Rachel Dewoskin

With a singing voice that can shake an auditorium, Judy should be the star of Darcy Academy, the local performing arts high school. So why is a girl this promising hiding out in a seedy motel room on the edge of town? A scathingly funny and moving book about dreams and reality, at once light on its feet and profound.

Aysha is a twenty-two-year-old plagued by guilt and anxiety ever since her parents' divorce. But after suffering severe symptoms, she's now focused on recovering and on teaching her English as a Second Language students. Then a young man named Da Ge joins her ESL class. A dissident with a painful past, he has fled China after the Tianenmen Square massacre, and Aysha finds herself falling irresistibly in love, in spite of the language barrier-and often,...

Samantha Baxter has a full, sane life--creative job, lovely family, and all the trappings of middle-age happiness. But when she gets a diagnosis that terrifies her, a lifetime of polite pleasing and putting others first ignites in her a surprising, pure rage.