"The American West in the early 1960s appears to be a pastoral paradise. Aspiring novelist Aaron Holland Broussard has observed it from the open door of a boxcar, riding the rails for both inspiration and odd jobs. Jumping off in Denver, he finds work on a farm and meets Jo Anne McDuffy, a college student and gifted painter. Their connection is immediate, but their romance is complicated by Joanne's involvement with a professor who is mixed up with...

"It's been over two years since Effie's beloved parents got divorced, destroying the image of the happy, loving childhood she thought she had. Since then, she's become estranged from her father and embarked on a feud with his hot (and much younger) girlfriend, Krista. And now, more earth-shattering news: Greenoaks, the rambling Victorian country house Effie called home her whole life, has been sold. When Krista decides to throw a grand "house cooling"...

Stranded on an uninhabited island after their private plane crashes, thirty-year-old Anna Emerson and sixteen-year-old T.J. Callahan, her student, struggle to survive and, as the months pass, slowly fall in love.

Chloe Wang is nervous to introduce her parents to her boyfriend, because the truth is, she hasn't met him yet either. She hired him from Rent for Your 'Rents, a company specializing in providing fake boyfriends trained to impress even the most traditional Asian parents. Drew Chan's passion is art, but after his parents cut him off for dropping out of college to pursue his dreams, he became a Rent for Your 'Rents employee to keep a roof over his head....

Set on a rubber plantation in Malaya, this story centers on a woman's reasons for killing a man who was a close family friend.

Four mothers. Four daughters. Eight stories. The Joy Luck Club is four women in San Francisco who have played mah jong together on a weekly basis for forty some years. One of them, Suyuan, has died, and her daughter June is preparing to go to China. Auntie Lindo with daughter Waverly, Auntie Ying Ying with daughter Lena, and Auntie An Mei with daughter Rose are at the going away party. Born in China, the Joy Luck Club members came to America as young...