Part thriller, part historical novel, The Birds Fall Down takes readers inside the intrigue of revolutionaries preparing to overthrow an empire. During early revolutionary stirrings in Russia, after an unexpected turn of events, Laura Rowan, the coddled granddaughter of an exiled British nobleman, becomes her grandfather's sole companion on a fateful train ride. In France, a young revolutionary approaches Laura and her grandfather with information...

Born in the 1890s on opposite sides of the Atlantic, friends for over forty years, Dorothy Thompson and Rebecca West lived parallel lives that placed them at the center of the social and historical upheavals of the twentieth century. Here, biographer Susan Hertog chronicles the separate but intertwined journeys of these two writers, who achieved unprecedented fame and influence at tremendous personal cost. American Dorothy Thompson was the first female...

The ten brilliant women who are the focus of Sharp came from different backgrounds and had vastly divergent political and artistic opinions. But they all made a significant contribution to the cultural and intellectual history of America and ultimately changed the course of the twentieth century, in spite of the men who often undervalued or dismissed their work. These ten women--Dorothy Parker, Rebecca West, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, Susan Sontag,...