To save herself and her husband from an evil king, Shell agrees to bring him three wonders.

To save herself and her husband from an evil king, Shell agrees to bring him three wonders.

Afghan-American Nadia Hashimi's literary debut novel is a searing tale of powerlessness, fate, and the freedom to control one's own fate that combines the cultural flavor and emotional resonance of the works of Khaled Hosseini, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Lisa See. In Kabul, 2007, with a drug-addicted father and no brothers, Rahima and her sisters can only sporadically attend school, and can rarely leave the house. Their only hope lies in the ancient custom of bacha posh, which allows young Rahima to dress and be treated as a boy until she is of marriageable age. As a son, she can attend school, go to the market, and chaperone her older sisters. But Rahima is not the first in her family to adopt this unusual custom. A century earlier, her great-great grandmother, Shekiba, left orphaned by an epidemic, saved herself and built a new life the same way. Crisscrossing in time, The Pearl the Broke Its Shell interweaves the tales of these two women separated by a century who share similar destinies. But what will happen once Rahima is of marriageable age? Will Shekiba always live as a man? And if Rahima cannot adapt to life as a bride, how will she survive?

Born in rural Carrollton, Mississippi, Elizabeth Spencer has been writing masterly stories and novellas about Southerners for more than half a century. The Southern Woman collects the best of Spencer’s shorter fiction and displays her range of place–the agrarian South, Italy in the decade after the Second World War, the gray-sky North, and the contemporary Sun Belt. In “The Little Brown Girl,” Maybeth discovers the limits of friendship in a racially divided world. In the elegiac “The Cousins,” a group of Southerners roams through Italy, brushing with love and regret and the grip of family. Also included is “The Light in the Piazza,” the novella about an American woman and her daughter in Florence that brought Spencer widespread acclaim and was adapted for both the screen and the Broadway stage. In this capstone collection, Elizabeth Spencer firmly claims her place in the distinguished heritage of the Southern short story.

Reproduction of the original: The Justice of the King by Hamilton Drummond

For fans of Shannon Hale’s Princess Academy and Soman Chainani’s The School for Good and Evil, comes the thrilling finale to the "breathtakingly exciting" Pennyroyal Academy trilogy. Evie and Maggie are still enjoying the glow of their victory as they travel into the forest on their coach. But the happiest day of Evie's life is suddenly turned upside-down when they're ambushed by witches. They dash back to the Academy, only to learn that the witches have been attacking every coach that tries to leave. With their supplies nearly depleted, the Academy surrounded by witches, and new dangers looming outside the castle walls, Evie must devise a plan to save her friends and clear a path for the princesses and knights to escape. In The Warrior Princess of Pennyroyal Academy, M. A. Larson brings Evie's exciting adventure to a close with even more magical mischief and heart.