After nearly a decade as a sous-chef in a trendy eatery, and fresh off a divorce from the owner, Jenna Stevens is desperate for a change. So when she spots a for-lease sign in her hometown, she impulsively decides to open her very own cooking store. Her crash course in business is aided by a streetwise store manager and Jenna's adoptive mother. But as soon as she gains a foothold in her new life, in walk her birth parents—aging hippies on a quest to reconnect. Now Jenna must figure out how to reconcile the free-spirited Serenity and Tom with the parents who raised her and decide whether to open her heart to a man who just might be the best thing to happen to her in years. All without sacrificing her newly found dreams. In the end, Jenna will find that there is no perfect family, only the people we love….

In a society where human consciousness can freely transfer between bodies, this short story follows Jasper, a part-time Star Ship pilot deeply involved in an interstellar project called REACH OUT. Jasper explores the meaning of identity, autonomy, and the moral dilemmas within a society that has conquered death through technology, allowing humans to live indefinitely by jumping from body to body. Throughout the short story, Jasper navigates complex relationships, particularly with Devon, a character who decides to inhabit his original body permanently. As Jasper shifts through various forms and genders, the narrative delves into the fluidity of identity and the spectrum of human experience, challenging societal norms and prompting Jasper to reconsider her perspectives on life, duty, personal freedom, and the essence of human existence.

Home, Again! narrates the story of a European mother and her Indo-European son, who are struggling to understand who they are, against the backdrop of events in Europe and India. Angela Guttenberg, a twenty-two-year-old Austrian woman, graduates in anthropology from the University of Vienna in 1933. Disenchanted with Europe because of Hitlers rise, as well as her lovers conversion to Nazism, she sails to India for her post-graduate research. And she goes to Jejuri, a temple town in the Deccan famous for the folk culture of the sun-god, Khandoba, as well as for the concentration of the Dhangar Samaj, a nomadic community of shepherds, who are his worshippers. While researching the Dhangar culture, she falls in love with a Dhangar with whom she has a son. When her son, Haldiram Johann Holkar, a self-described mongrel child with a hybrid name, grows up, he goes to England for higher education. There, in the early 1960s, he sees the ugliness of British racism, as well as the glory of British liberalism. Upon his return to India, he begins to see the inadequacies of his people. And driven by his own modern vision for India, he confronts religious extremists on a day of communal tension in the Bombay of 1966only to be killed by them. At the end, Angela Guttenberg-Holkar, now middle-aged at fifty-five, returns to Vienna as she had gone to Indiadisenchanted with political life, struggling with her identity. The story progresses primarily through narratives and dialogues and, occasionally, through exchanges of letters, moving from one landscape to the otherfrom Vienna to Jejuri, then back to Europe, finally back to Indiaas the mother and the son strive to define who they are in a world in which diverse cultures meet to produce complicated identities.

Shannon Holmes -- Essence bestselling author of B-More Careful and Bad Girlz, and one of the brightest stars in urban fiction -- returns with a dramatic must-read novel inspired by his own life. Never Go Home Again is the story of Corey Dixon, a young man whose father tries as best he can to steer him away from the lure of the streets. And yet, like so many others in Corey's neighborhood, he finds the temptations of the lucrative drug trade too great to resist. While he makes fast money for a while, it is inevitable that it is he who has to pay, with his time and maybe even his life: by the age of sixteen Corey is locked up. Incarcerated in Riker's Island and then in prisons upstate, Corey lives through experiences that threaten to destroy his body, his mind, and eventually his spirit. But in the midst of his horrific imprisonment he discovers new strength to keep himself together and survive. Corey meets a few kind souls who mean him well, including a teacher who encourages him to get out of prison and make something of himself. The teacher also advises Corey to "never go home again." Though the homesick Corey does not immediately understand, he ultimately realizes the wisdom of his mentor's words. Unflinching and riveting, this story is the firsthand account of the brutal, unforgiving inner-city streets and prison life, as well as a difficult lesson in accepting responsibility and moving on.

Returning to his hometown with his wife and son, FBI hero Pete Ketter becomes caught up in a bizarre murder case that pits him against a psychopathic killer.

First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.