The tales of one family and their larger-than-many-lives sister, Antoine, weaves together the vibrant, epic story of Guadaloupe and its diaspora.A young woman born in the suburbs of Paris—whose skin color and memories of occasional childhood visits alone connect her to her father’s native Guadeloupe—yearns to understand her lineage and her métis identity. Upon her request, her old aunt Antoine, the eccentric and indomitable family matriarch, unveils the history of ...

**A ballerina at the height of her powers becomes consumed with finding her missing brother in this “striking debut” (Oprah Daily).“A compelling novel about the spiritual and bodily costs of the dogged pursuit of art.”—Raven Leilani, author of Luster**LONGLISTED FOR THE CAROL SHIELDS PRIZE FOR FICTION • LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/HEMINGWAY AWARDAt twenty-two years old, Cece Cordell reaches the pinnacle of her career as a ballet dancer ...

Mary Gray Phelps was born on 31st August 1844 in Boston, Massachusetts.Her mother, who wrote the Kitty Brown children’s book series, died when she was only 8. The young girl asked to be renamed in honor of her mother.Two years later her father married her mother's sister, Mary Stuart, also a writer, but she died of tuberculosis only 18 months later. A mere six months later he married for a third time to Mary Ann Johnson, and they had two sons.Phelps received an uppe...

An author’s talents may seem obvious and indisputable as they move words and ideas into gathered phrases and stories.But where do these ideas and stories come from? A lonely thought that suddenly gathers form? An inspiration from a Muse? A suggestion from an everyday event?Perhaps in the case of their darker, more malevolent stories, other forces are at work. They help to nourish single words into sentences and paragraphs that ease themselves from the shadows and are sudden...

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was born free on 24th September 1825 in Baltimore, Maryland which, at that time, was still a slave state.By age 3 Frances had been orphaned and thereafter raised by her maternal aunt and uncle who also gave her her surname; Watkins.At 13 she was working as a seamstress and then as a nursemaid for a white family that owned a bookshop. Here any spare time was used to read books in the shop and work on her own writing which from 1839 included piece...

An author’s talents may seem obvious and indisputable as they move words and ideas into gathered phrases and stories.But where do these ideas and stories come from? A lonely thought that suddenly gathers form? An inspiration from a Muse? A suggestion from an everyday event?Perhaps in the case of their darker, more malevolent stories, other forces are at work. They help to nourish single words into sentences and paragraphs that ease themselves from the shadows and are sudden...

Alfred Damon Runyan was born on 4th October 1880, in Manhattan, Kansas.When Runyon was two his father was forced to sell his newspaper and the family moved eventually settling in Pueblo, Colorado where Runyon spent his youth.By most accounts, he attended school only through the fourth grade and then worked for his father in the newspaper trade.In 1898 Runyon enlisted in the U.S. Army to fight in the Spanish–American War. After his service he returned to Colorado and...

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society.In literature the ambition is much narrower. In order to be known, to be popular, you had to be published. And for that people had to know you existed and your ideas worth reading. Obviously for most of humanity’s time people couldn’t read and texts couldn’t be publishe...

An author’s talents may seem obvious and indisputable as they move words and ideas into gathered phrases and stories.But where do these ideas and stories come from? A lonely thought that suddenly gathers form? An inspiration from a Muse? A suggestion from an everyday event?Perhaps in the case of their darker, more malevolent stories, other forces are at work. They help to nourish single words into sentences and paragraphs that ease themselves from the shadows and are sudden...