"Antonia Vega, the immigrant writer at the center of this novel, has had the rug pulled out from under her. She has just retired from the college where she taught English when her husband, Sam suddenly dies. And then more jolt: her big-hearted but unstable sister disappears, and Antonia returns home one evening to find a pregnant, undocumented teenager on her doorstep. Antonia has always sought direction in the literature she loves--lines from her...

Assigned to care for his fiancée's father, Professor Yang, after he suffers a stroke, Jian Wan is disturbed when the professor begins to rave against his family and colleagues, and takes great risks to uncover the truth.

Harry and her young partner in PI work, Fergus, take on cases from missing persons to murders, but when Fergus's mother turns up, years after abandoning him, they have a deeply personal mystery to solve: Can he trust her?