Throughout his 34 years of working for Kong Mac, Wu had accumulated 800 pounds of gold, and had hidden it all throughout the Sierras. On the day the novel begins, May 5th, 1885, Wu has finally moved all of his gold stash to his hiding place in Castle Rock on Mount Diablo in northern California.

The summer of 1983 - the era of big debt, big hair, and big dreams. Seventeen-year-old Kassandra Lawson is excited about starting her senior year of high school. She has a crush on a local hunk, and her best friend, valley girl extraordinaire Liz Hendricks, insists on helping her snag the hot guy - for sure! July starts out uneventful for Kee and her parents. Her father, Kevin, is a partner at a CPA firm, and her mother, Gail, works as a secretary at the police department. The small family lives an idyllic life in sunny Hacienda Heights, California.

Zane Bigelow grew up in a beautiful, perfectly kept house in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains. Strangers and even Zane’s own aunt across the lake see his parents as a successful surgeon and his stylish wife, making appearances at their children’s ballet recitals and baseball games. Only Zane and his sister know the truth, until one brutal night finally reveals cracks in the facade, and Zane escapes for college without a thought of looking back....

Clare and Henry have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was 36. They were married when Clare was 23 and Henry was 31. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself misplaced in time, pulled to moments of emotional gravity from his life, past and future. His disappearances are spontaneous, his experiences unpredictable, alternately harrowing and amusing.

When Jackie is released from prison, his boss Pino sends a limo to pick him up. Even fresh out of the joint, ruthless Jackie is ready to work, collecting money for the mob and using his special training to take care of bad accounts—permanently.

Meet JeriLee Randall, aspiring actress, ambitious writer, and sexual powerhouse. It is this ambition that takes her away from her tiny hometown of Port Clare and sets her on a collision course with her future. Surviving on determination and seduction, she makes her way to Broadway and then on to Hollywood. The bright lights mask a deeper darkness, and JeriLee is quickly drawn into a world of greed, drugs, casting couches, and smooth-talking power players.

It's 1947. War's over, cherry-print dresses, parking above the city lights, swing dancing. Beautiful, 17-year-old Violet lives in a perfect world. Everybody loves her. In 2012, she's still beautiful, charming, and surrounded by admirers. Veronica "Ronni" Johnson, licensed practical nurse and aspiring writer, meets the captivating Violet in the assisted living facility where Violet requires no assistance, just lots of male attention. When she dies, she leaves Ronni a very generous bequest - only if Ronni completes a book about her life within one year.

To the Green-Eyed Lovebird: We met 15 years ago, almost to the day, when I moved my stuff into the NYU dorm room next to yours at Senior House. You called us fast friends. I like to think it was more. We lived on nothing but the excitement of finding ourselves through music (you were obsessed with Jeff Buckley), photography (I couldn’t stop taking pictures of you), hanging out in Washington Square Park, and all the weird things we did to make money. I learned more about myself that year than any other. Yet, somehow, it all fell apart.

Raised by her three overbearing brothers, Scarlett is a hell-raising tomboy with a tool belt. A tornado stirring up trouble everywhere she goes. Her favorite pastimes? Drinking any man under the table and two-stepping. But she has zero interest in love. Scarlett’s only being neighborly when she claims her sexy next-door neighbor as her new pet project.

Emotional wounds aren't always apparent, and those that haunt Marika and Rhiannon are deep and lasting. On the surface, Marika appears to be a wealthy, successful lawyer, while Rhiannon is a reclusive, maladjusted loner. But Marika, in her own way, is as damaged as the younger Rhiannon. When circumstances throw them together one summer, they begin to reach out, each finding unexpected strengths in the other.

Two years after his partner, Francesco, died, 28-year-old Kevin Doyle is dusting off his one good suit jacket for yet another funeral, yet another loss in their close-knit group. They had all been young, beautiful, and living the best days of their lives, though they didn't know it. That was before New York City began to feel like a war zone, its horrors somehow invisible, and ignored by the rest of the world. Some people might insist that Francesco is in a better place now, but Kevin definitely isn't.

Get the entire Year of Discovery series in one box set: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, and the explosive conclusion, December. Over 700 pages of tragedy, tribulation, and triumph in one volume.

At the end of a sweltering summer shaped by the tragic assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr., and Bobby Kennedy, race riots, political protests, and the birth of black power, three coeds from New York City - Zelda Livingston, Veronica Cook, and Daphne Brooks - pack into Veronica’s new Ford Fairlane convertible, bound for Atlanta and their last year at Spelman College. It is the beginning of a journey that will change their lives irrevocably.

It was the summer of 1965. Ray, Tim, and Jennifer were just three teenage friends hanging out in the campgrounds, drinking a little. But Tim and Jennifer didn't know what their friend Ray had in mind. And if they'd known, they wouldn't have thought he was serious. Then they saw what he did to the two girls at the neighboring campsite - and knew he was dead serious...Ray figured he was in the clear. Tim and Jennifer thought the worst was behind them, that the horrors were all in the past. They were wrong. The worst was yet to come.

Taken from their families when they are very small and sent to a remote, church-run residential school, Kenny, Lucy, Clara, Howie and Maisie are barely out of childhood when they are finally released after years of detention. Alone and without any skills, support or families, the teens find their way to the seedy and foreign world of Downtown Eastside Vancouver, where they cling together, striving to find a place of safety and belonging in a world that doesn’t want them.

Lone Stars follows the arc of four generations of a Texan family in a changing America. Julian Warner, a father at last, wrestles with a question his husband posed: what will you tell our son about the people you came from, now that they're gone? Finding the answers takes Julian back in time to Eisenhower's immigration border raids, an epistolary love affair during the Vietnam War, crumbling marriages, queer migrations to Cambridge and New York, up to the disorienting polarization of Obama's second term.

In Just Jenny, Jenny Nance has a plan - save enough money to tour the world. The desire to traipse the globe is a dream she once shared with her twin sister. Jenny made a deathbed promise to her sister that she would go to all the places they had fantasized visiting together. Nothing will entice her to break her vow to Natalie, not even the sexy new Blue Ridge Valley police chief.... No matter how attracted she is to him.

A struggling writer must come to terms with her past, present, and future after she discovers that she's the inspiration for a pseudonymously published best-selling novel.

Laurel Lockwood lost her son once through neglect. She's spent the rest of her life determined to make up for her mistakes, and she has succeeded in becoming a committed, protective parent-maybe even overprotective. Still, she loosens her grip just enough to let Andy attend a local church social-a decision that terrifies her when the church is consumed by fire. But Andy survives...and remarkably, saves other children from the flames.

Pittsburgh, 1995. The son of a black father he’s never known and a white mother he sometimes wishes he didn’t, 22-year-old Bobby Saraceno is passing for white. Raised by his bigoted maternal grandfather, Bobby has hidden his truth from everyone, even his best friend and fellow comic-book geek, Aaron, who has just returned home from prison a hardened racist.

On April 27, 1997, four contestants make it to the final cell of the Quigley House, a full-contact haunted escape room in Lincoln, Nebraska, made famous for its monstrosities, booby-traps, and ghoulishly costumed actors. If the group can endure these horrors without shouting the safe word, “reprieve,” they’ll win a substantial cash prize - a startling feat accomplished only by one other group in the house’s long history. But before they can complete the challenge, a man breaks into the cell and kills one of the contestants.

Welcome to Precious, Texas, where fistfights serve as dinner theater and fire ants rain from the sky. The locals are very friendly, if a bit eccentric. No pictures, please, or you may find yourself a guest of the county morgue. Photojournalist Shala Winters already had her hands full bringing tourism to this backward, Podunk town, but her job just got tougher. Pictures can say a thousand words, and one of Shala's is screaming bloody murder. Now she has to entrust a macho, infuriating lawman with her life - but she'll never trust him with her heart.

Clare and Henry have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was 36. They were married when Clare was 23 and Henry was 31. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself misplaced in time, pulled to moments of emotional gravity from his life, past and future. His disappearances are spontaneous, his experiences unpredictable, alternately harrowing and amusing.

Meet JeriLee Randall, aspiring actress, ambitious writer, and sexual powerhouse. It is this ambition that takes her away from her tiny hometown of Port Clare and sets her on a collision course with her future. Surviving on determination and seduction, she makes her way to Broadway and then on to Hollywood. The bright lights mask a deeper darkness, and JeriLee is quickly drawn into a world of greed, drugs, casting couches, and smooth-talking power players.

A completely revised edition of the first Henry Rios mystery, The Little Death, Lay Your Sleeping Head introduces Michael Nava’s singular protagonist, gay Latino criminal defense lawyer Henry Rios. Rios, beset by personal and professional problems, begins a passionate affair with the black sheep heir to a great California fortune who tells Rios an improbable tale of murder and sexual predation in his wealthy family. When the young man is found dead of an apparent drug overdose, Rios begins an investigation that ultimately reveals much more than murder.

Bernadine Brown is a woman with money to spend. Henry Adams is a town in desperate need of cash. But after Bernadine puts up the money, she has some ideas about how the town should be run. Will the townspeople be willing to shake up their comfortable lives to share the gift they’ve been given with others who really need it?

Nestled on the Oregon coast is a small town of rocky beaches and rugged charm. Locals love the land’s unspoiled beauty. Developers see it as a potential gold mine. When newcomer Hank Cooper learns he’s been left an old friend’s entire beachfront property, he finds himself with a community’s destiny in his hands. Cooper has never been a man to settle in one place, and Thunder Point was supposed to be just another quick stop. But Cooper finds himself getting involved with the town. And with Sarah Dupre, a woman as complicated as she is beautiful.

Cali McKay's mama isn't ready to pass over to the "other side" yet. Her unlucky-in-love daughter needs her now more than ever. Before Mama can chain-smoke her way to heaven, she's gotta make sure Cali's deadbeat ex-boyfriend doesn't get her daughter killed.

She doesn't need anything but her bar....Daisy O'Dell has her hands full with hotheads and thirsty ranchers until the day one damn fine cowboy walks in and throws her whole life into turmoil.... He's looking for a cold drink and a moment's peace....Instead, Jarod McElroy finds one red-hot woman. She's just what he needs - if only he can convince her to come out from behind that bar and come home with him....

Craig Elson’s life has hit rock bottom. Even though he’s one of the best strategic planners around, a more confident guy takes credit for his work, and despite being a good-looking man, he suffers insults from the slimiest creep at the bar. Taking care of his beloved mom, who has Alzheimer’s, uses all his funds, leaving him in a plain, depressing car...and a plain, depressing life. Until he sees gorgeous grad student Jesse Randall and his T-shirt that reads “I Would Bottom You So Hard”. The message seeps into Craig’s soul, and he asks Jesse to teach him to top.