Imagine an island that was a perfect place to take that long deserved vacation. Clean beaches, a boardwalk that stretches for two miles, charter fishing, horseback riding, entertainment rides for the young and old, almost everything you would want for the perfect vacation. Imagine an island with three unique towns with their own historical flavor and a large lake where you can go skiing, fishing, or camp if you prefer to just sleep under the star-filled skies. In Red Dreams, the first in a series, Michael Ham takes you to such a place, but instead of warm late spring days, you will venture into a journey of darkness. The story begins with Peggy, who is being held captive by a church that has a completely twisted view on their understanding of God. She escapes with four others, and agents for the church quickly track them down, except for Peggy. One attempt after another, they try to either capture her or kill her until finally, they succeed. But she isnt dead. Now in the hospital, she must make a decision. Should she return to Ravenswood or should she run? These are just the stepping stones in Red Dreams. There are quite a few people you will read about, and as for a few of them, you will never hear of them again. There is a lot to this story and the path to understand it all will take time.

Shawn Harrington returned to Marshall High School as an assistant coach years after appearing as a player in the iconic basketball documentary film Hoop Dreams. In January of 2014, Marshall's struggling team was about to improve after the addition of a charismatic but troubled player. Everything changed, however, when two young men opened fire on Harrington's car as he drove his daughter to school. Using his body to shield her, Harrington was struck and paralyzed. The mistaken-identity shooting was followed by a series of events that had a devastating impact on Harrington and Marshall's basketball family. Over the next three years it became obvious that the dream of the game providing a better life had nearly dissolved. Author Rus Bradburd tells Shawn's story with empathy and care, exploring the intertwined tragedies of gun violence, health care failure, racial assumptions, struggling educational systems, corruption in athletics—and the hope that can survive them all.

What we now call "the good life" first appeared in California during the 1930s. Motels, home trailers, drive-ins, barbecues, beach life and surfing, sports from polo and tennis and golf to mountain climbing and skiing, "sportswear" (a word coined at the time), and sun suits were all a part of the good life--perhaps California's most distinctive influence of the 1930s. In The Dream Endures, Kevin Starr shows how the good life prospered in California--in pursuits such as film, fiction, leisure, and architecture--and helped to define American culture and society then and for years to come. Starr previously chronicled how Californians absorbed the thousand natural shocks of the Great Depression--unemployment, strikes, Communist agitation, reactionary conspiracies--in Endangered Dreams, the fourth volume of his classic history of California. In The Dream Endures, Starr reveals the other side of the picture, examining the newly important places where the good life flourished, like Los Angeles (where Hollywood lived), Palm Springs (where Hollywood vacationed), San Diego (where the Navy went), the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena (where Einstein went and changed his view of the universe), and college towns like Berkeley. We read about the rich urban life of San Francisco and Los Angeles, and in newly important communities like Carmel and San Simeon, the home of William Randolph Hearst, where, each Thursday afternoon, automobiles packed with Hollywood celebrities would arrive from Southern California for the long weekend at Hearst Castle. The 1930s were the heyday of the Hollywood studios, and Starr brilliantly captures Hollywood films and the society that surrounded the studios. Starr offers an astute discussion of the European refugees who arrived in Hollywood during the period: prominent European film actors and artists and the creative refugees who were drawn to Hollywood and Southern California in these years--Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, Man Ray, Bertolt Brecht, Christopher Isherwood, Aldous Huxley, Thomas Mann, and Franz Werfel. Starr gives a fascinating account of how many of them attempted to recreate their European world in California and how others, like Samuel Goldwyn, provided stories and dreams for their adopted nation. Starr reserves his greatest attention and most memorable writing for San Francisco. For Starr, despite the city's beauty and commercial importance, San Francisco's most important achievement was the sense of well-being it conferred on its citizens. It was a city that "magically belonged to everyone." Whether discussing photographers like Edward Weston and Ansel Adams, "hard-boiled fiction" writers, or the new breed of female star--Marlene Dietrich, Jean Harlow, Bette Davis, Carole Lombard, and the improbable Mae West--The Dream Endures is a brilliant social and cultural history--in many ways the most far-reaching and important of Starr's California books.

Harvesting the Dream is the rare story of a large and successful business that remains family owned and continues to operate on the basis of professional and personal integrity. You’ll follow the Trinchero family from their common origins in a New York flooded with immigrant families like themselves, to their uncommon rise to success, to the present business challenges they face in the new Napa Valley. Their story brings the American dream to life–and underscores the reality that hard work and the willingness to defy well-rooted conventions are still the building blocks of business success.

Mary thought she was living the American Dream until one night everything changed in an instant. The lines between her dreams and reality became so intertwined that Mary did not know what was real. Were her dreams trying to tell her something? And more importantly, were they trying to help her save herself and the man she loved? Lost in the Dream is a true and honest portrayal of a mother's journey filled with practical life lessons Mary learned once she faced the image she portrayed to the world, released her fears, and ultimately succumbed to her heart to find her authentic self and sustainable happiness.