After the husband and wife that she works for disappear, live-in maid Araceli takes their two boys on a journey through sprawling Los Angeles to locate their grandfather.

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?...

"Eat the Apple is a daring, twisted, and darkly hilarious story of American youth and masculinity in an age of continuous war. Matt Young joined the Marine Corps at age eighteen after a drunken night culminating in wrapping his car around a fire hydrant. The teenage wasteland he fled followed him to the training bases charged with making him a Marine. Matt survived the training and then not one, not two, but three deployments to Iraq, where the testosterone,...

"Features easy-to-follow urban trails that allow hikers of all levels to discover the landmarks that shape the Golden State's cities and towns"--

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....

"Join Arthur Sylvester, an award-winning UC Santa Barbara geologist, and Elizabeth O Black Gans, a geologist-illustrator, as they motor through mountains and deserts to explore the iconic features of the SoCal landscape, from boulder piles in Joshua Tree National Park and brilliant white dunes in the Channel Islands to tar seeps along the rugged coast and youthful cinder cones in the Mojave Desert. Whether you want to find precious gemstones, ponder...

This book captures one family's spirit and losses in a harsh landscape that has been shaped and exploited over hundreds of years, and chronicles the author's journey as she realizes that there's nowhere else in the country, no matter how green and welcoming, that feels like home. Blending family memoir and environmental history, Kendra Atleework conveys a fundamental truth: the places in which we live, live on, sometimes painfully, in us. Kendra Atleework...