The friendship of a brother and sister in California, united by their love of surfing, but divided by their parents' crumbling marriage. Medina sides with the father, a doctor, Jim with the ex-model mother.

Joy Nicholson's The Tribes of Palos Verdes is a Los Angeles Times bestseller and now a major motion picture starring Jennifer Garner, Maika Monroe, and Cody Fern. “Nicholson captures the California-coast culture. . . . Medina shows what it’s like to feel ‘six million years old’ way before your time."—Entertainment Weekly “Impressive . . . Captures what it is to be young, intelligent, and very alone.”—Us Weekly Medina Mason is a defiant, awkward fourteen-year-old living in the affluent beach community of Palos Verdes, California. The pressure is intense in their high-stakes world, and Medina’s family begins to break under the stress. Her parents’ marriage disintegrates and her beloved brother turns to drugs in order to cope. Medina turns to the ocean to escape it all. She surfs to survive, finding a bitter solace in the rough comfort of the waves. “An inspiring portrait of a young woman unswayed by other people’s pettiness” (Mademoiselle), this is the moving story of growing up “different,” of the love between siblings, and of one girl’s power to save herself

Sam Brown sets out on a road trip from his home in a small California desert town to the cooler, greener climes of the Northwest. He tells himself he just needs a break, from his father, a dead-end relationship with a stripper, his job as a nurse, and his troubled best friend. But what he can't escape, no matter how many miles he travels, is the memory of his mother, July, who was brutally murdered sixteen years earlier and visits him regularly in his dreams. Sam's grief is sorely renewed when he learns July's murderer is soon to be released from prison. Overcome by strong feelings of panic and revenge, he turns to women. He reconnects with a former patient in Los Angeles. In Santa Barbara he meets a sage/philosopher who inspires him to put order in his life. In Oregon, he falls in love with an arborist whose woodsy home provides peace and refuge-at least for a while. Simultaneous with Sam's journey, his mother's story unfolds, coming to a climax when the details of July's grisly murder are revealed. Through a fast-paced, gripping narrative, Heat Signature explores the complexities of family and friendship, love and loss, race and sexuality. Visit www.lisateasley.com

Seeking an escape from their lives in Los Angeles, lovers Nick and Sarah embark on what they hope will be a romantic adventure in the Mexican jungle but instead encounter a dangerous world of drugs, violence, and secret agendas.

In this moving memoir about the power of friendship and the resilience of the human spirit, Amy Silverstein tells the story of the extraordinary group of women who supported her as she waited on the precipice for a life-saving heart transplant. Nearly twenty-six years after receiving her first heart transplant, Amy Silverstein’s donor heart plummeted into failure. If she wanted to live, she had to take on the grueling quest for a new heart—immediately. A shot at survival meant uprooting her life and moving across the country to California. When her friends heard of her plans, there was only one reaction: “I’m there.” Nine remarkable women—Joy, Jill, Leja, Jody, Lauren, Robin, Valerie, Ann, and Jane—put demanding jobs and pressing family obligations on hold to fly across the country and be by Amy’s side. Creating a calendar spreadsheet, the women—some of them strangers to one another—passed the baton of friendship, one to the next, and headed straight and strong into the battle to help save Amy’s life. Empowered by the kind of empathy that can only grow with age, these women, each knowing Amy from different stages of her life, banded together to provide her with something that medicine alone could not. Sleeping on a cot beside her bed, they rubbed her back and feet when the pain was unbearable, adorned her room with death-distracting decorations, and engaged in their “best talks ever.” They saw the true measure of their friend’s strength, and they each responded in kind. My Glory Was I Had Such Friends is a tribute to these women and the intense hours they spent together—hours of heightened emotion and self-awareness, where everything was laid bare. Candid and heartrending, this once-in-a-lifetime story of connection and empathy is a powerful reminder of the ultimate importance of “showing up” for those we love.

"The funniest book Pynchon has written." — Rolling Stone "Entertainment of a high order." - Time Part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon—private eye Doc Sportello surfaces, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era. In this lively yarn, Thomas Pynchon, working in an unaccustomed genre that is at once exciting and accessible, provides a classic illustration of the principle that if you can remember the sixties, you weren't there. It's been a while since Doc Sportello has seen his ex- girlfriend. Suddenly she shows up with a story about a plot to kidnap a billionaire land developer whom she just happens to be in love with. It's the tail end of the psychedelic sixties in L.A., and Doc knows that "love" is another of those words going around at the moment, like "trip" or "groovy," except that this one usually leads to trouble. Undeniably one of the most influential writers at work today, Pynchon has penned another unforgettable book.

Actress, director, entertainer Joely Fisher's touching, down-to-earth memoir filled with incredible, candid stories about her life, her famous parents, and how the loss of her unlikely hero, sister Carrie Fisher, ignited the writer in her. Growing up in an iconic Hollywood Dynasty, Joely Fisher knew a show business career was her destiny. The product of world-famous crooner Eddie Fisher and ’60s sex kitten Connie Stevens, she struggled with her own identity and place in the world on the way to a decades-long career as an acclaimed actress, singer, and director. Now, Joely shares her unconventional coming of age and stories of the family members and co-stars dearest to her heart, while stripping bare her own misadventures. In Growing Up Fisher, she recalls the beautifully bizarre twist of fate by which she spent a good part of her childhood next door to Debbie Reynolds. She speaks frankly about the realities of Hollywood—the fame and fortune, the constant scrutiny. Throughout, she celebrates the anomaly of a two-decade marriage in the entertainment industry, and the joys and challenges of parenting five children, while dishing on what it takes to survive and thrive in the unrelenting glow of celebrity. She speaks frankly about how the loss of her sister Carrie Fisher became a source of artistic inspiration. Fisher’s memoir, with never-before-seen photos, will break and warm your heart.

Atascadero, California--located nearly halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco on US Highway 101--is the brainchild of E.G. Lewis. Thought by some to have been a visionary, others considered Lewis a con artist. In spite of his reputation, he founded Atascadero and left in his wake a collection of unique architecture that was the first planned community in the state of California. He established roads, water mains, power grids, agricultural cooperatives, and a 20-mile road to the Pacific Ocean. Atascadero is also home to the nation's first enclosed shopping mall and magnificent art from the 1904 St. Louis World Exposition. Atascadero's creator also founded University City, Missouri, and Palos Verdes, California.

Jared Sydney Torrance originally founded Torrance in 1912 as an industrial city. But the land and its surrounding South Bay region thrived through agricultural activities, beginning in 1784 on the Rancho San Pedro. Farming activities continued after Ben Weston became the first one to buy land from the Dominguez family's rancho in 1847. Farming remained an important part of city commerce in the transition to a thriving Los Angeles County suburb in the late 1950s. Throughout those early years, family farmers contributed to the city's economy by raising cattle, pigs, and turkeys, as well as sugar beets, alfalfa, beans, hay, oats, barley, and flowers, and operating dairy farms. Other South Bay cities also relied on agriculture for economic growth, including Carson, once home to a thriving cut-flower farm industry, and Gardena, the one-time berry capital of Southern California, as well as the Palos Verdes Peninsula, where dry farming was a successful industry.