriage of convenience." -- "1855: O Christmas tree: A generation later, Thomas and Laura's daughter Lillian, a widowed mother, works as a nurse in the Crimea, and Christmas seems far away until Major Trey Wharton helps create a festive sparkle." -- "1877: No crib for a bed: Lillian's son Captain Wilkie Wharton is makes a...

Written nearly a decade after Lithium for Medea, Palm Latitudes, Kate Braverman's second novel and arguably her chef d'oeuvre, explores the intertwined lives of three women who await absolution and revelation in the bougainvillea, and violence-filled "barrio" of Los Angeles. Frances Ramos is a voluptuous prostitute who flaunts her wealth and is held in high esteem by the local street gangs. Gloria Hernandez is a dutiful young wife and mother-until...

On Christmas Eve, two life-altering events are thrust upon Kate, a traditional middle - class housewife, without warning. Cliff, her husband of 25 years, announces he is leaving her for his old flame. Then, Ford, who is living in a dilapidated station wagon, appears at Kate's doorstep. Having lost their Iowa farm, Ford and his family have moved to California to begin a new life. Desperate for shelter, Ford leaves his wife and children in a seedy hostel...