"Mia Tang has a lot of secrets. Number 1: She lives in a motel, not a big house. Every day, while her immigrant parents clean the rooms, ten-year-old Mia manages the front desk of the Calivista Motel and tends to its guests. Number 2: Her parents hide immigrants. And if the mean motel owner, Mr. Yao, finds out they've been letting them stay in the empty rooms for free, the Tangs will be doomed. Number 3: She wants to be a writer. But how can she when...

Kinsey Millhone's grit is tested as she unearths the gruesome truth about a long-buried betrayal and, in the process, comes face-to-face with the grisly fact of her own mortality.

"Mia Tang thinks she's going to have the best year ever. She and her parents are the proud owners of the Calivista Motel, Mia gets to run the front desk with her best friend, Lupe, and she's finally getting somewhere with her writing! But as it turns out, sixth grade is no picnic."--publisher

An ex-con with delusions of grandeur and his tagalong brother unwittingly team up with a psychopath one wrong word away from meltdown. When their late afternoon joyride turns into a random act of violence, they take a family hostage in the affluent bedroom community of Bristo Camino. Enter Chief of Police Jeff Talley, a stressed-out former LAPD SWAT negotiator who is hiding from his past. Plunged back into the high-pressure world that he desperately...

"A dazzling debut novel from an exciting new voice, The Mothers is a surprising story about young love, a big secret in a small community--and the things that ultimately haunt us most. Set within a contemporary black community in Southern California, Brit Bennett's mesmerizing first novel is an emotionally perceptive story about community, love, and ambition. It begins with a secret. "All good secrets have a taste before you tell them, and if we'd...

Alder has always lived in his cozy little house in Southern California. An old, reliable, comforting walnut tree has stood between his house and the one next door. When a new family--with a particularly annoying girl his age named Oak--moves into the neighboring house, they cut the tree down. As Oak and Alder start school together, they can't imagine ever becoming friends. But they soon discover a series of mysterious, possibly magical, connections...

A year after their break-up when tragedy draws stepsiblings Eden Munro and Tyler Bruce together again, Eden contemplates this one last chance at love.

Eden Munro spends the summer with her father and his new family in Santa Monica and quickly finds herself thrust into a world full of new experiences and the more time she spends breaking the rules with them, the more she finds herself falling for the one person she should not--her stepbrother, Tyler.

With the help of a very special pit bull puppy, twelve-year-old Hannah adjusts to moving from Michigan to California and makes friends, despite the birthmark that makes her self-conscious.

"Savannah is shaken to the core when coroner Dr. Jennifer Liu appears on her doorstep late one night with a disturbing confession. In a potentially career-ruining move, a remorseful Dr. Liu admits to fudging an autopsy report to keep her friend Brianne's suicide a secret--fulfilling a final promise made before the terminally ill woman administered a lethal drug cocktail. But after Dr. Liu finds the same unique mixture in a second body, she fears the...