A call to arms against our era's most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women in the developing world. With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake a journey through Africa and Asia to meet an extraordinary array of women...  more

A call to arms against our era's most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women in the developing world. With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake a journey through Africa and Asia to meet an extraordinary array of women struggling under profoundly dire circumstances: a Cambodian teenager sold into sexual slavery, an Ethiopian woman left for dead after a difficult birth, an Afghan wife beaten ruthlessly by her husband and mother-in-law. But we meet, as well, those who have triumphed: a formerly illiterate fistula patient who became a surgeon in Addis Ababa, an Indian woman who saved herself and her children from prostitution. And those who make it their work to provide hope and help to other women: the victim of gang rape who galvanized the international community and created schools in rural Pakistan, the former Peace Corps volunteer who founded an organization that educates and campaigns for women's rights in Senegal. Through their stories, Kristof and WuDunn help us see that the key to progress lies in unleashing women's potential, and they make clear how each of us can help make that happen.  Fiercely moral, pragmatic, and inspirational, Half the Sky is essential reading for every global citizen.

Paul Iverson's life changes in an instant. He returns home one day to find his wife, Lexy, has died under strange circumstances. The only witness was their dog, Lorelei, whose anguished bark brought help to the scene -- but too late. In the days and weeks that follow, Paul begins to notice...  more

Paul Iverson's life changes in an instant. He returns home one day to find his wife, Lexy, has died under strange circumstances. The only witness was their dog, Lorelei, whose anguished bark brought help to the scene -- but too late. In the days and weeks that follow, Paul begins to notice strange "clues" in their home: books rearranged on their shelves, a mysterious phone call, and other suggestions that nothing about Lexy's last afternoon was quite what it seemed. Reeling from grief, Paul is determined to decipher evidence and unlock the mysteries of her death. But he can't do it alone; he needs Lorelei's help. A linguist by training, Paul embarks on an impossible endeavor: a series of experiments to teach Lorelei to communicate what she knows. Perhaps behind her wise and earnest eyes lies a key to what really happened to the woman he loved. As Paul's investigation leads him in an unexpected and even perilous directions, he revisits the pivotal moments of his life with Lexy, the brillant, enigmatic woman whose sparkling passion for life and dark, troubled past he embraced equally. Written with a quiet elegance and profound knowledge of love's hidden places, Babel is a novel of astonishing and lasting power -- a story of marriage, survival, and devotion that lies too deep for words.

Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step... Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy until Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would...  more

Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step... Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy until Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone. Aibileen is a black maid,  a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken. Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and maybe the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue,  so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own. Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed. In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women-mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends-view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by and the ones we don't.

Twenty years ago, Allie Denty was the pretty one and her best friend Olivia Pelham was the smart one. Throughout high school, they were inseparable--until a vicious rumor about Olivia--a rumor too close to the truth--ended their friendship. Now, on the eve of their twentieth high school...  more

Twenty years ago, Allie Denty was the pretty one and her best friend Olivia Pelham was the smart one. Throughout high school, they were inseparable--until a vicious rumor about Olivia--a rumor too close to the truth--ended their friendship. Now, on the eve of their twentieth high school reunion, Allie, a temp worker, finds herself suddenly single, a little chubby, and feeling old. Olivia, a cool and successful magazine beauty editor in New York, realizes she's lonely, and is finally ready to face her demons. Sometimes hope lives in the future; sometimes it comes from the past; and sometimes, when every stupid thing goes wrong, it comes from a prettily packaged jar filled with scented cream and promises.

Worlds collide when Little Bee, a Nigerian girl orphaned by violence, meets Sarah, a dissatisfied British professional away on holiday.  The story is extremely funny, but the African beach scene is horrific. The story starts there, but the book doesn't. And it's what happens...  more

Worlds collide when Little Bee, a Nigerian girl orphaned by violence, meets Sarah, a dissatisfied British professional away on holiday.  The story is extremely funny, but the African beach scene is horrific. The story starts there, but the book doesn't. And it's what happens afterwards that is most important. A mixture of tragedy and comedy, a taste of what could happen to immigrants to the UK, realistically narrated by the two main characters: Little Bee, an immigrant to UK from Nigeria; and Sarah, a British magazine editor who had a previous connection with Little Bee. -- US title "Little Bee". UK title "The Other Hand"

Jeannette Walls's father always called her "Mountain Goat" and there's perhaps no more apt nickname for a girl who navigated a sheer and towering cliff of childhood both daily and stoically. In The Glass Castle, Walls chronicles her upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic...  more

Jeannette Walls's father always called her "Mountain Goat" and there's perhaps no more apt nickname for a girl who navigated a sheer and towering cliff of childhood both daily and stoically. In The Glass Castle, Walls chronicles her upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic parents -- Rose Mary, her frustrated-artist mother, and Rex, her brilliant, alcoholic father. To call the elder Walls's child rearing style laissez faire would be putting it mildly. As Rose Mary and Rex, motivated by whims and paranoia, uprooted their kids time and again, the youngsters (Walls, her brother and two sisters) were left largely to their own devices. But while Rex and Rose Mary firmly believed children learned best from their own mistakes, they themselves never seemed to do so, repeating the same disastrous patterns that eventually landed them on the streets. Walls describes in fascinating detail what it was to be a child in this family, from the embarrassing (wearing shoes held together with safety pins; using markers to color her skin in an effort to camouflage holes in her pants) to the horrific (being told, after a creepy uncle pleasured himself in close proximity, that sexual assault is a crime of perception; and being pimped by her father at a bar). Though Walls has well earned the right to complain, at no point does she play the victim. In fact, Walls' removed, nonjudgmental stance is initially startling, since many of the circumstances she describes could be categorized as abusive (and unquestioningly neglectful). But on the contrary, Walls respects her parents' knack for making hardships feel like adventures, and her love for them -- despite their overwhelming self-absorption -- resonates from cover to cover.