"Ephram Jenkins has never forgotten the beautiful girl with the long braids running through the piney woods of Liberty, their small East Texas town. Young Ruby, "the kind of pretty it hurt to look at, " is already quite damaged, but Ephram is forcibly drawn to her. As soon as she becomes a young woman and has any power of her own, Ruby flees suffocating Liberty for the bright pull of 1950s New York City. Years later, when a funeral forces her to return...

Jack Parker thought he'd already seen his fair share of tragedy. His grandmother was killed in a farm accident when he was barely five years old. His parents have just succumbed to the smallpox epidemic sweeping turn-of-the-century East Texas -- orphaning him and his younger sister, Lula. Then catastrophe strikes on the way to their uncle's farm, when a traveling group of bank-robbing bandits murder Jack's grandfather and kidnap his sister. With no...

"Liya Thakkar is a successful biochemical engineer, takeout enthusiast, and happily single woman. The moment she realizes her parents' latest dinner party is a setup with the man they want her to marry, she's out the back door in a flash. Imagine her surprise when the same guy shows up at her office a week later -- the new lawyer hired to rescue her struggling company. What's not surprising: he's not too thrilled to see her either after that humiliating...

"From Edmund White, a bold and sweeping new novel that traces the extraordinary fates of twin sisters, one destined for Parisian nobility and the other for Catholic sainthood. Yvette and Yvonne Crawford are twin sisters, born on a humble patch of East Texas prairie but bound for far grander fates. Just as an untold fortune of oil lies beneath their daddy's land, both girls harbor their own secrets and dreams-ones that will carry them far from Texas...

Told from two viewpoints, sixth-graders Karina and Chris use social media to stand up to racism in Houston, Texas, after an attack puts Karina's Indian American grandfather in the hospital. Karina Chopra would have never imagined becoming friends with the boy next door--after all, they've avoided each other for years and she assumes Chris is just like the boys he hangs out with, who she labels a pack of hyenas. Then Karina's grandfather starts tutoring...

Twelve-year-old Yasmeen Khoury is unhappy that her family has moved from Detroit to San Antonio, Texas, leaving her friends and Arab Christian community behind; from the very first day at school Yasmeen feels completely isolated and out of place, but she slowly makes friends with a Mexican boy, Carlos, and her Jewish neighbor, Ayelet Cohen, although she feels like she has to hide these friendships, especially from her Palestinian father, a native...

Hap and Leonard is now a Sundance TV series starring James Purefoy and Michael Kenneth Williams.Hap Collins and Leonard Pine find mucho trouble, this time in Mexico, when they come face to face with a nudist mobster, his seven-foot strong-arm, a octogenarian knife-touting fisherman, and, somehow, an armadillo.When Hap Collins saves the life of his employer's daughter, he is rewarded with a Caribbean Cruise, and he convinces his best friend Leonard...

Best friends Hap Collins, a white boy from East Texas, and Leonard Pine, an Africa-American, homosexual veteran, work with Hap's former lover to score a large sum of money.

After a scandalous affair costs him his job in Houston, Cason Statler--Gulf War veteran and Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist--returns home to the small east Texas town of Camp Rapture. Cason is a wreck. He drinks too much, he's stalking his ex-girlfriend, and he's wallowing in envy of his successful older brother. To get back on his feet, he takes a job at the local paper, and when he stumbles across his predecessor's notes on a cold case murder...

Hap and Leonard is now a Sundance TV series starring James Purefoy and Michael Kenneth Williams.Hap Collins and Leonard Pine are in for an action-packed adventure when they cross paths with a towering Pentecostal preacher, a midget with a giant attitude, and a gang of bikers turned soldiers of fortune.Even though a midlife crisis just hit Hap Collins like a runaway pickup truck, he's still got his job, he knows his best friend, Leonard Pine, will...