Linda Fallon travels to a literary festival to give a reading from her latest work, but while she is there she encounters her former lover, Thomas James, and together, the couple share memories of their past affair.

"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"-- Provided by publisher.

When struggling novelist James Hernandez meets poet Louisa Lou Bell, he's sure he's just found the love of his life. There's just one problem: she's engaged to his oldest friend, Rob. So James toasts their union and swallows his desire. As the years pass, James's dreams always seem just out of reach--he can't finish that novel, can't mend his relationship with his father, can't fully commit to a romantic relationship. He just can't move on. But after...

In the far north of Italy lies the valley of the ice-cream makers: about a dozen villages where, for generations, people have specialised in making ice cream. Giuseppe Talamini claims it was actually invented here. Every spring his family sets off for theice-cream parlour in Rotterdam, returning to the mountains only in winter. Eldest son Giovanni Talamini decides to break with this tradition by pursuing a literary career. But then one day his younger...

This collection presents characters in the midst of personal and national crises. We meet a failed poet who, envious of other people's wealth during the real-estate bubble, becomes an embezzler; a clavichordist whose dreams of art collapse under the obligations of marriage and fatherhood; and, in "Bronze," a sexually confused college freshman whose encounter with a stranger on a train leads to a revelation about his past and his future.

"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...

"From the author of Star-Crossed...Behind every great love song is a great love story. It's been seven years and Diana is finally ready to marry her long-time fiancé, Arie; she's even composing a beautiful love song for him, working on it in hotels and concert halls as she criss-crosses the world as a classical pianist. Before she can finish it, though, tragedy strikes--and Diana is lost to Arie forever. But her song might not be... In Australia,...

"It's the end of summer, 2003. George W. Bush has recently declared the mission in Iraq accomplished and the unemployment rate is at its highest level in years. Meanwhile, somewhere in the Midwest, Troy Augustus Loudermilk (fair-haired, statuesque, charismatic) and his companion Harry Rego (definitely none of those things) step out of a silver Land Cruiser and onto the campus of The Seminars, America's most prestigious creative writing program, to...

Ahmad is a ten-year-old boy living in a small Iranian village. On the day of his sister's wedding and his father's death, Ahmad is struck silent from that day forward, communicating by mouthing words and writing in a notebook. After his father dies, Ahamd's seemingly centuries-old great-great-great-great grandfather tells him about a legendary curse that befalls every other son in the family line. Ahmad's grandfather Khan alternately ignores the stories...

When Laura, an unwed seamstress struggling to support her daughter in 1920s upstate New York, works with bohemian poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, a complex friendship develops amid growing public scrutiny and small-town gossip. --Provided by publisher.