American Saga

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK This program includes a bonus conversation between the author and Roxane Gay. A sweeping, masterful debut about a daughter's fateful choice, a mother motivated by her own past, and a family legacy that begins in Cuba...

Barcelona, 1964. Exiled from Cuba after the revolution, Isabel Perez has learned to guard her heart and protect her family at all costs. After Isabel’s sister, Beatriz, disappears in Barcelona, Isabel goes to Spain in search of her. Joining forces with an unlikely ally thrusts Isabel into her sister’s dangerous world of espionage, but it’s an unearthed piece of family history that transforms Isabel’s life.

Meet Leroy O’Malley of Apalachicola, Florida: a naive and hopeful dreamer. All Leroy wanted was a shot at the good life—a steady job, maybe even a dental plan. This is the story of a man who made the mistake of believing the lies. Always down on his luck, a chance encounter with a foul-mouthed—though oddly charismatic—out-of-towner at a roadside oyster shack suddenly launches Leroy on the fast-track to the life he’s always wanted.

This riveting, multigenerational epic tells the story of two families and the history of Puerto Rico through the eyes of Isabel Monfort and her husband, Quintn Mendizabal. Isabel attempts to immortalize their now-united families - and, by extension, their homeland - in a book. The tale that unfolds in her writing has layers upon layers, exploring the nature of love, marriage, family, and Puerto Rico itself.

As the Ice Age ends and the glaciers release their hold on North America, a brave band of people make their way into the new continent. The climate is changing and the game is scarce. A hostile tribe pursues them, driving them ever southward. In their midst rises a young shaman, who receives a Dream from the spirit of the Wolf, a vision of paradise on the other side of the impenetrable ice. An older, more powerful Dreamer teaches the young man how to find the path to the new land, but they both realize that a shadowy menace looms on the horizon, a cosmic battle between good and evil.

When Malena Sevilla's tidy, carefully planned world collapses following her father’s mysterious suicide, she finds a letter - signed with an “A” - that reveals that her mother, whom she thought dead, is very much alive in San Isidro, a quaint town tucked in the Andes Mountains. Intent on meeting her, Malena arrives at Alameda Street and meets four sisters who couldn’t be more different from one another, but who share one thing in common: all of their names begin with an A.

A bustling port city, Charleston, South Carolina, is the crossroads of the American Revolution, where supplies and weapons for the rebel army must be unloaded and smuggled north. From the window of the dressmaker's shop where she works, lovely Celia Garth, recently engaged to the heir to a magnificent plantation, watches all of this thrilling activity. When the unthinkable occurs and the British capture and occupy Charleston, bringing fiery retribution to the surrounding countryside, Celia sees her world destroyed.

The Hale family is obsessed with status, power, and control. No problem is too big their money can’t solve. Royce Hale manipulated me into giving him everything. My virginity. My hand in marriage. My heart. And as soon as he got what he wanted, he callously sold me off for a cool $10 million. In the boardroom and the twisted game his family plays, he says the only rule is to win at all costs. Yesterday I learned a painful lesson not to trust the prince of Cape Hill. Today I’ll destroy his carefully laid plans and show him just how badly he’s already lost.

In the summer of 1986 in a small Chinese village, 10-year-old Junie receives a momentous letter from her parents, who had left for America years ago: Her father promises to return home and collect her by her 12th birthday. But Junie’s growing determination to stay put in the idyllic countryside with her beloved grandparents threatens to derail her family’s shared future.

Las Vegas: a city built on obscene wealth and corrupt deals, cunning entrepreneurs, and the ruthless mob. The Cartel's plan to open a casino will rake in cash, but it comes with great sacrifice. The stakes have never been this high, and the rules of the game have never been this hard to manipulate. And when one dead girl, one scorned wife, and one hole in the desert launch a chain of catastrophic events, the Cartel is sent on a downward spiral as they battle the Arabian mob and fight traitors within their circle.

It's the dawn of the twentieth century, post-Reconstruction, in the Commonwealth of Virginia. From the ancestral blood and sweat of its settlers - the immigrants, the slaves, the Cherokee - a new generation strives for prosperity in the united township of Grafton. Across the unfolding decades, childhood friends, mothers and daughters, wives and lovers will have their bonds tested. New hopes and dreams lie beyond the river, and as allegiances are challenged, a harmonious community finds itself grappling with inevitable cultural change.

Michael McGarrity returns with the second installment of his sweeping, richly authentic New York Times best-selling American West trilogy set in the raw, untrammeled New Mexico backlands during the Roaring '20s, the Great Depression, and World War II. Hard Country, the first novel in the Kerney family trilogy and the debut prequel to his national best-selling Kevin Kerney crime novels, was critically acclaimed for its authentic, gritty realism; its sprawling, engrossing story; and its compelling, engaging characters.

Since they were five years old, Jasmine Cox Larson Bush and Kyla Blake had a bond that could not be broken. They shared secrets, marked milestones, and held each other up through life's adversities. It was a friendship they both thought would last forever. But when Jasmine's jealousy led her to seduce Kyla's husband, Dr. Jefferson Blake, that bond was severed, and their friendship was damaged forever.... Now, 20 years later, a major tragedy brings the two together when Jefferson, in New York for a medical convention, is shot in an attempted robbery.

Ever since running away at the age of fourteen, Paul-Edward, the son of a white landowner and a black slave, has had one dream: to own land every bit as good as his daddy's. While growing up, Paul-Edward loved, and feared, his father, but he loved the land unconditionally. Then, after a rash act of youthful rebellion, he leaves his family behind and vows to succeed on his own. However, for anyone black coming of age in 1880's Mississippi, this is no simple goal.

In 1964, Stanislavo, a zealous young man devoted to his ideals, turns his back on his privilege to join the leftist movement in the jungles of Venezuela. There, as he trains, he meets Emiliana, a nurse and fellow revolutionary. Though their intense connection seems to be love at first sight, their romance is upended by a decision with consequences that will echo down through the generations.

Thirty-five-year-old Arabella, a New York theatre director whose dating and career prospects are drying up, is offered an opportunity to direct a risqué cross-dressing interpretation of a Shakespeare classic—that might garner international attention—in the West Bank. Her mother, Naya, and grandmother, Zoya, hatch a plot to match her with Aziz, a Palestinian American doctor volunteering in Gaza. Arabella agrees to meet Aziz, since her growing feelings for Yoav, a celebrated Israeli American theatre designer, seem destined for disaster.

The best-selling master of historical fiction weaves a grand, sweeping drama of New York from the city's founding to the present day. Rutherfurd celebrates America's greatest city in a rich, engrossing saga that showcases his extraordinary ability to combine impeccable historical research and storytelling flair. As in his earlier, best-selling novels, he illuminates cultural, social, and political upheavals through the lives of a remarkably diverse set of families. Rutherfurd brings to life the momentous events that shaped New York and America.

In 1824, on the island of Trinidad, Marie Ursule, queen of a secret society of militant slaves, plots a mass suicide—a quiet, passionate act of revolt. But she cannot bring herself to kill her small daughter, Bola, whom she smuggles away in the early dawn light. As Bola's children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren spill out across the world to America, Canada and Europe, they find their lives both haunted and vindicated by the dreams and passions of their defiant ancestor.

In her final novel, Dorothy West offers an intimate glimpse into African American middle class. Set on bucolic Martha's Vineyard in the 1950s, The Wedding tells the story of life in the Oval, a proud, insular community made up of the best and brightest of the East Coast's Black bourgeoisie. Within this inner circle of "blue-vein society", we witness the prominent Coles family gather for the wedding of the loveliest daughter, Shelby.

In the autumn of 1862, Abraham Lincoln visited the Antietam Battlefield in Sharpsburg, Maryland, USA. Elected as the 16th President of the United States just two years prior, he faced a nation torn apart by the Civil War. The long-simmering dispute over the right to slaves had erupted into open warfare between the North and South. The Union sought to enforce its authority, while the South had withdrawn from the Union. Despite his reluctance to war, Lincoln understood that a democratic republic could not tolerate rebellion. The South's defiance had to be met.