A groundbreaking collective biography narrating the history of emancipation through the life stories of women of African descent in the Americas.

As If She Were Free brings together the biographies of twenty-four women of African descent to reveal how enslaved and recently freed women sought, imagined, and found freedom from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries in the Americas. Our biographical approach allows readers to view large social processes – migration, trade, enslavement, emancipation – through the perspective of individual women moving across the boundaries of slavery and freedom. For some women, freedom meant liberation and legal protection from slavery, while others focused on gaining economic, personal, political, and social rights. Rather than simply defining emancipation as a legal status that was conferred by those in authority and framing women as passive recipients of freedom, these life stories demonstrate that women were agents of emancipation, claiming free status in the courts, fighting for liberty, and defining and experiencing freedom in a surprising and inspiring range of ways.

Praise for Chloe Caldwell: "I read it a couple of months ago in one can't-put-it-down-even-though-it's-the-middle-of-the-night sitting. It's as intense and interesting and clear-hearted as they come."—Cheryl Strayed "I'll read anything Chloe Caldwell writes. She's a rare bird: fearless, dark, prolific, unpretentious, and truly honest."—Elisa Albert "Nothing's sexier than first love and first intimacies, and Caldwell's brave autobiographical tale twists the trope into a powerful story about unexpectedly falling in love with a woman and the discoveries, sexual and otherwise, that ensue."—Time Out New York "The essays in this collection are as exuberant as they are sad. Her storytelling is as vulnerable as it is bombastic. These essays roll in gangsta, but wear freshly picked daisies in their hair."—Rookie Magazine Flailing in jobs, failing at love, getting addicted and un-addicted to people, food, and drugs—I'll Tell You in Person is a disarmingly frank account of attempts at adulthood and all the less than perfect ways we get there. Caldwell has an unsparing knack for looking within and reporting back what's really there, rather than what she'd like you to see. Chloe Caldwell is the author of the novella Women, and the essay collection Legs Get Led Astray. Her work has appeared in the Sun, Salon, VICE, Hobart, Nylon, the Rumpus, Men's Health, and LENNY, among others. She teaches personal essay and memoir writing in New York City and lives in Hudson.

"Smith spins out a sensuous, sinuous psychological thriller that compels attention to the final line."—Booklist Amelie and Janet are in love with the same man: Janet's husband. One knows it; the other doesn't. Or does she? As bestselling novelist Amelie Ferrar knows, an affair with a married person is like a work of fiction: a kind of spy story with its rules and customs, negotiations and compromises, and many private rituals. But like any spy story, there will inevitably be a betrayal: something will slip, someone else will find out, someone may even die. As Amelie falls deeper into her obsession with the man she loves—and his wife—the line between the fiction she writes and the reality she lives begins to blur...and the twisted ending to this story is one that not even she could have seen coming.

From one of contemporary literature’s bestselling, critically acclaimed, and beloved authors: a “luminous” novel (Jennifer Egan, The New York Times Book Review) about a fiercely compelling young widow navigating grief, fear, and longing, and finding her own voice—“heartrendingly transcendant” (The New York Times, Janet Maslin). Set in Wexford, Ireland, Colm Tóibín’s magnificent seventh novel introduces the formidable, memorable, and deeply moving Nora Webster. Widowed at forty, with four children and not enough money, Nora has lost the love of her life, Maurice, the man who rescued her from the stifling world to which she was born. And now she fears she may be sucked back into it. Wounded, selfish, strong-willed, clinging to secrecy in a tiny community where everyone knows your business, Nora is drowning in her own sorrow and blind to the suffering of her young sons, who have lost their father. Yet she has moments of stunning insight and empathy, and when she begins to sing again, after decades, she finds solace, engagement, a haven—herself. Nora Webster “may actually be a perfect work of fiction” (Los Angeles Times), by a “beautiful and daring” writer (The New York Times Book Review) at the zenith of his career, able to “sneak up on readers and capture their imaginations” (USA TODAY). “Miraculous...Tóibín portrays Nora with tremendous sympathy and understanding” (Ron Charles, The Washington Post).

We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate.