An unflinching, inspirational, and incredibly moving novel based on the true story of Enaiatollah Akbari, a young boy whose agonizing struggle begins after his native Afghanistan becomes a dangerous place to live. His mother shepherds him across the border into Pakistan but has to leave him there to fend for himself.

"When the British Empire sets its sights on India in the mid-nineteenth century, it expects a quick and easy conquest ... But when they arrive in the Kingdom of Jhansi, the British army is met with a surprising challenge. Instead of surrendering, Queen Lakshmi raises two armies--one male and one female--and rides into battle, determined to protect her country and her people. Although her soldiers may not appear at first to be formidable against superior...

"It has been more than thirty-five years since Renata Adler's Speedboat, Winner of the Ernest Hemingway Award for Best First Novel, charged through the literary establishment, blasting genre walls and pointing the way for a newly liberated way of writing. This unclassifiable work is simultaneously novel, memoir, commonplace book, confession, and critique. It is the story of every man and woman cursed with too much consciousness and too little comprehension,...

Edward Dickens, the tenth child of author Charles Dickens, has consistently let down his parents. Unable to apply himself at school and adrift in life, the teenaged boy is sent to Australia in the hopes that he can make something of himself - or at least fall out of the public eye. Determined to prove to his parents and more importantly, himself, that he can succeed in this vast and unfamiliar wilderness, Edward works hard at his new life amidst various...

"In the depths of war, she would defy the odds to help liberate a nation...A gripping historical novel based on a remarkable true story of World War II heroine Virginia Hall, from the bestselling author of Hemingway's Girl. France, March 1944. Virginia Hall wasn't like the other young society women back home in Baltimore-she never wanted the debutante ball or silk gloves. Instead, she traded a safe life for adventure in Europe, and when her beloved...

"This indelible romance begins with a daring conceit--that the author's grandfather may have had an affair with Lucille Ball. Strauss offers a fresh view of a celebrity America loved more than any other. Lucille Ball--the most powerful woman in the history of Hollywood--starred in America's first big-time interracial marriage. She owned more movie sets than did any movie studio. And she more or less single-handedly created the modern tv business....

"In 1940, art-world icon Georgia O'Keeffe bought a house in a mountain-rimmed New Mexico desert, planning to live there for six months every year. To manage her remote household while she paints, O'Keeffe invited Maria Chabot-a young and naïve would-be writer-to join her. Their tempestuous relationship endured throughout the chaotic years of WW2; the death of Georgia's domineering, philandering husband (famed photographer Alfred Stieglitz); and...

In one of the most momentous events of the Cold War, Svetlana Alliluyeva, the only daughter of the Soviet despot Joseph Stalin, abruptly abandoned her life in Moscow in 1967, arriving in New York to throngs of reporters and a nation hungry to hear her story. By her side is Peter Horvath, a young lawyer sent by the CIA to smuggle Svetlana into America. She is a contradictory celebrity: charismatic and headstrong, lonely and haunted, excited and alienated...

"Socialite Edith Bolling has been in no hurry to find a new husband since she was widowed, preferring to fill her days with good friends and travel. But the enchanting courting of President Woodrow Wilson wins Edith over and she becomes the First Lady of the United States. The position is uncomfortable for the fiercely independent Edith, but she's determined to rise to the challenges of her new marriage--from the bloodthirsty press to the shadows...

"In 1916, during the early days of the Great Migration, Celia Coleman and Lucy Grimes flee the racism and poverty of their homes in the post-Civil War South for the "Promised Land" of Vauxhall, New Jersey. But the North possesses its own challenges and bigotries that will shape the fates of the women and their families over the next seventy years. Told through the voices of nine family members--their perspectives at once harmonious and contradictory--Coleman...