Nothing Grows by Moonlight ( Av måneskinn gror det ingenting ), first published in Norway in 1947, is sure to be talked about. It is a moving novel of love, betrayal, search, and sorrow that introduces a major twentieth-century Norwegian writer, Torborg Nedreaas, to an English-speaking audience. Under the surface of a dramatic story rich in atmosphere lurk social themes that will be of particular interest to American and British readers. At the beginning, a man picks up a woman in a railway station. "It is really very difficult to say what it was that made me notice her. It was probably many things, my own mood, the weather, the emptiness of that particular day." It turns out that she simply wants, desperately needs, someone to talk to. He listens to her story, spellbound, and from that night he is haunted forever by the clear, honest revelation of a broken soul—as the reader will be. The woman describes her hopeless involvement with her teacher and lover, who continues to see her, always to reject her, long after he is married. Obsessively, she returns to situations in which she is abused. Finally, in confronting her past without self-pity, without denying personal responsibility, she realizes how much her self-destructive behavior owes to a capitalistic and patriarchal system that forces women into roles that make them emotionally and economically dependent. A powerful subthemes of Nothing Grows by Moonlight concerns abortion, which Nedreaas sees not as a crime to be punished but as a tragedy that would not be necessary in a more equitable and caring society. But what finally lingers in the reader’s mind is the fully developed image of a woman, buffeted by life, coming to terms with God and man.

The Woman in Me is a brave and astonishingly moving story about freedom, fame, motherhood, survival, faith, and hope. In June 2021, the whole world was listening as Britney Spears spoke in open court. The impact of sharing her voice—her truth—was undeniable, and it changed the course of her life and the lives of countless others. The Woman in Me reveals for the first time her incredible journey—and the strength at the core of one of the greatest performers in pop music history. Written with remarkable candor and humor, Spears’s groundbreaking book illuminates the enduring power of music and love—and the importance of a woman telling her own story, on her own terms, at last.

A bittersweet story of love between two women, nested in an artful exploration of language, history, and power May 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She’s been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no interest in their official banquets or imperialist agenda. Instead, Chizuko longs to experience real island life and to taste as much of its authentic cuisine as her famously monstrous appetite can bear. Soon a Taiwanese woman―who is younger even than she is, and who shares the characters of her name―is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. The charming, erudite, meticulous Chizuru arranges Chizuko’s travels all over the Land of the South and also proves to be an exceptional cook. Over scenic train rides and braised pork rice, lively banter and winter melon tea, Chizuko grows infatuated with her companion and intent on drawing her closer. But something causes Chizuru to keep her distance. It’s only after a heartbreaking separation that Chizuko begins to grasp what the “something” is. Disguised as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese writer, this novel was a sensation on its first publication in Mandarin Chinese in 2020 and won Taiwan’s highest literary honor, the Golden Tripod Award. Taiwan Travelogue unburies lost colonial histories and deftly reveals how power dynamics inflect our most intimate relationships.

Rose and Solange are lifelong friends, growing up together in 1980s France. Their paths are intertwined, yet they enter adulthood on radically different Rose, who prizes stability above all else, studies psychology and marries her first love, Christian; Solange has numerous affairs, becomes pregnant at fifteen, gives birth to a baby boy, and pursues an acting career. Each tries to find her own happiness, her own sense of meaning, while navigating a world which seeks to establish binary ideas of what a woman can be. How to Make a Woman is a bold, sometimes brutal, coming-of-age novel from the award-winning novelist Marie Darrieussecq.

This picture book about friendship and sign language, originally published in the Philippines in concert with nonprofit Room to Read, is revised for this global edition.  Our new neighbors’ hands are dancing. Their hands move as if to music. What are they saying to each other?   Sam’s new neighbors’ hands make graceful movements she doesn’t recognize, and she wonders what they are saying. Soon she meets her new neighbor, Mai, who teaches Sam some Filipino Sign Language. Along the way, they both discover the joys of making a new friend, a best friend.

A gorgeous memoir about the sudden end to a seemingly happy marriage—an aching, love-filled, and transcendent account of surviving betrayal and discovering joyOn a chilly day in early spring, Belle Burden’s husband of twenty years announced, with no prior warning, that he was leaving her. Belle was shocked; he had always been a committed partner and a devoted father to their three children. She thought they were in love. She thought he—they—were living the life they'd always professional success, summers at their beloved beachside home, a vibrant social life. But overnight, her caring, steady husband became a man she hardly recognized. He exited his life with her like an actor shrugging off a costume.In Strangers, Belle revisits her marriage, searching for clues that her husband was not who she always thought he was. As she examines her relationship through a new lens, she reckons with her own family history and the lessons she intuited about how a woman is expected to behave in the face of betrayal. Through all of it, she is transformed. The discreet, compliant woman she once was—someone whose nickname was “Belle the Good”—gives way to someone braver, someone determined to use her voice.With unflinching honesty and profound grace, Burden charts a path through heartbreak to show the power of a woman who refuses to give up on love and rediscovers trust in herself. Strangers is a stunning, deeply moving, compulsively readable memoir heralding the arrival of a thrilling new literary talent.

After losing her country and mistress in the invasion of the Mongol empire, Fatima has leveraged her education to become a lady-in-waiting to Sorghaghtani Beki in the Mongols’ imperial court. Dispatched to infiltrate a rival court as her new mistress’s spy, Fatima encounters Töregene, one of the wives of emperor Ögedei Khaan. The two women, bound together by a shared desire for revenge against the Mongols, vow to work together. Before long, they’ll call a storm that radically shifts the power balance of the mightiest empire in the world…

Sitara spent her youth in the service of a scholarly household, where she was treated like family—the best life a slave like her could hope for in 13th century Iran. Then the Mongol invasions ripped it all away. Her home was burnt. Her beloved mistress was killed before her eyes. And she was dragged into the strange and unknown steppes… But Sitara adapts fast. Adopting her mistresses name, “Fatima,” she has used her education to become a vital asset in the Mongol court…where she bides her time for revenge. Has the hour come at last, now that Genghis Khan has died?