The twelve central characters of this multi-voiced novel lead vastly different lives: Amma is a newly acclaimed playwright whose work often explores her black lesbian identity; her old friend Shirley is a teacher, jaded after decades of work in London's funding-deprived schools; Carole, one of Shirley's former students, works hard to earn a degree from Oxford and becomes an investment banker; Carole's mother Bummi works as a cleaner and worries about...

Sara Crewe looks like a little princess - that's what her schoolmates say when Sara's rich father brings her to Miss Minchin's Select Seminary for girls. Yet when Sara's fortunes vanish and she must live as a servent in a cold attic room, she proves that being a real princess takes heart, hope, and perhaps a little magic.

A young man newly rich tries to recapture the past and win back his former love, despite the fact that she has married.

Two women--one American, the other Irish-- trade houses for the summer and the resulting change of scenery helps them remake their lives. The American is Marilyn of Connecticut, mourning the death of her son, the Irish woman is Ria of Dublin, a mother of two, whose husband had an affair and made the woman pregnant. By the author of The Glass Lake.

Henry D. Thoreau (1817–62) was an American author, naturalist, poet, and philosopher. He wrote many essays and books, including Civil Disobedience, Walking, and The Maine Woods, among others. John Updike (1932–2009) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, short story writer, and poet. One of the most influential and compelling books in American literature, Walden is a vivid account of the years that Henry D. Thoreau spent alone in a secluded...

"A single twist of fate puts a servant girl to work in Queen Victoria's royal kitchen, setting off a suspenseful, historical mystery ... Isabella Waverly only means to comfort the woman felled on a London street. In her final dying moments, she thrusts a letter into Bella's hand. It's an offer of employment in the kitchens of Buckingham Palace, and everything the budding young chef desperately wants: an escape from the constrictions of her life as...