Jewel used to be content with being a ride or die chick, playing Bonnie while the men in her life played Clyde. But now she realizes that it was her connections and street smarts that helped her man, Calico, rise to the top, and Jewel wants to be the one in control. She's tired of taking orders from men. She's willing to do anything to be queen of the streets, but when a deal she makes with the enemy comes back to haunt her, her dream is turned into a nightmare. Hopeless and struggling to keep her head above water, Jewel meets Misty, who seems to be her savior. They quickly form a bond, but when that bond is broken and the mist turns to rain, Jewel finds herself in the middle of a storm that she might not make it out of.

Connecting California is an innovative reader that illuminates the direct historical connections between the state of California and the United States. Featuring a selection of key documents, essays, and images from the past, the book illustrates California's cultural, political, and economic importance to the development of early and modern America. Literary and transnational themes are explored to create a comprehensive yet reader-friendly learning experience for students. The text progresses chronologically and includes an expansive array of source types designed to appeal to learners of all backgrounds and interests, with topics like food, dress, music, sports, and architecture included alongside more traditional subject matter. The second edition features streamlined information to make the text more accessible and approachable, as well as additional primary documents, and discussion around, California Indians, Spanish-to-Mexican rule, and the Fifteenth Amendment, which granted California voting rights to African Americans and Asian Americans. Appropriate for all levels of U.S. history study, Connecting California offers students a wide spectrum of resources that embody the unique eras, demographics, and geographies of both California and American history.

Californio Connections portrays life in the San Francisco/Monterey Bay Areas as it transitioned from an Ohlone population to Spanish, Mexican and American governance. as told through the lives of six individuals all distantly related to the author.

In Californios, Anglos, and the Performance of Oligarchy in the U.S. West, author Andrew Gibb argues that the mid-nineteenth-century encounter between Anglos and californios— the Spanish-speaking elites who ruled Mexican California between 1821 and 1848—resulted not only in the Americanization of California but also the “Mexicanization” of Americans. Employing performance studies methodologies in his analysis of everyday and historical events, Gibb traces how oligarchy evolved and developed in the region. This interdisciplinary study draws on performance studies, theatre historiography, and New Western History to identify how the unique power relations of historical California were constituted and perpetuated through public performances—not only traditional theatrical productions but also social events such as elite weddings and community dances—and historical events like the U.S. seizure of the city of Monterey, the feting of Commodore Stockton in San Francisco, and the Bear Flag Revolt.

Anthropologists, historians, and sociologists will find here a striking challenge to accepted explanations of the northward movement of migrants from Mexico into the United States. Alvarez investigates the life histories of pioneer migrants and their offspring, finding a human dimension to migration which centers on the family. Spanish, American, and English exploits paved the way for exchange between Baja and Alta California. Alvarez shows how cultural stability actually increased as migrants settled in new locations, bringing their common values and memories with them.

They were people who were shaped by the world they lived in, and by the laws of honor that ruled them. But not all of those laws were fair or good. One man was willing to stand up for what was right-even if it made him an outsider.