Wang Gungwu is one of Asia’s most important public intellectuals. He is best-known for his explorations of Chinese history in the long view, and for his writings on the Chinese diaspora. With Home is Not Here, the historian of grand themes turns to a single life history: his own. In this volume, Wang talks about his multicultural upbringing and life under British rule. He was born in Surabaya, Java, but his parents’ orientation was always to China. Wang grew up in the plural, multi-ethnic town of Ipoh, Malaya (now Malaysia). He learned English in colonial schools and was taught the Confucian classics at home. After the end of WWII and Japanese occupation, he left for the National Central University in Nanjing to study alongside some of the finest of his generation of Chinese undergraduates. The victory of Mao Zedong’s Communist Party interrupted his education, and he ends this volume with his return to Malaya. Wise and moving, this is a fascinating reflection on family, identity, and belonging, and on the ability of the individual to find a place amid the historical currents that have shaped Asia and the world.

Back in the days of Ronald Reagan's America, those far-from-innocent days of nostalgic rot and willful illusion, small-town life was thought to be simple, pure, the source of all decent values, and the home of true hearts and ever helpful neighbors who bear each other's burdens. James McGrath, a church musician who has just destroyed his personal life and his career through an act of catastrophic stupidity, believes this nonsense just long enough to flee a city he loves. Hoping to heal, he goes to live with his father in a tiny town on the Canadian border. He finds what fools have always found: truths more ordinary and more bitter than he wants to accept and a life more impoverished and antagonistic than he imagined. Descending into this bleak reality, like Jesus in the wilderness, James must face and answer the question: what do we live by? He makes some friends, falls in and out of love, rediscovers his art, and eventually finds a way back into his life. But it's not a smooth journey, and it comes with a price.

A successful quilter worries about a new rival—and a newly independent son—in a novel by the New York Times-bestselling author of Between Heaven and Texas. Mary Dell Templeton prefers the quiet, quirky charms of Too Much, Texas to the bright lights of Dallas any day. She's relieved to be moving back to her hometown--and bringing her cable TV show, Quintessential Quilting, with her. There are just a couple of wrinkles in her plan. Her son, Howard, who is her talented co-host and color consultant, and happens to have Down syndrome, wants to stay in Dallas and become more independent. Meanwhile, Mary Dell's new boss hopes to attract a different demographic--by bringing in a younger co-host. What Holly Silva knows about quilting wouldn't fill a thimble, but she's smart and ambitious. Her career hinges on outshining the formidable Mary Dell in order to earn her own show. Yet as Holly adapts to small-town living and begins a new romance, and Mary Dell considers rekindling an old one, the two find unlikely kinship. For as Mary Dell knows, the women of Too Much have a knack for untangling the knottiest problems when they work together. And sometimes the pattern for happiness is as simple and surprising as it is beautiful… "Marie Bostwick is my go-to author…always powerful, inspiring, and uplifting." –Robyn Carr, #1 New York Times bestselling author "A brilliant storyteller." --Las Vegas Review-Journal

From the well-loved author of Knitting Under the Influence and The Smart One and the Pretty One comes a new novel about a young single mother trying to move out of her family's shadow. Rickie left home a long time ago-so how is it that at the age of twenty-five, she's living with her parents again, and sleeping in the bedroom of her childhood home? At least one thing has changed since high school: She now has a very sweet but frequently challenging son named Noah, who attends the same tony private LA school she herself attended. Rickie fit in fine when she was a student, but now her age and tattoos make her stand out from all the blond Stepford moms, who are desperate to know why someone so young-and so unmarried-has a kid in first grade. Already on the defensive, Rickie goes into full mother-tigress mode when her small and unathletic son tells her that the gym teacher is out to get him. She storms the principal's office, only to discover that Andrew Fulton, the coach, is no dumb jock. As her friendship with Andrew develops, Rickie finds herself questioning her assumptions-about motherhood, being a grown-up, and falling in love.