san francisco bay area (calif.)

A floundering second-generation teenager growing up in the Bush-era Atlanta suburbs, Neil Narayan is authentic, funny, and smart. He just doesn't share the same drive as everyone around him. His perfect older sister is headed to Duke. His parents' expectations for him are just as high. He tries to want this version of success, but mostly, Neil just wants his neighbor across the cul-de-sac, Anita Dayal. But Anita has a secret: she and her mother Anjali have been brewing an ancient alchemical potion from stolen gold that harnesses the ambition of the jewelry's original owner. Anjali's own mother in Bombay didn't waste the precious potion on her daughter, favoring her sons instead. Anita, on the other hand, just needs a little boost to get into Harvard. But when Neil - who needs a whole lot more - joins in the plot, events spiral into a tragedy that rips their community apart. Ten years later, Neil is an oft-stoned Berkeley history grad student studying the California gold rush. His high school cohort has migrated to Silicon Valley, where he reunites with Anita and resurrects their old habit of gold theft - only now, the stakes are higher. Anita's mother is in trouble, and only gold can save her. Anita and Neil must pull off one last heist.

In 1937, a prison guard's only daughter has gone missing. Inmate Tommy is the only one who knows the truth, but both of their lives depend on the search's outcome. Two decades earlier, a boy named Shanley dreams of shedding his dingy existence and finding his real father in America. When the chance comes to cross the Atlantic, he must use all of his ingenuity to survive a volatile and foreign world.

Escaping from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in the summer of 2001, eleven-year-old Fadi and his family immigrate to the San Francisco Bay Area, where Fadi schemes to return to the Pakistani refugee camp where his little sister was accidentally left behind.

When humans declare war on mermaids, Luce swims to San Francisco Bay where she finds a group of "twice lost" girls, lost once when trauma turned them into mermaids and again when they defied mermaid law, and unites them into an army under her leadership.

When thirteen-year-old Joan moves to California in 1972, she becomes friends with Sarah, who is timid at school but an imaginative leader when they play in the woods, and after winning a writing contest together they are recruited for an exclusive summer writing class that gives them new insights into themselves and others.

"Mira explores the past of her familiar Bay Area, discovering layers of history in San Francisco and learning the real reason her mother has been working to change history"--Provided by publisher.

On a cold night in October 1937, searchlights cut through the darkness around Alcatraz. A prison guard's only daughter--one of the youngest civilians who lives on the island--has gone missing. Tending the warden's greenhouse, convicted bank robber Tommy Capello waits anxiously. Only he knows the truth about the little girl's whereabouts, and that both of their lives depend on the search's outcome. Almost two decades earlier and thousands of miles away, a young boy named Shanley Keagan ekes out a living as an aspiring vaudevillian in Dublin pubs. Talented and shrewd, Shan dreams of shedding his dingy existence and finding his real father in America. The chance finally comes to cross the Atlantic, but when tragedy strikes, Shan must summon all his ingenuity to forge a new life in a volatile and foreign world. Skillfully weaving these two stories, Kristina McMorris delivers a compelling novel that moves from Ireland to New York to San Francisco Bay. As her finely crafted characters discover the true nature of loyalty, sacrifice, and betrayal, they are forced to confront the lies we tell--and believe--in order to survive.

Provides a portrait of Angel Island, which processed more than half a million immigrants between 1910 and 1940. Details the hardships many immigrants endured as they waited to be processed and includes black-and-white photographs.

Twelve-year-old Ariana, a tomboy, and her ladylike cousin Laila, recently arrived from Afghanistan, do not get along but they pull together when a rival Afghani grocery store opens, rekindling an old family feud and threatening their family's livelihood.

Twelve-year-old Ariana is worlds apart from her proper Afghan cousin Laila, who just moved into their California home. Ariana is a tomboy; Laila cooks, sews, and sings. When a revival Afghan grocery store opens in their town, Laila and Ariana fall on opposite sides of an ancient feud, only to realize that they might be the only ones to end it.