Ali Ahn

"16-year-old Angel struggles to free herself from the trap of prostitution in which she is caught."--

Told in alternating points of view, Kabira, Garai, and the other First Sisters share a history of years of sexual violence, oppression, and exploitation at the hands of the vizier Iskan, whose dark powers originate from his control of the sacred spring at his palace at Ohaddin, before the women are able to escape and establish the female haven of Red Abbey on the island of Menos.

Joseph Boyden's first novel, Three Day Road, was a Today Show Book Club selection. Through Black Spruce is the exceptional follow-up to his acclaimed debut. Cree bush pilot Will Bird lies comatose in a hospital, while his wayward niece Annie arrives to sit in silent vigil by his side. Slowly their stories reveal two people previously separated by great distances, beaten and broken, and searching for some sense of where they belong in the world.

The tech boom of our time is changing San Francisco at warp speed. Famously home to artists and activists, and known as the birthplace of the Beats, the Black Panthers, and the LGBTQ movement, the Bay Area has been transformed by Silicon Valley. But the richer the region gets, the more unequal and less diverse it becomes, and the cracks in the city's facade begin to show. Inspired by Studs Terkel's classic works of oral history, writer and filmmaker...