A timely synthesis of Shriver's expansive work, this collection of thirty-five works curated from her many columns, features, essays, and op-eds reveals a provocative, talented writer at her most assured.

"Ten months after her mother's death, the narrator of The Hero of This Book takes a trip to London. The city was a favorite of her mother's, and as the narrator wanders the streets, she finds herself reflecting on her mother's life and their relationship. Thoughts of the past meld with questions of the future: Back in New England, the family home is now up for sale, its considerable contents already winnowed. The narrator, a writer, recalls all that...

The Source of Self-Regard is brimming with all the elegance of mind and style, the literary prowess and moral compass that are Toni Morrison's inimitable hallmark. It is divided into three parts: the first is introduced by a powerful prayer for the dead of 9/11; the second by a searching meditation on Martin Luther King Jr., and the last by a heart-wrenching eulogy for James Baldwin. In the writings and speeches included here, Morrison takes on contested...

"A man-- the traveler-- arrives in the seaside town of S. Thala with the intent to abandon his present, and instead finds himself abruptly reintroduced to his past. Through his subsequent interactions with 'her, ' the woman to whom he was briefly engaged as a young man over twenty years ago, and 'him, ' the man who walks and keeps watch over 'her, ' the traveler is soon drawn back in and acclimated to the strange timelessness and company that is S....

Celebrates 48 female writers from throughout history and across the world (most underappreciated, and some who are celebrated internationally as pillars of world literature). They include Aemilia Lanyer, a contemporary of Shakespeare, whose polemical re-writing of The Bible's Passion Story is regarded as one of the earliest feminist works of literature; Sarojini Naidu, a freedom fighter and the 'Nightingale of India,' whose poetry echoed Indian independence;...

A writer discovers the truth about her past in this haunting and multi-layered thriller.

A "Brothers Grimm tale for the contemporary reader"--School Library Journal. Sixteen short stories of myth and hagiography, of the lives of women untold and unexplored. -- adapted from jacket