Laurel and Daphne Wolfe, identical, inseparable redheaded twins, share an obsession with words. As adults making their way in 1980s Manhattan, their verbal infatuation begins to push them apart. Their fraying twinship finally shreds completely when the sisters go to war over custody of their most prized family heirloom: Merriam Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition.

"Original and illuminating."-The New York Times Book Review In her most ambitious work since In the Time of Butterflies, Julia Alvarez tells the story of a woman whose poetry inspired one Caribbean revolution and of her daughter whose dedication to teaching strengthened another. Camila Henriquez Urena is about to retire from her longtime job teaching Spanish at Vassar College. Only now as she sorts through family papers does she begin to know...

A fictionalized biography of the eighteenth-century African woman who, as a child, was brought to New England to be a slave, and after publishing her first poem when a teenager, gained renown throughout the colonies as an important black American poet.

Ninety-two-year-old poet Victoria Trumbull becomes embroiled in controversy at the community theater on Martha's Vineyard. The new artistic director has announced plans to replace local amateur talent with off-Island professionals, and the cast and crew react murderously. The group is producing Ms. Trumbull's adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The production is endangered when someone begins committing crimes apparently based on the scenes...

"Marian Ffarmer is a world-renowned poet and a legend in the making--but only now, at 75 years old, is she beginning to believe in the security of her successes. Unfortunately, a poet's accomplishments don't necessarily translate to capital, and as her adult son struggles to buy his first home, her confidence in her choices begins to fray. Marian's pristine life of mind--for which she's sacrificed nearly all personal relationships, from romance to...

"Upstate New York, 1928. Laura Kelley and the man she loves sneak away from their judgmental town to attend a performance of the scandalous Ziegfeld Follies. But the dark consequences of their night of daring and delight reach far into the future.... That same evening, Bohemian poet Edna St. Vincent Millay and her indulgent husband hold a wild party in their remote mountain estate, hoping to inspire her muse. Millay declares her wish for a new lover...