NCW Libraries

"When we first meet Maria Lagana, she's rewriting scripts at Mercury Pictures, a failing Hollywood studio known for its schlock. Maria's job is to re-craft dialogue and action to circumvent the censors, a skill she's mysteriously adept at. Born in Italy, as a teenager Maria witnessed Mussolini's censors arrest her father, an event that will destroy her family and burden Maria with questions of guilt and responsibility she will carry with her throughout...

Inara Erickson's discovery of an elaborately stitched piece of fabric in her deceased aunt's island estate leads her to the century-old story of Mei Lien, and a difficult truth about her about her family.

"Disembarking on Ellis Island, Francesca arrives on the shores of America with her sights set on a better life than the one she left in Italy. That same day, aspiring linguist Alma reports to her first day of work at the immigrant processing center. Ellis, though, is not the refuge it first appears thanks to President Roosevelt's attempts to deter crime. Francesca and Alma will have to rely on each other to escape its corruption and claim the American...

The story of a Latin American science fiction writer and the lives her lost manuscript unites decades later in post-Katrina New Orleans. In 1929 in New Orleans, a Dominican immigrant named Adana Moreau writes a science fiction novel. The novel earns rave reviews, and Adana begins a sequel. Then she falls gravely ill. Just before she dies, she destroys the only copy of the manuscript. Decades later in Chicago, Saul Drower is cleaning out his dead grandfather's...

"September 1911. On Ellis Island in New York Harbor, nurse Clara Wood cannot face returning to Manhattan, where the man she loved fell to his death in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Then, while caring for a fevered immigrant whose own loss mirrors hers, she becomes intrigued by a name embroidered onto the scarf he carries...and finds herself caught in a dilemma that compels her to confront the truth about the assumptions she's made. Will what she learns...

When Ikemefuna is put on a plane from Lagos to Texas, she anticipates her newly arranged All-American life: a handsome husband, a beautiful red-brick mansion in Sugar Land, pizza parlors, and dance classes. Desperate to please, she'll happily cater to her family's needs. But Ikemefuna soon discovers what it actually means to live with her in-laws. Demands fro a grandson grow urgent, her every move comes under scrutiny, and the America she imagined...

This historical novel tells of the early days of the Mormon Church, and the trek of "Saints" to what is now Salt Lake City. One of the Saints was an English woman named Dinah who is convinced that her religious destiny lies in America. The book follows her travels from Manchester to Utah, ending in her spiritual new life in a new land.

The beautiful story of diversity follows a young girl named Kanzi whose most treasured reminder of her old home provides a pathway for acceptance in her new one.

"In the idyllic hill country of Sri Lanka, a young girl grows up with her loving family; but even in the midst of this paradise, terror lurks in the shadows. When tragedy strikes, she and her mother must seek safety by immigrating to America. There the girl reinvents herself as an American teenager to survive, with the help of her cousin; but even as she assimilates and thrives, the secrets and scars of her past follow her into adulthood. In this...

"A poignant and suspenseful drama that untangles the complicated ties binding three women--two sisters and their mother--in one Chinese immigrant family and explores what happens when the eldest daughter disappears, and a series of family secrets emerge. Sylvie, the beautiful, brilliant, successful older daughter of the Lee family, flies to the Netherlands for one final visit with her dying grandmother-- and vanishes. Amy is too young to remember...