When her happy middle-class life in Afghanistan is shattered by the rise of the Taliban and her husband's murder by fundamentalists, former schoolteacher Fereiba embarks on a high-risk effort to escape to England with her three children.

For Maya, a young widow trying to escape her complicated past, teaching school in a secluded mountain village offers a promise of peace. As Maya finds out, however, no refuge is remote enough to keep out the modern world, or her own past. The community she has grown to love comes under attack when powerful outsiders hijack the local elections dividing the villagers. When Maya's landlord's charming nephew sets up shop nearby, Maya is drawn to him...

In 1982, a little upstart named Sun was making waves in the high-tech industry with its groundbreaking workstation technology, even as early competitors dismissed the company as not worth losing sleep over. Since then, Sun Microsystems has become a formidable presence in the industry, making its own rules and taking no prisoners, and is currently poised to reach the highest point of its ascendancy—the challenge of Microsoft's dominance over the...

Calcutta, 1886. Ottilie Russell is adrift between two cultures, British and Indian, belonging to both and neither. In order to support her little brother, Thaddeus, and her grandmother, she relies upon her skills in beetle-wing embroidery that have been passed down to her through generations of Indian women. When a stranger appears with the news that Thaddeus is now Baron Sunderson and must travel to England to take his place as a nobleman, Ottilie...

The term "sleeping dictionary" was coined for young Indian women who slept with British men and educated them in the ways of India. Set between 1925 and the end of World War II, The Sleeping Dictionary is the story of Kamala, born to a peasant family in West Bengal, who makes her way to Calcutta of the 1930s. Haunted by a forbidden love, she is caught between the raging independence movement and the British colonial society she finds herself inhabiting....

Soon to be a major motion picture from award-winning director Julian Schnabel, starring Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire) Written by the much-admired Italo-Palestinian journalist Rula Jebreal, Miral is a novel that focuses on remarkable women whose lives unfold in the turbulent political climate along the borders of Israel and Palestine. The story begins with Hind, a woman who sacrifices everything to establish a school for refugee Palestinian girls...

From internationally bestselling author Indu Sundaresan comes a heartrending tale of tragic love and clashing cultures in World War II India. In 1942, Sam Hawthorne, a young US Army captain, arrives in a tiny princely state in western India. He carries combat wounds and several secrets, one of which is the real reason behind his visit: to find his brother Mike, an idealistic American soldier who disappeared after joining the local struggle for independence...

This history of the world for young readers, published in 1921, won the first Newbery Medal for outstanding contribution to children's literature in 1922. Beginning with primitive man, Van Loon sets out to trace the various strands of civilization, from art to agriculture to religion, focusing on the importance of singular events and individuals.

The Palace of Illusions takes us back to a time that is half history, half myth, and wholly magical. It is told by Panchaali, wife of the Pandavas brothers, a fiery female redefining for us a world of warriors, gods, and the ever-manipulating hands of fate. The novel traces the princess Panchaali's life, beginning with her birth in fire and following her spirited balancing act as a woman with five husbands who have been cheated out of their father's...

In the spirit of Khaled Hosseini, Nadia Hashimi and Shilpi Somaya Gowda comes this powerful debut from a talented new voice, a sweeping, emotional journey of two childhood friends in Mumbai, India, whose lives converge only to change forever one fateful night. India, 1986: Mukta, a ten-year-old village girl from the lower caste Yellama cult has come of age and must fulfill her destiny of becoming a temple prostitute, as her mother and grandmother...