"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"--

"A spellbinding debut novel about the trailblazing Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad, who defied society's expectations to find her voice and her destiny. "Remember the flight, for the bird is mortal." All through her childhood in Tehran, Forugh Farrokhzad is told that Persian daughters should be quiet and modest. She is taught only to obey, but she always finds ways to rebel, gossiping with her sister among the fragrant roses of her mother's walled...

"Zoli Novotna, a young woman raised in the traveling gypsy tradition, is a poet ... As fascism spreads over 1930s Czechoslovakia, Zoli and her grandfather flee to join a clan of fellow Romani harpists. Sharpened and inspired by reading books, which are frowned upon in the Romani tradition, Zoli becomes the symbol of a supposed brave new world of tolerance in the Soviet Union. But as Zoli's fame grows and her poetic skills deepen, the ruling Communists...

"Manuela Beltrán, a poet haunted by a troubled childhood, is bent on revenge for the wrongs she suffered at the hands of her mother's lover. Her vendetta will draw together a cast of enigmatic characters, the inhabitants of Gamboa's 'dark valley.' There is Tertullian, an Argentine who claims to be the Pope's son, ready to consort to extreme methods to create a harmonious society. There is Ferdinand Palacios, a Colombian priest with a dark paramilitary...

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.