"In 2025 California, an eighteen-year-old African American woman, suffering from a hereditary trait that causes her to feel others' pain as well as her own, flees northward from her small community and its desperate savages." --

"A California epic following several native, diverse Californians gasping for air in a world that continues to marginalize them"--

In the five years since Julia visited her aunt and uncle's home in Malibu, her life has been turned upside down by her daughter's death. She expects to find nothing more than peace and solitude as she house-sits with only her dog, Bonnie, for company. But she finds herself drawn to the handsome man who oversees the lemon orchard. Roberto expertly tends the trees to support his extended Mexican family. What connection could these two people share?...

"It's spring 1971 and P.I. Vera Kelly and her girlfriend, Max, leave their cozy Brooklyn apartment for an emergency visit to Max's estranged family in Los Angeles. Max's parents are divorcing-her father is already engaged to a much younger woman and underthe sway of an occultist charlatan; her mother has left their estate in a hurry with no indication of return. Max, who hasn't seen her family since they threw her out at the age of twenty-two, prepares...

Patrick Davis is a man with troubles. First his Hollywood dreams crumble and then his storybook marriage hits a snag. Now, DVDs start being delivered to his house, DVDs which show that someone is watching him and his wife, that the two of them are being stalked and recorded by cameras hidden in their house. Then someone offers to fix everything, to take the mess his life has become and make it all right. Patrick figures it's the offer of a lifetime....

Presents stories featuring men who make doomed forays into middle-class respectability in Southern California, from a high-school basketball player who aspires to a college scholarship, to a game-show production assistant who moonlights as a stand-up comedian.

Living in Orange County, California, in the late 1960s, three brothers pursue leads relevant to their respective careers as a homicide detective, a minister, and a reporter when a woman from a childhood rival family is found murdered.