In 1949, four Chinese women--drawn together by the shadow of their past--begin meeting in San Francisco to play mah jong, invest in stocks and "say" stories. They call their gathering the Joy Luck Club--and forge a relationship that binds them for more than three decades.

Ruth Young and her widowed mother, LuLing, have always had a tumultuous relationship. Now, before she succumbs to forgetfulness, LuLing gives Ruth some of her writings, which reveal a side of LuLing that Ruth has never known.... In a remote mountain village where ghosts and tradition rule, LuLing grows up in the care of her mute Precious Auntie as the family endures a curse laid upon a relative known as the bonesetter. When headsrong LuLing rejects...

For forty years, in China and in San Francisco, Winnie Louie and Helen Kwong have kept certain confidences. Suddenly, those shattering secrets are about to be revealed. So begins a series of comic misunderstandings and heartbreaking realizations about luck, loss, and trust; about the things a mother cannot tell her daughter, the secrets daughters keep, and the miraculous resiliency of love. Mothers and daughters

Thirteen-year-old Jamie must spend her summer volunteering at Foxfield Public Library, but quickly grows to love the people there and enthusiastically joins the fight to save the library.-- Provided by Publisher.

Meet Elaine Lui’s mother. She’s “a movie, an Amy Tan novel, and a sitcom all rolled into one.”* Or as her daughter sums it up: “She’s Chinese, she squawks like a chicken, she is totally nuts, and I am totally dependent on her.” With tales of brutal mah-jong competitions, all-cap texts (“YOUR BAD SKIN NEED SOUP”); public shaming, and pearls of occasionally-bizarre wisdom; Lui not only paints a portrait of a challenging, frustrating,...