"In this funny, heartbreaking, timely memoir--told in the form of college admission essays--Irena Smith illuminates the dissonance of working as a college consultant in Palo Alto, California, helping the best and brightest students in the country gain admission to highly selective schools, even as her own children are unraveling"--Provided by publisher.
"It's 2002 in Silicon Valley. 9/11's still fresh, the dot-com bubble has burst, and holy calamity is raining down on 14-year-old Chad Loudermilk. His father is about to lose his job, his mother isn't the same since Chad's grandma died, and as one of the few black kids at tony Palo Alto High School, Chad's starting to wonder about his birth parents. Next door lives dot-com mogul Scot MacAvoy, with his luxury SUV and his gardeners and his beautiful wife and his time to play video games with Chad, all making the Loudermilk family's struggle to stay afloat seem that much harder . . . It's a place where the working class, blended Loudermilk family grapple with issues of race and inequality, all while trying to keep a smile on their faces"--Publisher.
"A young couple on the brink of marriage--the charming Veblen and her fianc? Paul, a brilliant neurologist--find their engagement in danger of collapse. Along the way they weather everything from each other's dysfunctional families, to the attentions of a seductive pharmaceutical heiress, to an intimate t?te-?-t?te with a very charismatic squirrel."--Provided by publisher.
In the 1960s, five women come together through weekly visits to a Palo Alto, California, park, sharing their fears, dreams, and desires and helping one another deal with the daily challenges of life, love, illness, parenthood, and insecurity.
Eighteen-year-old David Ellison, a senior at Oak Fields Preparatory School which is only a few miles away from the Stanford University campus, tries to reconcile his desire to attend Juillard instead of an Ivy League university as is expected of him, while also wondering why he seems dissatisfied with his long-term girlfriend after being cast opposite an interesting new student in the school play.
Forty-three-year-old surgeon Dr. Ted Cogan struggles to clear his name when he is accused of statutory rape and manslaughter after seventeen-year-old and former patient Kristen Kroiter kills herself, leaving behind a diary that provides details describing a sexual encounter.
In the 1960s, five women come together through weekly visits to a Palo Alto, California, park, sharing their fears, dreams, and desires and helping one another deal with the daily challenges of life, love, illness, parenthood, and insecurity.
