Excerpt from The Last Days of California by Mary Miller, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

He paid with cash, counting out the bills carefully and probably leaving a bad tip, and led me to the door with a warm hand on my back. "My girl," he said, patting. Whenever he put a hand on my body, it went up and down and up and down like it was difficult for him to touch me for more than a second at a time.

Excerpted from The Last Days of California: A Novel by Mary Miller. Copyright © 2014 by Mary Miller. With permission of the publisher, Liveright Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.