Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose...

Step into the charming world of "Cranford" by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell. This delightful novel invites you to a quaint English village, where the lives of its eccentric and endearing inhabitants are interwoven in a tapestry of humor, heartwarming moments, and social observations. Set in the early 19th century, the narrative unfolds through the eyes of Mary Smith, an outsider welcomed into the close-knit community. As she navigates the idiosyncrasies...

Virginia Woolf's "Night and Day" offers a fascinating glimpse into Edwardian England, where the lives of two women-Katharine Hilbery and Mary Datchet-serve as the focal point for exploring issues of love, marriage, gender roles, and intellectual ambition. Katharine, born into a privileged family, is caught between the traditional expectations of society and her own intellectual pursuits, while Mary, an independent suffragette, embodies the changing...

In nineteenth-century China, in a remote Hunan county, a girl named Lily, at the tender age of seven, is paired with a laotong, "old same," in an emotional match that will last a lifetime. The laotong, Snow Flower, introduces herself by sending Lily a silk fan on which she's painted a poem in nu shu, a unique language that Chinese women created in order to communicate in secret, away from the influence of men. As the years pass, Lily and Snow Flower...

"The Handmaids Tale is a novel of such power that the reader will be unable to forget its images and its forecast. Set in the near future, it describes life in what was once the United States and is now called the Republic of Gilead, a monotheocracy that has reacted to social unrest and a sharply declining birthrate by reverting to, and going beyond, the repressive intolerance of the original Puritans. The regime takes the Book of Genesis absolutely...

"For years, rumors of the 'Marsh Girl' have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. She's barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark. But Kya is not what they say. Abandoned at age ten, she has survived on her own in the marsh that she calls home. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life lessons from the...

The novel follows the lives of eight Vassar graduates, known simply to their classmates as "the group." An eclectic mix of personalities and upbringings, they meet a week after graduation to watch Kay Strong, the first of the group, be married. After the ceremony, the women begin their adult lives--traveling to Europe, tackling the world of nursing and publishing, and finding love and heartbreak in the streets of New York City. Through the years,...

Born into poverty in a small desert town in the American Midwest, Thea Kronborg is one of seven children. But Thea is exceptional, a fact recognized by a discerning few, including Ray Kennedy, who longs to marry her but whose fate it is to set her free. With her rugged will and pioneer spirit, Thea carves her way from Moonstone, Colorado to Chicago, from Dresden to New York, culminating in a triumphant debut at the Metropolitan Opera. Thea has become...

Brown Girl, Brownstones, tells the story of a young Barbadian American caught between the ambitious dreams of her forward-looking mother and the rose-tinted nostalgia of her father. While Selina's mother strives diligently to save enough money to buy a brownstone in Brooklyn, her father dreams only of returning to his home in Barbados. Managing a constellation of difficult family and cultural dynamics, Selina is also faced with navigating the complex...

The Pulitzer Prize– and National Book Award–winning novel is now a new, boldly reimagined film from producers Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg, starring Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks, and Fantasia Barrino.
A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick
Celie has grown up poor in rural Georgia, despised by the society around her and abused by her own family. She strives to protect her sister, Nettie, from a similar...