Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Her life story is told in the documentary film And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS’s American Masters. Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age—and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors (“I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare”) will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned. Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read.

The year is 1969. In the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India, a skyblue Plymouth with chrome tailfins is stranded on the highway amid a Marxist workers' demonstration. Inside the car sit two-egg twins Rahel and Esthappen, and so begins their tale. . . . Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, they fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family—their lonely, lovely mother, Ammu (who loves by night the man her children love by day), their blind grandmother, Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), their enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt), and the ghost of an imperial entomologist's moth (with unusually dense dorsal tufts). When their English cousin, Sophie Mol, and her mother, Margaret Kochamma, arrive on a Christmas visit, Esthappen and Rahel learn that Things Can Change in a Day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever, beside their river "graygreen." With fish in it. With the sky and trees in it. And at night, the broken yellow moon in it. The brilliantly plotted story uncoils with an agonizing sense of foreboding and inevitability. Yet nothing prepares you for what lies at the heart of it. The God of Small Things takes on the Big Themes—Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite Joy. Here is a writer who dares to break the rules. To dislocate received rhythms and create the language she requires, a language that is at once classical and unprecedented. Arundhati Roy has given us a book that is anchored to anguish, but fueled by wit and magic.

From the author of The Kiss Countdown comes a charming holiday novella about a Type A lawyer, a rigorous to-do list, and the man determined to unwrap her heart.After a string of heartbreaks, all Eve Matthews wants this year is a quiet holiday with her pregnant sister. But when early labor changes everything, so must Eve’s plans. While her sister cares for her newborns in the hospital, Eve will stay behind to finish the nursery, decorate the house, and create the perfect holiday homecoming—because if she can’t control life’s disappointments, she can at least control Christmas.There’s just one Grant Simmons. Her brother-in-law’s infuriatingly charming brother…and the man whose peppermint-flavored kiss she’s never forgotten. She pushed him away once to protect her heart, and now he’s back—claiming he only wants to help his brother’s growing family by helping her.It starts with stolen pie and ends with him taking up more space in her holiday, and her life, than she ever planned. Between tangled lights, flour fights, and laughter she thought she’d lost, Eve realizes what Grant really wants is a place in her heart, and that maybe the best Christmas moments aren’t on any checklist.Still, opening her heart means risking it all. Can Eve let go of her need for control, or will fear keep her from the one gift she needs most this Christmas?