For readers of Melissa Bank or Jhumpa Lahiri: witty, seductive stories of expatriate women, their loves and losses. "Interesting women - are we ever going to be free of them? I meet them everywhere these days, now that there is no longer such a thing as an interesting man..." So drawls the narrator of one of Andrea Lee's jewel-like stories, herself, undeniably, an Interesting Woman. These gleaming, sensual stories bend a wit worthy of Colette's on a demimonde of expatriates, teenage 'pocket divas', girlfriends, wives, mistresses and daughters. Each focuses on a moment of seduction, of self-discovery, where the mocking detachment of the outsider is briefly pulled aside. An American, chained by her Italian husband's belief in her conventional wholesomeness, surprises him with two costly call girls for his birthday; but her pleasure in her own daring remains wistfully private. A New England beauty has a brief love affair, alternately lyrical and perverse, with a European prince more than twice her age. A woman, having earlier left her husband 'in a moment of epic distraction', has his new ex to stay, changing forever their understanding of the man they both married. 'Interesting Women' teases the reader with ironic glimpses of the charged games of sexual power between men and women, and women with each other. It is that delicious rarity: a summer read of sophisticated intelligence, whose gorgeous images will linger long.

From National Book Award-nominated writer Andrea Lee comes Red Island House, a travel epic that opens a window on the mysterious African island of Madagascar, and on the dangers of life and love in paradise, as seen through the eyes of a Black American heroine. "People do mysterious things when they think they have found paradise," reflects Shay, the heroine of Red Island House. When Shay, an intrepid Black American professor, marries Senna, a brash Italian businessman, she doesn't imagine that her life's greatest adventure will carry her far beyond their home in Milan: to an idyllic stretch of beach in Madagascar where Senna builds a flamboyant vacation villa. Before she knows it, she becomes the reluctant mistress of a sprawling household, caught between her privileged American upbringing and her connection to the continent of her ancestors. So begins Shay's journey into the heart of a remote African country. Can she keep her identity and her marriage intact amid the wild beauty and the lingering colonial sins of this mysterious world that both captivates and destroys foreigners? A mesmerizing, powerful tale of travel and self-discovery that evokes Isabel Allende's House of the Spirits and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah, Red Island House showcases an extraordinary literary voice and gorgeously depicts a lush and unknown world.

An insightful and passionate novel from the author of 'Interesting Women', which follows the dramatic breakdown of the marriage and lives of a couple once thought to be in love. Mira Ward, a writer, and her husband Nick, a banker, are a newly married American couple who seem to have the ideal life. Good-looking and in love, they are the envy of their family and friends. But when Nick is transferred to Rome, the two become classic innocents abroad. Fate intervenes when on a plane journey to join her husband, Mira -- by pure chance -- is given a first-class ticket. Impulsively giving her phone number to Zenin, a predatory Italian tycoon she meets on the plane, she sets in motion a chain of events that will reveal the cracks in her marriage and her self-image, and shatter her life as she knows it. Evoking the grandeur and romance of Italy, and weaving back and forth in time -- between the current lives of Mira, Nick and Zenin, and the tumultuous days of the affair -- 'Lost Hearts In Italy' is a haunting novel of betrayal and passion, about the sacrifices we make in the name of love, and the true cost of desire.

Take an amazing journey with one woman who has allowed her painful past to become transformed into a beautiful display of God's work in her life today. When the Soul Surrenders not only tells an authentic life-story of transformation, but also tenderly guides its readers into their own transformational journey of surrender.

"A subtly crafted reflection of both the bleak and golden shadings of Russian life . . . Its tones belong more to the realm of poetry than journalism."" -The New York Times Book Review"
At age twenty-five, Andrea Lee joined her husband, a Harvard doctoral candidate in Russian history, for his eight months' study at Moscow State University and an additional two months in Leningrad. Published to enormous critical acclaim in 1981, "Russian Journal" is the award-winning author's penetrating, vivid account of her everyday life as an expatriate in Soviet culture, chronicling her fascinating exchanges with journalists, diplomats, and her Soviet contemporaries. The winner of the Jean Stein Award from the National Academy of Arts and Letters-and the book that launched Lee's career as a writer-Russian Journal is a beautiful and clear-eyed travel-writing classic.
"�Lee� takes us wherever she is, conveying a feeling of place and atmosphere that is the mark of real talent."
"-The Washington Post Book World
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"A book of very great charm . . . �Lee� records what she saw and heard with unassuming delicacy and exactness."
-Newsweek