"When her family becomes impoverished after a disastrous financial speculation, Agnes Gray determines to find work as a governess in order to contribute to their meager income and assert her independence. But Agnes' enthusiasm is swiftly extinguished as she struggles first with the unmanageable Bloomfield children and then with the painful disdain of the haughty Murray family; the only kindness she receives comes from Mr Weston, the sober young curate....

Twelve-year-old Francie grows up in 1930s Harlem.

"Weaving together ghost stories, myths, and song, this haunting novel follows a young bride as she leaves her life in India behind to move to Nepal with her new husband and his family, examining the loss she experiences as she gives up one home to become part of another."--

"The world is suffering an infertility crisis, the last natural birth was over twenty years ago and now the only way to conceive is through a painful fertility treatment. Any children born are strictly monitored, and if you are deemed an unfit parent then your child is extracted. After witnessing so many struggling to conceive - and then keep - their babies, Kit thought she didn't want children. But then she meets Thomas and they have a baby girl,...

"Born from the obsessive and highly idiosyncratic mind of a cult figure of the Japanese underground, these stories borrow themes and subjects familiar to readers of Philip K. Dick and fuses them with a conflicted, tortured, and intense imagination"--

"The Living Is Easy, Dorothy West's first novel and one of only a handful of novels published by women during the Harlem Renaissance, tells the story of Cleo Judson, daughter of Southern sharecroppers, who is determined to integrate into Boston's black elite. Married to the "Black Banana King" Bart Judson, Cleo maneuvers her three sisters and their children-but not their husbands-into living with her, attempting to recreate her original family in...

"Written by Sharon Blackie, these twelve, beautifully written stories are original for modern readers, but based on existing folklore and fairy tales. They all focus on women who have the ability to transform themselves, or who have been transformed or enchanted - who have the ability to shape-shift, to renew themselves, to cross over from one element to another - from land to water, this world and the Otherworld, woman-kind to wild creature. Blackie,...

Meet Akhila: forty-five and single, an income-tax clerk, and a woman who has never been allowed to live her own life - always the daughter, the sister, the aunt, the provider - until the day she gets herself a one-way ticket to the seaside town of Kanyakumari. In the intimate atmosphere of the all-women sleeping car - the 'Ladies Coupe' - Akhila asks the five women the question that has been haunting her all her adult life: can a woman stay single...

"Her Infinite Variety" spins the rollicking tale of the devilish yet wholly beguiling Clara Hoyt through the tumultuous, heady times of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. From the time she enthralls the first of her husbands, Clara charts a wildly entertaining course to the inner sanctum of New York's aristocracy and to the boardrooms of the publishing world.

"Phaedra has been cast to the side all her life: daughter of an adulteress, sister of a monster, and now unwilling bride to the much-older, power-hungry Theseus. Young, naïve, and idealistic, she has accepted her lot in life, resigned to existing under the sinister weight of Theseus's control and the constant watchful eye of her handsome stepson Hippolytus. When supposedly pious Hippolytus assaults her, Phaedra's world is darkened in the face of...