Non-Fiction
Adeline's stepmother or Niang was extemely domineering and high maintenance. Her natural children and particularly her son were first in her favour. Any of the children not bowing to her wishes were castigated. Adeline was sent to boarding school with instructions that the rest of the family were not to contact her.
Adeline spent her whole life trying to win approval from her father and suffering emotional abuse from her step-mother. Her grandfather Ye-Ye and her Aunt Baba were loving towards her and helped her greatly.
Adeline lived in China, emigrated to England to get a M.D. and finally settled in the US.
This story is somewhat of a Cinderella story and although the story is one that tugs at the heartstrings, the history of China in the 20th century is even more fascinating. I know little about the history of China and find myself wanting to know more.
First Line: "It would not be quite truthful to say that we were all together for the first time in nearly forty years."
Rating:
(4.0/5)
Upon Stella Sparrow's thirteenth birthday she develops a skill to see how other people will die. Each of the woman born in the Sparrow clan has a different ability. Her mother (Jenny) sees other people's dreams and her grandmother (Elinor) can see when people lie. When Stella tries to prevent a murder, her father is accused of homicide.
When Stephanie Plum heads in to her cousin's bail office to get her most recent assignment, she doesn't expect to be asked to bring in her fellow bounty officer and friend Ranger. Ranger was the last person seen with Homer Ramos before he was shot in the head and his office building set on fire. Stephanie turns down the job but her office isn't the only one looking for Ranger. Her arch nemesis is the bounty officer looking for him, as are two thugs who won't say who they are working for. 
A man drives off a cliff and gets trapped in his car, burning in the fire until his car falls into a river extinguishing the flames. He has third degree burns over most of his body and is taken to the hospital where he becomes very depressed. The book's unnamed narrator was used to getting by on his good looks and now that he has nothing but burns over his body he has to learn to live differently. 
This story is about two 19th wives. The first is Ann Eliza Young , the 19th wife of Brigham Young. Ann Eliza divorced Brigham in the late 1800s and started a crusade against polygamous marriages. The story is told of how both Ann and her mother were forced into their plural marriages. Her father also tells a bit of his own story and her brothers are also included. This is all told from historical accounts of the time. An interesting tidbit is the story of a present day writer trying to get ahold of these accounts. The Latter Day Saints (LDS) church is very reluctant to re-visit such a troubled time in their history.
Charlie Grover is the Police Chief of small town Promise, Oklahoma. His wife has passed away and he's left as a single father to his teenager while he tries to balance being a father, his career, and the demons he wrestles with from his past when his father beat him and he almost died in a fire. 
The Mortmain family is an odd family unit living in an odd residence. The family exists of sisters Rose and Cassandra, their brother Thomas, their father, their step-mother Topaz, and their orphaned helping hand Stephen. The family lives in an old dilapidated castle and their money is running out as they wait for their father to return to his writing glory and follow up his first successful book with another. 
This mystery starts in a nightclub called Purgatory. An off-duty policeman working as a bartender is brutally slain. Who is the nightclub owned by? None other than Dallas' husband Roarke.
Oei is the daughter of a famous Japanese painter Hokusai, living in 19th century Edo(Toyko), Japan. This is the era of emperors and shoguns. The western world is feared and kept as far as possible from the Japanese.
There are two classes in the world: Crosses (dark skinned) and Noughts (light-skinned). The Crosses are the ruling class; the only ones in government, the majority of lawyers, the ones who get to school their children and send them to university, etc. Callum is a Naught and his best friend Sephy is a Cross. They became friends when Callum's mother worked for Sephy's family and even when she was fired through no fault of her own, Callum and Sephy kept seeing each other secretly. However this is not a world where Naughts and Crosses can be together and as they grow to love each other they realize that life is not going to be easy for them if they want to stay together.