"Philly native Roberta Forest is a precocious rebel with the soul of a poet. The thirteen-year-old is young, gifted, black, and Catholic--although she's uncertain about the Catholic part after she calls Thomas Jefferson a hypocrite for enslaving people and her nun responds with a racist insult. Their ensuing fight makes Roberta question God and the important adults in her life, all of whom seem to see truth as gray when Roberta believes it's black...

"New York, 1984: Twenty-two-year-old Phoebe Hayes is a young woman in search of excitement and adventure. But the recent death of her father has so devastated her that her mother wants her to remain home in Baltimore to recover. Phoebe wants to return to New York, not only to chase the glamorous life she so desperately craves but also to confront Ivan, the older man who painfully wronged her. With her best friend Carmen, she escapes to the East Village,...

James Tiptree, Jr., burst onto the science fiction scene in the late 1960s with a string of hard-edged, provocative stories. He was hailed as a brilliant writer with a deep sympathy for his female characters. He carried on intimate correspondences with other writers, none of whom knew his true identity. He was so reclusive that he was widely believed to be a top-secret government agent. Then the cover was blown--on a sixty-one-year-old woman named...