Books like Leaving Mother Lake by Yang Erche Namu

Jung Chang paints a vivid portrait of China’s social conditions, tracing the lives of families and women from the 1920s through the Cultural Revolution in a personal, biographical style.

Eighty‑year‑old LuLing recalls her childhood in rural China while her daughter Ruth, a San Francisco ghostwriter, discovers the story of their family’s past and the secrets of a mute nursemaid tied to an ancient curse.

Carolyn Jessop recounts her coerced marriage, abuse, and daring escape from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‑Day Saints, taking her eight children to freedom and contributing to the investigation of Church leader Warren Jeffs.

Billie Holiday chronicles her own life in this memoir, detailing a turbulent Harlem childhood, her rise in New York's jazz clubs, and the hardships of exploitation, racism, and addiction.

A Peace Corps teacher chronicles life in the remote Sichuan town of Fuling, weaving firsthand observations of Chinese countryside, historical moments, and the looming Three Gorges Dam into vivid travel prose.

A romance between an Englishwoman and a Hindu set against the backdrop of a Nepalese valley.

Portia, her family, and cousin Julian revisit their summer escape at Gone‑Away Lake, only to find an abandoned Victorian house brimming with mysteries and hidden treasures.

Elyn R. Saks, a distinguished professor and lawyer, chronicles her lifelong battle with schizophrenia, detailing how she overcame challenges to build a respected career in law, psychology, and psychiatry.

Route 312 is the Chinese Route 66. It flows three thousand miles from east to west, passing through the factory towns of the coastal areas, through the rural heart of China, then up into the Gobi Desert, where it merges with the Old Silk Road. The highway witnesses every part of the social and economic revolution that is turning China upside down.In this utterly surprising and deeply personal book, acclaimed National Public Radio reporter Rob Gifford, a fluent Mandarin speaker, takes the dramatic journey along Route 312 from its start in the boomtown of Shanghai to its end on the border with Kazakhstan. Gifford reveals the rich mosaic of modern Chinese life in all its contradictions, as he poses the crucial questions that all of us are asking about China: Will it really be the next global superpower? Is it as solid and as powerful as it looks from the outside? And who are the ordinary Chinese people, to whom the twenty-first century is supposed to belong? Gifford is not alone on his journey. The largest migration in human history is taking place along highways such as Route 312, as tens of millions of people leave their homes in search of work. He sees signs of the booming urban economy everywhere, but he also uncovers many of the country's frailties, and some of the deep-seated problems that could derail China's rise. The whole compelling adventure is told through the cast of colorful characters Gifford meets: garrulous talk-show hosts and ambitious yuppies, impoverished peasants and tragic prostitutes, cell-phone salesmen, AIDS patients, and Tibetan monks. He rides with members of a Shanghai jeep club, hitchhikes across the Gobi desert, and sings karaoke with migrant workers at truck stops along the way.As he recounts his travels along Route 312, Rob Gifford gives a face to what has historically, for Westerners, been a faceless country and breathes life into a nation that is so often reduced to economic statistics. Finally, he sounds a warning that all is not well in the Chinese heartlands, that serious problems lie ahead, and that the future of the West has become inextricably linked with the fate of 1.3 billion Chinese people."Informative, delightful, and powerfully moving . . . Rob Gifford's acute powers of observation, his sense of humor and adventure, and his determination to explore the wrenching dilemmas of China's explosive development open readers' eyes and reward their minds." --Robert A. Kapp, president, U.S.-China Business Council, 1994-2004From the Hardcover edition.

Kate, a newly widowed mother, returns to Lost Lake in Georgia—a sleepy summer resort—to heal with her eccentric daughter Devin, hoping the place’s forgotten magic and their shared past can revive the cottage community and their hearts.

A powerful memoir of John Bul Dau’s escape from the Sudanese civil war as a Lost Boy, his 1,000‑mile exile to Ethiopia and Kenya, and his later life rebuilding in the United States.

An autobiographical account of an Afghan woman who became a refugee and rebuilt her life in the United States.

A compelling look at the rise and fall of the Fox sisters and the birth of Spiritualism in America, blending historical narrative with supernatural elements.

Evan Delaney investigates a cult in Wyoming when her ex‑sister‑in‑law joins its ranks, a mother seeks custody and disappearance with her son, and a murder threatens to pull her deeper into a deadly nightmare.