First serialized in 1907 and then published as a book in 1908, Mary Roberts Rinehart's "The Circular Staircase" is the popular mystery story about the dowager Rachel Innes as she reveals and prevents a series of strange crimes at the home she has rented for the summer. "The Circular Staircase" was Rinehart's first bestseller and was the originator of the popular "had I but known" genre of mystery writing, where the main character narrates the tale...

Paige has only a few memories of her mother, who abandoned her at five. She dreams of art school, marries a doctor-- and becomes a mother herself. But her mother's absence has made her doubt both her ability to give, and her own self-worth.

“BALTIMORE WOMAN DISAPPEARS DURING FAMILY VACATION.” The headlines are all the same: Beloved mother and wife Delia Grinstead was last seen strolling down the Delaware shore, wearing only a bathing suit and carrying a beach tote with five hundred dollars tucked inside. To the best of her family’s knowledge, she has disappeared without a trace. But Delia didn’t disappear. She ran. Exhausted with her routine and everyone else’s plans for her,...

T.S. Garp, a man with high ambitions for an artistic career and with obsessive devotion to his wife and children, and Jenny Fields, his famous feminist mother, find their lives surrounded by an assortment of people, including teachers, whores, and radicals.

Stories about women for women. The collection is divided into such categories as Initiation and Righteous Rage. The stories range from rape and murder, to women using brains and guile to have their way with men.

1944, Rome. Newlywed Niki Novotǹ is recruited by a new American spy agency to establish a secret branch in Italy's capital. One of the OSS's few female operatives abroad and multilingual, she's tasked with crafting fake stories and distributing propaganda to lower the morale of enemy soldiers. Despite limited resources, Niki and a scrappy team of artists, forgers and others--now nicknamed The Lipstick Bureau--find success, forming a bond amid the...

Rae Perry is young, unmarried, and far from home as she awaits the birth of her first child -- accompanied by the angry, moody man she's loved since high school. Lila Grey is a fortune-teller with no interest in the future, a mother who lost her daughter long ago, on a cold, cold day. Now, as these two women meet, it is earthquake weather in California -- when animals panic, friends and lovers quarrel, ice cubes dissolve in the palm of your hand....

The compelling, hidden story of Cathy Williams, a former slave and the first woman to ever serve in the US Army. "Here's the first thing you need to know about Miss Cathy Williams: I am the daughter of a daughter of a queen and my Mama never let me forget it." Cathy Williams was born and lived a slave until the Union army came and destroyed the only world she had ever known. Separated from her family, she makes the impossible decision: to fight with...