Showing results by narrator "Robin Miles" in Women's Fiction

Inspired by Nigeria's folktales and war, Under the Udala Trees is a deeply searching, powerful debut about the dangers of living and loving openly. Ijeoma comes of age as her nation does; born before independence, she is 11 when civil war breaks out in the young republic of Nigeria. Sent away to safety, she meets another displaced child, and the star-crossed pair fall in love. They are from different ethnic communities. They are also both girls.

An adored only child, Annie has until recently lived a peaceful and content life. She is inseparable from her beautiful mother, a powerful and influential presence, who sits at the very centre of the little girl’s existence. Loved and cherished, Annie grows and thrives within her mother’s shadow. When she turns twelve, however, Annie’s life changes, in ways that are often mysterious to her.

Lucy, a teenage girl from the West Indies, comes to North America to work as an au pair for Lewis and Mariah and their four children. At first glance Lewis and Mariah are a blessed couple—handsome, rich and seemingly happy. Almost at once, however, Lucy begins to notice cracks in their beautiful facade. With a mixture of anger and compassion, Lucy scrutinizes the privileged, facile world of her employers while comparing it to the vivid realities of her home in the Caribbean.

Collecting pieces written for the New Yorker and the Paris Review between 1978 and 1982, including the seminal ‘Girl’, these stunning works announced a fully-formed, generational talent and firmly established the themes that Kincaid would continue to return to in her later work: the loss of childhood, the fractious nature of mother–daughter relationships, the intangible beauty of the natural world and the striving for independence in a colonial landscape.

Bea and Awilda have been best friends from the moment Awilda threw her 14-year-old self across Bea’s twin-sized bed as if they had known each other forever. Bubbly, adventurous Awilda taught sheltered, shy Bea how to dress, wear her hair, and what to do with boys. She even introduced Bea to her husband, Lonnie, in college, who pledged to take good care of her for the rest of their lives. But philanderer Lonnie breaks that promise over and over again, leaving Bea to wrestle with her self-esteem and longtime secret addiction.

In 1959 Cuba, Natalia San Martín was nothing short of a princess: sheltered, pampered, and courted by her very own prince, a childhood friend turned lifelong love. All that changed on the fateful New Year's Eve when Fidel Castro and his followers seized control of the country, with tragic consequences for not only the island but Natalia herself. Five years later, in 1960s New York, she's known as Natalie Martin - living a life that's bleak but thankfully anonymous.

Martha Grimes's Hotel Paradise was hailed by Booklist as "superb...beyond genre...one of the year's best." Now, Grimes returns to the same small town, intertwining the threads of one young girl's unexplained death with another young girl's attempt at making sense of her own life.

Tough, spirited, and fiercely independent Abigail is brought as a teenager to London from Nigeria by relatives who attempt to force her into prostitution. She flees, struggling to find herself in the shadow of a strong but dead mother. In spare yet haunting and lyrical prose reminiscent of Marguerite Duras, Abani brings to life a young woman who lives with a strength and inner light that will enlighten and uplift the listener.

Among the longleaf pines and family farms of eastern North Carolina, days seem to pass without incident for Margaret Clayton and Bernice Stokes until they discover each other in a friendship that will take them on the most important journey of their lives. Margaret, droll and whip smart, has a will of iron that never fails her even when her body does, while Bernice, an avid country-music fan, is rarely lucid.

It's Carnival time and the Caribbean-colonized planet of Toussaint is celebrating with music, dance, and pageantry. Masked "Midnight Robbers" waylay revelers with brandished weapons and spellbinding words. To young Tan-Tan, the Robber Queen is simply a favorite costume to wear at the festival - until her power-corrupted father commits an unforgiveable crime. Suddenly, both father and daughter are thrust into the brutal world of New Half-Way Tree....

At a Caribbean resort built atop a former slave plantation, Myrna works as a maid by day; by night she trespasses on the resort's overgrown inland property, secretly excavating the plantation ruins that her island community refuses to acknowledge. Rapt by the crumbling walls of the once slave owner's estate, she explores the unspoken history of the plantation - a site where her ancestors once worked the land, but which the resort now uses as a lookout point for tourists.

Critics and audiences alike have hailed Heather A. Clark’s Chai Tea Sunday as a rich and powerful debut novel. Here, 30-something Nicky Fowler tries to pick up the pieces of her shattered marriage after it is destroyed in the wake of an unspeakable tragedy. Traveling to Kenya to volunteer at an orphanage, Nicky hopes that her fragile spirit can be repaired. Aided by chai-fueled conversations with her host mother, she develops the strength to put her life back on track.