San Antonio College Library

"JJ Ferguson has returned home to Pinewood, North Carolina, to build his dream house and to pursue his high school sweetheart, Ava. But as he reenters his former world, where factories are in decline and the legacy of Jim Crow is still felt, he's startled to find that the people he once knew and loved have changed just as much as he has. Ava is now married and desperate for a baby, though she can't seem to carry one to term. Her husband, Henry, has...

A romance in reverse is set in Paris and London and follows an artist's attempts to fall back in love with his wife after the end of his affair, an effort that is challenged by the sale of a personal painting and his wife's discovery of his infidelity.

"In this "compelling, clever, and dark" (Heat magazine) thriller, a man's shocking act of savagery stuns a local community-and the revelations that follow will keep you gripped until the very last page. This work of psychological suspense, a #1 bestseller in Ireland, is perfect for fans of Patricia Highsmith and Ruth Ware. "I expected more of a reaction the first time I hit her." So begins Liz Nugent's astonishing debut novel--a chilling, elegantly...

One Sunday afternoon in Southern California, Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating's christening party uninvited. Before evening falls, he has kissed Franny's mother, Beverly - thus setting in motion the dissolution of their marriages and the joining of two families. Spanning five decades, Commonwealth explores how this chance encounter reverberates through the lives of the four parents and six children involved. Spending summers together in Virginia,...

"Satire meets slasher in this short, darkly funny hand grenade of a novel about a Nigerian woman whose younger sister has a very inconvenient habit of killing her boyfriends. "Femi makes three, you know. Three and they label you a serial killer." Korede is bitter. How could she not be? Her sister, Ayoola, is many things: the favorite child, the beautiful one, possibly sociopathic. And now Ayoola's third boyfriend in a row is dead. Korede's practicality...

"Family Resource Management unlocks the complexity of family decision making for students, enabling them to grasp both the concepts and the underlying explanations of family behavior. Authors Tami James Moore and Sylvia M. Asay have provided a strong theoretical base to facilitate both understanding and retention and have organized the text to parallel the decision-making process employed by professionals. As a result, it includes sections on introducing...

"The Beijing Duck House in Rockville, Maryland, is not only a beloved go-to setting for hunger pangs and celebrations; it is its own world, inhabited by waiters and kitchen staff who have been fighting, loving, and aging within its walls for decades. When disaster strikes, this working family's controlled chaos is set loose, forcing each character to confront the conflicts that fast-paced restaurant life has kept at bay. Owner Jimmy Han hopes to leave...

"For Ruthie, the frozen, snow-padded town of Waitsfield, Massachusetts, is all she has ever known. But this is no picturesque New England. Once "home of the bean and the cod, where Lowells speak only to Cabots, and Cabots speak only to God," by the 1980s it is an unforgiving place, awash with secrets. Very Cold People tells Ruthie's story, through her eyes: from the shame handed down through her Italian and Jewish immigrant forebears and indomitable...

"A glimmering collection of new short fiction from the Booker Prize winner "Lively writes with an astringent blend of sympathy and detachment, emotional wisdom and satiric wit."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times In such acclaimed novels as The Photograph, Family Album, and How It All Began, Penelope Lively has captivated readers with her singular blend of wisdom, elegance, and humor. Now, in her first story collection in decades, Lively takes...

Follows the life of a woman born in Moscow who leaves for the United States, where she finds happiness and love but must also deal with the ghosts of her youth. A modern woman will inhabit forty rooms in her lifetime: they form her biography, from childhood to death. The first rooms she is aware of as she nears the age of five are those that make up her family's Moscow apartment. The child reaches adolescence; leaves home to study in America; and...