Cassie Miles

Family Matters and Other Complications: Assorted Stories and Poems Crossing Many Borders
by Latika Mangrulkar

Family Matters and Other Complications dramatizes the processes involved with immigration. Creating a trans-national identity and the emotional upheavals that occur with such a major change are at the center of this book about men and women at various stages in life as they try to feel at home in a foreign environment.

The assorted stories and poems are woven around characters struggling with identity issues, and the subtle undercurrents make these complex family relationships come alive .

Spanning across several generations and locales, this is a universal dilemma. Historical borders are no longer valid and geographical boundaries have lost their meaning, unable to confine us to where we were born, as the world grows a bit smaller every day. Beginning in the late 1960s, the book covers a period of 50 years, traveling from the Himalayan Mountains to communities in America. Author Latika Mangrulkar grew up in India as an army brat, living all over the subcontinent before coming to the United States at the age of 22. She was the first South Asian woman grad student at her Midwestern university. She is a social worker/therapist and an educator, and lives in the San Francisco area.

A Death in Vienna
by Daniel Silva

Art restorer and sometime spy Gabriel Allon is sent to Vienna to authenticate a painting, but the real object of his search becomes something else entirely: to find out the truth about the photograph that has turned his world upside down. It is the face of the unnamed man who brutalized his mother in the last days of World War II, during the Death March from Auschwitz. But is it really the same one? If so, who is he? How did he escape punishment? Where is he now?

Fueled by an intensity he has not felt in years, Allon cautiously begins to investigate, but the more layers he strips away, the greater the evil that is revealed, a web stretching across sixty years and thousands of lives. Soon, the quest for one monster becomes the quest for many. And the monsters are stirring . . .

Filled with sharply etched characters and prose, and a plot of astonishing intricacy, this is an uncommonly intelligent thriller by one of our very best writers.

Kingdom of the Golden Dragon
by Isabel Allende

Not many months have passed since teenager Alexander Cold followed his bold grandmother into the heart of the Amazon to uncover its legendary Beast. This time, reporter Kate Cold escorts her grandson and his closest friend, Nadia, along with the photographers from International Geographic, on a journey to another remote niche of the world. Entering a forbidden sovereignty tucked in the frosty peaks of the Himalayas, the team's task is to locate its fabled Golden Dragon, a sacred statue and priceless oracle that can foretell the future of the kingdom. In their scramble to reach the statue before it is destroyed by the greed of an outsider, Alexander and Nadia must use the transcendent power of their totemic animal spirits -- Jaguar and Eagle. With the aid of a sage Buddhist monk, his young royal disciple, and a fierce tribe of Yeti warriors, Alexander and Nadia fight to protect the holy rule of the Golden Dragon. Isabel Allende once again leads readers on a fantastical voyage of suspense, magic, and awe-inspiring adventure in this riveting follow-up to City of the Beasts.