"Anisa Ellahi dreams of being a translator of "great works of literature," but mostly spends her days subtitling Bollywood movies and living off her parents' generous allowance. Adding to her growing sense of inadequacy, her mediocre white boyfriend, Adam, has successfully leveraged his savant-level aptitude for languages into an enviable career. But when Adam learns to speak Urdu practically overnight, Anisa forces him to reveal his secret. Adam...

To keep herself occupied after recently losing her sight, Zinaida begins a diary in the summer of 1888. When a family rents a guesthouse on her family's estate, Zinaida meets and befriends Anton, the middle son, who is a doctor and a writer. As the summer progresses, Zinaida's diary becomes an intimate, intropective narrative of her singular relationship with Anton. More than a century later, Katya Kendall discovers Zinaida's diary, and in a last...

In 1816 London, widow Catherine St. Day hires Lucy Muchelney to translate a French astronomy text and thus finish her husband's scientific legacy, and they unexpectedly find themselves falling in love.

Is a new life possible? Because Shira Greene's life hasn't quite turned out as planned. She's a single mom living with her daughter and her gay friend, Ahmad. Her PhD on Dante's Vita Nuova hasn't gotten her a job, and her career as a translator hasn't exactly taken off either. But then she gets a call from a Nobel Prize-winning Italian poet who insists she's the only one who can translate his newest book. Stunned, Shira realizes that--just like that--her...

In 1862, young Sylvie Swift works in Nashville as a translator by day, but at night, she acts as a Union spy. Both endeavors acquaint her with an ancient sisterhood, the Cult of Chaos, a mystical feminist society whose mission is to confront and eradicate the violent injustices enacted by men. Soon she begins to question notions of history, family, warfare, and power.