"In this moving debut novel, two estranged siblings must set aside their differences to deal with their mother's death and her hidden past--a journey of discovery that takes them from the Caribbean to London to California and ends with her famous black cake. In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett's death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a traditional Caribbean black cake, made from a family recipe with...

A woman expecting her third child with a philandering husband must come to grips with her self-esteem issues, her long-time secret addiction and the lack of diversity in the upper class New Jersey suburb where they just moved.

"Successful, secure, and still very much in love, middle-aged couple Eugene and Rosemary Johnson have never given up on one special wish--to be parents. And while Christmas always brings happiness and a whirlwind of holiday fun, their hopes for children of their own seem further away than ever. Especially this year, when Rosemary must have emergency surgery and home help to recuperate. Wanting to lift his wife's spirits, Eugene suddenly has an inspiration...

"Jessie Tucker is beloved throughout Lexington, Alabama, for her kind heart and endless generosity. But the widow feels it's past time she rewarded herself-- especially when upstanding Hubert Wiggins tragically loses his wife and son. Discouraged by Hubert's lack of romantic interest, she cooks up a deception she knows will make pious Hubert do right by her. She doesn't know Hubert has a new, much-riskier secret love. When he is not the ardent lover...

"Gorgeously evocative, Red Island House follows two decades in the life of Shay, an African-American professor whose husband Senna, a brash and wealthy Italian businesswoman, builds her a dream house in Madagascar." --

Ptolemy Grey is a 91-year-old man, suffering from dementia and living as a recluse in his Los Angeles apartment. Then Robyn Small, a 17-year-old family friend, appears and helps clean up his apartment and straighten out his life. A reinvigorated Ptolemy volunteers for an experimental medical program that restores his mind, and he uses his last days--shortened now by the medical experiment--to delve into the mystery of the recent drive-by shooting...

"If you could choose your family...you wouldn't choose the Penningtons. Dimple Pennington knows of her half siblings, but she doesn't really know them. Five people who don't have anything in common except for faint memories of being driven through Brixton in their dad's gold jeep, and some pretty complex abandonment issues. Dimple has bigger things to think about. She's thirty, and her life isn't really going anywhere. An aspiring lifestyle influencer...

Somewhere in Northwest London stands the Caldwell housing estate, a relic of 1970s urban planning--five identical blocks, deliberately named: Hobbes, Smith, Bentham, Locke, and Russell. If you grew up here, the plan was to get out and get on, to something bigger and better. Thirty years later, ex-Caldwell kids Leah, Natalie, Felix, and Nathan have all made it out, with varying degrees of success. Living only streets apart, they occupy separate worlds...

"When the man she loved years ago returns to town, one young woman's complicated past rises again, threatening to expose her well-kept secrets. If Maxine could put her finger on the moment when her life went into a tailspin, she would point back twenty years to the day her daddy died. She tells herself he's the only person who ever really knew and loved her, and if he hadn't left her behind, her future would've taken a different path. No absentee...

Longtime friends from the years when passion seemed permanent, the couples have stayed in touch, gathering for births and anniversaries, bonding over discussions of politics, race, and art. But as bonds fray, the lines once clearly marked by wedding bands aren't so simply defined. Ordinary People is a moving examination of identity and parenthood, sex and grief, and the fragile architecture of love.