Marcos Rivas is desperate to escape the projects, his neglectful mother, and her abusive boyfriend, but when he is picked for a class at his high school targeting smart students who are underperforming, he initially resists.

This lush romantic drama depicts a family of cigar makers whose loves and lives are played out against the backdrop of America in the midst of the Depression. Set in Ybor City (Tampa) in 1930, Cruz imagines the catalytic effect the arrival of a new "lector" (who reads Tolstoy's Anna Karenina to the workers as they toil in the cigar factory) has on a Cuban-American family. Cruz celebrates the search for identity in a new land.

"A man gets himself into a little bit of trouble, then a little bit more, then a lot. And then his whole world becomes a nightmare. How does he get himself out of this mess of his own creation? The answer involves the end of an extramarital affair, reconciliation with a daughter he has neglected, and a deadly encounter with a man who comes out of the past bearing bad news and the keys to a new life. Set in Tampa, Florida, in the late 1980s, Suitcase...

"Cyl Waterford hates Tampa. That she's inherited a lighthouse there does little to change her mind. Of course, she's going to sell as soon as she can and return to Colorado. If there are rumors the lighthouse is haunted, that's something future buyers will need to investigate. Cyl doesn't believe in ghosts anyway. When her deceased aunt's friends Luna and Martinique convince Cyl to have a séance in the lighthouse, everything she thought she knew...