To escape her small town, her parents crumbling marriage, and her drug-addicted brother, Hope jumps at the chance to attend the exclusive Ravenhurst Academy. But her problems follow her to school, her online boyfriend asks her to pose for some photos that go viral, and Hope falls into a dark place she is not sure she can find her way out of."

Sometimes those who have the most seem bent on throwing it away. Meet Bob Sterling, a comfortable middle-aged professor, a specialist in the life of Edgar Allan Poe, married to a former student with whom he has a young son. In the space of a week his family, marriage, home, career, sanity, and life are brought to the brink of ruin in the aftermath of a trip he makes with a student, the intense young poet Sienna Chu, who brings to life Bob's long-harbored...

Ruthie Swain, the bedridden daughter of a dead poet, tries to find her father through stories -- and through generations of family history in County Clare.

"The Grammarians are Laurel and Daphne Wolfe, identical, inseparable redheaded twins who share an obsession with words. They speak a secret "twin" tongue of their own as toddlers; as adults making their way in 1980s Manhattan, their verbal infatuation continues, but this love, which has always bound them together, begins instead to push them apart. Daphne, copy editor and grammar columnist, devotes herself to preserving the dignity and elegance of...

A Mixteca Indian from Oaxaca, Am?rica Soliz, suffers from the poverty and hopelessness of her Chicago ghetto, made more endurable by a desire and determination to be a poet.

Writing poetry helps fifth-grader Harper Lee Morgan cope with her father's absence, being evicted, and having to skip school to care for her brother while their mother works, and things look even brighter after she befriends a mute girl and a kindly disabled woman.

"In 1921 an infamous Italian poet wrote his last and greatest play, inspired by his muse and mistress. On the eve of opening night she vanished and the play was never performed. Two generations later Alessandro D'Ascanio plans to stage his grandfather's masterpiece and offers the lead to a promising English actress with the same name as the muse. The woman is drawn to the mystery of her namesake's disappearance and to the compelling Alessandro"--Back...