After suddenly being orphaned, twelve-year-old Consuelo reluctantly moves in with her American grandmother while hoping to return soon to her Mexican American family. Consuelo, a recent arrival in Los Angeles, becomes involved in finding the criminals who are committing mysterious local robberies. Intrigue & danger weave a web around young Consuelo as she is thrust into a new life in unfamiliar surroundings & an exciting mystery that begs to be resolved.
One Friday evening Daniel de Luc, an elusive crime writer with a deep love of poetry, disappears from a Camps Bay apartment while cooking pasta. His wife Paola, desperately worried after days of hearing nothing, is contacted by an eccentric stranger who claims to have known her missing husband under a different name and warns her not to look for him. Paola soon learns that her husband was involved in the shadowy world of the international sex industry, where well-heeled women pay men to become the anonymous fathers of their children. As her neat, controlled existence is turned inside out, Paola struggles to keep a level head and find her own humanity while trying to outwit her enemies and stay alive. The result is a fast-paced thriller that shifts between Cape Town and Paris, blending realism with the fantastic and pitting love against the attraction of sexual adventure.
Can first love turn into the real deal? Anything can happen in a sizzling new Fool's Gold story from New York Times bestselling author Susan Mallery. Isabel Beebe thinks she's cursed in the romance department. Her teenage crush, Ford Hendrix, ignored all her letters. Her husband left her for another…man. So Isabel has come home to dust off her passion for fashion and run the family bridal shop until her parents are ready to sell it. Then she'll pursue her real dreams. At least, that's the plan, until sexy, charming Ford returns and leaves her feeling fourteen all over again….. Seeing Isabel all grown-up hits bodyguard trainer Ford like a sucker punch. Back when heartbreak made him join the military, her sweet letters kept him sane. Now he can't take his eyes—or his lips—off her. The man who gave up on love has a reason to stay in Fool's Gold forever—if three little words can convince Isabel to do the same.
The Signe family is blessed with two daughters. Consuelo, the elder, is thought of as pensive and book-loving, the serious child-la niña seria-while Mili, her younger sister, is seen as vivacious, a ray of tropical sunshine. Two daughters: one dark, one light; one to offer comfort and consolation, the other to charm and delight. But, for all the joy both girls should bring, something is not right in this Puerto Rican family; a tragedia is developing, like a tumor, at its core. In this fierce, funny, and sometimes startling novel, we follow a young woman's quest to negotiate her own terms of survival within the confines of her culture and her family. magazine "Judith Ortiz Cofer has created a character who takes us by the hand on a journey of self-discovery. She reminds readers young and old never to forget our own responsibilities, and to enjoy life with all its joys and sorrows."--Bessy Reyna, MultiCultural Review
When Elena and her little brother, Carlos, leave their Mexican seaside village to search for their immigrant father in Los Angeles, they encounter intrigue, crime, mystery, friendship, and love.
The one thing that we have in common always divides us, Dr. Consuelo Lopez, thought. Known by the inmates as "that Latina forensic 'shrink'" at Folsom, she arrived with several personality classifiers in her briefcase. The Folsom Warden, Don Redling, and Detective Kendall, who guarded the correctional officer escorted Consuelo into anarchist, Lenny Carr's cell. Kendall explained to Lopez, "I didn't follow you here. I'm here on research." "At the same moment of my appointment?" Consuelo smirked as she and Kendall entered the cell, squeezing behind Redling. "I'm not going to leave you alone in here," Kendall said, rolling his eyes in contempt at his colleague, Warden Redling. Carr had the circuit boards spread across the computer shell. "Controller failure." He jabbered at the innards. "Watch those tools," Redling specified. "We count 'em." "The computer is a fetish," Consuelo said. "Watch how Carr is magically influenced by the power of the fetish." Carr was a convicted murderer. The jury judged him a cold-blooded killer. Consuelo wondered whether he felt any empathy, or would the many tests reveal that he is a sociopath without conscience? She turned on her camcorder. "Look into the camera," she said. "I want that unblinking look in your eyes on video tape." "Since when could you resist the power of the media, doctor?" Carr chuckled. " Too bad the power's down, the generator is sputtering, and soon you'll all be locked in here with me, Dr. Lopez."
Faith Simpson is born at the dawn of the twentieth century into a dynasty that gives her everything she will ever need--except her parents' love and attention. Often misunderstood, she trusts few as she grows up on the family's manicured Long Island estate. Just twenty-nine miles away, on lower Manhattan's dirty, crowded streets, Hope Lee's world is one of poverty and desperation. The scrappy child of hard-working Irish and Chinese immigrants has learned to fend for herself, until a terrible disaster thrusts her into a strange, new world of privilege. When she meets Faith, Hope has faced enough loss to last a lifetime, and, like Faith, she has built an emotional wall to survive. Compelled by the tragic bonds of very different childhoods, they soon forge a strong alliance. But when Faith's father chooses Hope as his protégé, and, worse yet, both Faith and Hope fall in love with the same man, resentment and betrayal threaten their bond. Caught in the tumult of World War I, Wall Street, union fights, and changing women's roles, these two extraordinary women find that true fortune can't be bought or sold.
Sixteen-year-old Maggie Cruz leaves her mother's and stepfathers's big city Los Angeles home in order to lead a simpler life in her grandfather's small town house and gains fresh perspective on her life.
