A mother's missing child, a search for identity, and ever-changing notions of “home”—class and race intersect with belonging in this stunning debut novel of mothers, daughters, and best friends.

In June 2000, Mimi Truang is on her way home to Vietnam when her toddler daughter vanishes in the Philadelphia airport.

Seventeen years later, two best friends graduate from high school in the WASP-y town of Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania. Kit is half-Japanese, half-American, and interracially adopted by white well-to-do parents. Sabrina is the daughter of a Chinese immigrant single mother who brandishes strict household rules to hide her own secrets.

During that last summer before college, Kit travels to Tokyo, determined to uncover her Japanese identity. Her dizzying weeks in Tokyo offer her a critical distance from everything she holds dear—and a taste of first love that refines her understanding of what it means to belong.

Sabrina had hoped to take a similar trip to China, but money is tight. Her disappointment quickly subsides, however, as her bold, uncompromising boss becomes a mentor, prompting Sabrina to ask questions she’s avoided all her life.

Meanwhile, Mimi purchases a plane ticket to Philadelphia. She finally has a lead to renew her search in the country where she and her daughter were parted.

When Mimi, Kit, and Sabrina come face-to-face at the end of this transformative summer, they will confront the people they truly are, dismantling their own assumptions about belonging and the importance of blood ties.

In San Francisco 1866, an Irish nun, left pregnant and abandoned following a torrid relationship with a Chilean aristocrat, gives birth to a daughter named Emilia Del Valle. Raised by a loving stepfather, Emilia grows into an independent thinker and a self-sufficient young woman.

To pursue her passion for writing, she is willing to defy societal norms. At the age of sixteen, she begins to publish pulp fiction under a man’s pen name. When these fictional worlds can't contain her sense of adventure any longer, she turns to journalism, convincing an editor at the San Francisco Examiner to hire her. There she is paired with another talented reporter, Eric Whelan.

As she proves herself, her restlessness returns, until an opportunity arises to cover a brewing civil war in Chile. She seizes it, along with Eric, and while there, begins to uncover the truth about her father and the country that represents her roots. But as the war escalates, Emilia finds herself in danger and at a crossroads, questioning both her identity and her destiny.

A riveting tale of self-discovery and love from one of the most masterful storytellers of our time, My Name is Emilia del Valle introduces a character who will never let hold of your heart.

From the acclaimed author of Wahala, a vibrant decolonial retelling of Mansfield Park: Jane Austen meets The Vanishing Half.

Quiet Funke is happy in Nigeria. She loves her art teacher mother, her professor father, and even her annoying little brother (most of the time). But when tragedy strikes, she’s sent to England, a place she knows only from her mother’s stories. To her dismay, she finds the much-lauded estate dilapidated, the food tasteless, the weather grey. Worse still, her mother’s family are cold and distant. With one exception: her cousin Liv.

Free-spirited Liv has always wanted to break free of her joyless family. She becomes fiercely protective of her little cousin, and her warmth and kindness give Funke a place to heal. The two girls grow into adulthood the closest of friends.

But the choices their mothers made haunt Funke and Liv and when a second tragedy occurs their friendship is torn apart. Against the long shadow of their shared family history, each woman will struggle to chart a path forward, separated by country, misunderstanding, and ambition.

Moving between Somerset and Lagos over the course of two decades, This Motherless Land is a sweeping examination of identity, culture, race, and love that asks how we find belonging and whether a family’s generational wrongs can be righted.

A young, queer Palestinian American woman pieces together her great-aunt’s secrets in this sweeping debut, confronting questions of sexual identity, exile, and lineage.

In a Pacific Northwest hospital far from the Rummani family’s ancestral home in Palestine, the heart of a stillborn baby begins to beat and her skin turns vibrantly, permanently cobalt blue. On the same day, the Rummanis’ centuries-old soap factory in Nablus is destroyed in an air strike. The family matriarch and keeper of their lore, Aunt Nuha, believes that the blue girl embodies their sacred history, harkening back to a time when the Rummanis were among the wealthiest soap-makers and their blue soap was a symbol of a legendary love.

Decades later, Betty returns to Aunt Nuha’s gravestone, faced with a difficult decision: Should she stay in the only country she’s ever known, or should she follow her heart and the woman she loves, perpetuating her family’s cycle of exile? Betty finds her answer in partially translated notebooks that reveal her aunt’s complex life and struggle with her own sexuality, which Nuha hid to help the family immigrate to the United States. But, as Betty soon discovers, her aunt hid much more than that.

The Skin and Its Girl is a searing, poetic tale about desire and identity, and a provocative exploration of how we let stories divide, unite, and define us—and wield even the power to restore a broken family. Sarah Cypher is that rare debut novelist who writes with the mastery and flair of a seasoned storyteller.

The Mirage of Love by Lady Diana is a captivating fiction that centers around the life of a protagonist woman. Happily married to her lover, she finds herself estranged from her husband after four years. Lost in the monotony of life without love and respect, she leads a servile existence repressed from joy and desires.

Determined to escape the deadly clutches of expectations and social repressions, she seeks to rise above menial existence and achieve her dreams. She falls in love with another man, her teacher and mentor, yet fears acknowledging her feelings due to potential social accusations. An incident awakens her to life's temporality, leading her into an ambitious and intimate relationship with her mentor.

In a world led by her lover, ambition becomes tangible, and she faces the disorder of the human world, particularly that of women. A critical moment arrives when she must choose between the men, showcasing her independence and strength.

This novel is a bold exploration of a woman's struggle against societal norms, representing the universal search for identity among womankind. The protagonist's journey is one of lust, self-realization, and the quest for identity beyond the home hemisphere.

Kyla is in danger from both the government Lorders who erased her memory and the terrorists who tried to use her. So now she’s on the run.

Sporting a new identity and desperate to fill in the blank spaces of her life pre-Slating, Kyla heads to a remote mountain town to try to reunite with the birth mother she was kidnapped from as a child. There she is hoping all the pieces of her life will come together and she can finally take charge of her own future.

But even in the idyllic wilderness and the heart of her original family, Kyla realizes there is no escape from the oppressive Lorders. Someone close to her may be one of them, and even more frighteningly, her birth mother has been keeping secrets of her own.

In this stunning series finale, Kyla finally finds out who she really is, and the road to this discovery, and to deciding who she wants to become, is full of dangerous twists and turns that will keep readers riveted.

Sabine isn't like anyone else. For as long as she can remember, she's had two lives. Every twenty-four hours she "shifts," living each day twice.

In one life, Sabine has everything: popular friends, perfect grades, expensive clothes, and the guy everyone wants. In the other, Sabine's family struggles financially, and her friends are considered rebels.

But then she meets Ethan. He's gorgeous and challenging, and he makes her feel like she's never felt before.

All Sabine really wants is the chance to live only one life. But when this finally becomes possible, is she willing to risk everything - including losing the one person who might actually believe her - to make it happen?

Meditation on Space-Time portrays a man's struggle to discover his identity in contemporary society, to sacrifice for his friends, and to take the road less traveled. Even as Father Lawrence hears a stranger's confession, he dreams of probability waves, black holes, and temporal loops. He came to Gilead searching for his friend Camellia, not to hear about seducing women, framing rivals, and laundering church funds.

After a chase through the sanctuary into the church graveyard, Father Lawrence finds a note revealing a connection to Camellia. When he learns Camellia is pregnant with the stranger's child, he realizes the time to play ostrich is over. Ever since a girl he counseled committed suicide, he prefers contemplating the duality of space-time to sorting out his own emotions.

Faced with betrayal, he locks himself in his cabin, torn between retreating to his meditation on space-time and confronting the villain. He renounces his vow, learns to equate a dollar with a cheeseburger, and buys a gun without knowing how to load it. As he searches for his enemy, Father Lawrence contemplates death, only to hear three shots saluting the dark night. Either mercy or justice; either salvation or friendship.

For readers who would savor the hero's every laugh and tear as if each were bittersweet chocolate, Meditation on Space-Time offers a brilliant bit of poetic science.

George Webber has written a successful novel about his family and hometown. When he returns to that town, he is shaken by the force of the outrage and hatred that greets him. Family and friends feel naked and exposed by the truths they have seen in his book, and their fury drives him from his home.

He begins a search for his own identity that takes him to New York and a hectic social whirl; to Paris with an uninhibited group of expatriates; to Berlin, lying cold and sinister under Hitler's shadow. At last, Webber returns to America and rediscovers it with love, sorrow, and hope.

Sometimes you have to go home to find out who you really are.

Charlie West went to bed one night an ordinary high-school student. He woke up a hunted man. Terrorists are trying to kill him. The police want to arrest him for the stabbing death of his best friend. He doesn't know whose side he's on or who he can trust.

With his pursuers closing in on every side, Charlie makes his way back to his hometown to find some answers. There, holed up in an abandoned mansion, he's joined by his friends in a desperate attempt to discover the truth about a murder he can't remember—and the love he can never forget.

This is the second installment of the Homelanders series, where Charlie's search for answers brings him back to his own beginning.

The triumphant return of one of comics’ greatest talents, with an engrossing story of one man’s search for love, meaning, sanity, and perfect architectural proportions. An epic story long awaited, and well worth the wait.

Meet Asterios Polyp: middle-aged, meagerly successful architect and teacher, aesthete and womanizer, whose life is wholly upended when his New York City apartment goes up in flames. In a tenacious daze, he leaves the city and relocates to a small town in the American heartland. But what is this “escape” really about?

As the story unfolds, moving between the present and the past, we begin to understand this confounding yet fascinating character, and how he’s gotten to where he is. And isn’t.

We meet Hana: a sweet, smart, first-generation Japanese American artist with whom he had made a blissful life. But now she’s gone. Did Asterios do something to drive her away? What has happened to her? Is she even alive? All the questions will be answered, eventually.

In the meantime, we are enthralled by Mazzucchelli’s extraordinarily imagined world of brilliantly conceived eccentrics, sharply observed social mores, and deftly depicted asides on everything from design theory to the nature of human perception.

Asterios Polyp is David Mazzucchelli’s masterpiece: a great American graphic novel.

Inspired by the W.B. Yeats poem that tempts a child from home to the waters and the wild, The Stolen Child is a modern fairy tale narrated by the child Henry Day and his double.

On a summer night, Henry Day runs away from home and hides in a hollow tree. There he is taken by the changelings—an unaging tribe of wild children who live in darkness and in secret. They spirit him away, name him Aniday, and make him one of their own. Stuck forever as a child, Aniday grows in spirit, struggling to remember the life and family he left behind. He also seeks to understand and fit in this shadow land, as modern life encroaches upon both myth and nature.

In his place, the changelings leave a double, a boy who steals Henry’s life in the world. This new Henry Day must adjust to a modern culture while hiding his true identity from the Day family. But he can’t hide his extraordinary talent for the piano (a skill the true Henry never displayed), and his dazzling performances prompt his father to suspect that the son he has raised is an imposter.

As he ages, the new Henry Day becomes haunted by vague but persistent memories of life in another time and place, of a German piano teacher and his prodigy. Of a time when he, too, had been a stolen child. Both Henry and Aniday obsessively search for who they once were before they changed places in the world.

The Stolen Child is a classic tale of leaving childhood and the search for identity. With just the right mix of fantasy and realism, Keith Donohue has created a bedtime story for adults and a literary fable of remarkable depth and strange delights.

Lauren has always known she was adopted, but when a little research turns up the possibility that she was snatched from an American family as a baby, suddenly Lauren's life seems like a sham. How can she find her biological parents? And are her adoptive parents really responsible for kidnapping her?

Running away from her family to seek out the truth, Lauren's journey takes her deeper and deeper into danger as she realizes that someone wants to stop her uncovering what really happened when she was a baby... at any cost.

Walden, written by Michael T. Dolan, deconstructs higher education, the struggle for individualism, and the parade of conformity in one fell swoop of a very sharp pen. In the tradition of the great angry young men novels, Walden presents a humorous, shocking, and thoroughly modern take on a young man's struggle for self.

Tucked into one day, you'll find the grand themes of love and death, revolution and freedom, hope and enlightenment. And you'll find the Who and the Stones, back before they were doing Hummer commercials, CSI theme songs, and Microsoft jingles.

Join the revolution that is Walden. It's a story about the seamier side of campus life, a life far removed from the smiling faces on the college brochures. Mike Dolan has crafted a powerful and evocative story, full of anger, frustration, and misdirected emotion, about a young man caught up in the anonymous and soul-crushing world of the educational system.

Melissa Bank's runaway bestseller, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, charmed readers and critics alike with its wickedly insightful, tender look at a young woman's forays into love, work, and friendship. Now, with The Wonder Spot, Bank is back with her signature combination of devilishly self-deprecating humor, seriousness, and wisdom.

Nothing comes easily to Sophie Applebaum, the black sheep of her family, trying to blend in with the herd. Uneasily situated between two brothers, Sophie first appears as the fulcrum and observer of her clan in "Boss of the World." Then, at college, in "The Toy Bar," she faces a gauntlet of challenges as Best Friend to the dramatic and beautiful Venice Lambourne, curator of "perfect things." In her early twenties, Sophie is dazzled by the possibilities of New York City during the Selectric typewriter era—only to land solidly back in Surrey, PA after her father's death.

The Wonder Spot follows Sophie's quest for her own identity—who she is, what she loves, whom she loves, and occasionally whom she feels others should love—over the course of 25 years. In an often-disappointing world, Sophie listens closely to her own heart. And when she experiences her 'Aha!' moments—her own personal wonder spots—it's the real thing.

In a distant galaxy, the atrocity of slavery was alive and well, and young Thorby was just another orphaned boy sold at auction. But his new owner, Baslim, is not the disabled beggar he appears to be: adopting Thorby as his son, he fights relentlessly as an abolitionist spy. When the authorities close in on Baslim, Thorby must ride with the Free Traders — a league of merchant princes — throughout the many worlds of a hostile galaxy, finding the courage to live by his wits and fight his way from society's lowest rung.

But Thorby's destiny will be forever changed when he discovers the truth about his own identity...

Abandoned at birth in the perilous Deepwoods, Twig Verginix is brought up by a family of woodtrolls. One cold night, Twig does what no woodtroll has ever done before – he strays from the path. So begins a heart-stopping adventure that will take Twig through a nightmare world of fearsome goblins, bloodthirsty beasts and flesh-eating trees. Can he discover the truth about his past?

Beyond the Deepwoods is the first book of the Twig Saga – second trilogy in The Edge Chronicles. Each book is a stand-alone adventure, so you can read The Edge Chronicles in any order you choose.

These three internationally acclaimed novels have confirmed Agota Kristof's reputation as one of the most provocative exponents of new-wave European fiction. With all the stark simplicity of a fractured fairy tale, the trilogy tells the story of twin brothers, Claus and Lucas, locked in an agonizing bond that becomes a gripping allegory of the forces that have divided "brothers" in much of Europe since World War II.

Kristof's postmodern saga begins with The Notebook, in which the brothers are children, lost in a country torn apart by conflict, who must learn every trick of evil and cruelty merely to survive.

In The Proof, Lucas is challenged to prove his own identity and the existence of his missing brother, a defector to the "other side."

The Third Lie, which closes the trilogy, is a biting parable of Eastern and Western Europe today and a deep exploration into the nature of identity, storytelling, and the truths and untruths that lie at the heart of them all.

In Blue Belle, Montana, everyone knew better than to mess with the Claybornes. The brothers had once been a mismatched gang of street urchins—until they found an abandoned baby girl in a New York City alley, named her Mary Rose, and headed west to raise her to be a lady.

They became a family—held together by loyalty and love, if not by blood—when suddenly they faced a crisis that threatened to tear them apart. Trouble came to town with one Lord Harrison Stanford MacDonald. Armed with a swagger and six-shooter, he cut a striking figure—but it soon became apparent to Mary Rose that he was too much of a gentleman to make it in her rough-and-tumble town.

She asked her brothers to teach him the basics of frontier survival, which he acquired with ease. And soon he possessed a deep and desperate love for Mary Rose. She returned his affection wholeheartedly... until MacDonald revealed a secret that challenged everything she believed about herself, her life, and her newfound love.

Now her search for identity and meaning would begin, raising questions that could only be answered if she listened to the truth within her heart.

In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American.

It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father—a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man—has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey—first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother’s family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his father’s life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance.

Yukito Kishiro blurs the lines between human and machine in the sci-fi/action adventure Battle Angel Alita.

Daisuke Ido, a talented cybernetic doctor, finds the head of a cyborg in a junk heap. When he rebuilds her body, Alita's only clue to her past surfaces—her deadly fighting instincts! Now she is determined to find out the truth about who she once was...