"A contemporary story about the insular world of writers, centering on a notable female poet and the young woman to whom she reveals her long-guarded secret about a famous manuscript"--

In Three Pines Chief Inspector Armand Gamache investigates the disappearance of a woman who was once one of the most famous people in the world and now goes unrecognized by virtually everyone except the mad, brilliant poet Ruth Zardo.

When struggling novelist James Hernandez meets poet Louisa Lou Bell, he's sure he's just found the love of his life. There's just one problem: she's engaged to his oldest friend, Rob. So James toasts their union and swallows his desire. As the years pass, James's dreams always seem just out of reach--he can't finish that novel, can't mend his relationship with his father, can't fully commit to a romantic relationship. He just can't move on. But after...

"With the publication of her first book of poems, at the age of sixty-three, Amy Clampitt rose meteorically to fame, launching herself from obscurity to the upper ranks of American poetry all but overnight, and living a whirlwind eleven years until her death in 1994. Here we have the first full-length study of this patron saint of late bloomers-of her poetry, and of the lifetime it took her to find the true form for her words. "For the ocean, nothing...

"Although she is told that daughters should be quiet and modest, Forugh Farrokhzad finds ways to rebel--gossiping with her sister in the rose garden, composing poems behing her closed bedroom door, sneaking out with a teenage paramour. As a young woman in the 1950s, Forugh flees her forced marriage, returns to Tehran, and falls into a love affair. When her newfound freedom finds its voice on the page, her published poems--brilliant and utterly scandalous--polarize...

Disguising herself as a man to escape her loveless marriage and enjoy the exclusive freedoms of men, aspiring writer Aemilia Lanier falls in love and runs away with ragged poet William Shakespeare, with whom she secretly writes plays that bring him fame years later.

"Elsie is a sexy, funny, and fiercely independent woman in south London. But, at just twenty-eight, she is also tired. Though she spends her days writing tender poetry in her journal, her nights are spent working long hours for minimum wage at a neighborhood dive bar. Not even sleeping with her alluring coworker, Bea, can quell her existential dread. The difficulty of being estranged from her family, struggle of being continually rejected from jobs,...

"Life, like a poem, is a series of choices." In her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman's personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist...

"Growing up with a mother suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and a mostly absent father, Nikki Grimes found herself terrorized by babysitters, shunted from foster family to foster family, and preyed upon by those she trusted. At the age of six, she poured her pain onto a piece of paper late one night - and discovered the magic and impact of writing. For many years, Nikki's notebooks were her most enduing companions. In this accessible and inspiring...

Struggling to support her family in mid-19th-century New York, writer Frances Osgood makes an unexpected connection with literary master Edgar Allan Poe and finds her survival complicated by her intense attraction to the writer and the scheming manipulations of his wife.