"In the old tales, it is written that the egg of a seadragon, dragonfruit, holds within it the power to undo a person's greatest sorrow. But as with all things that offer hope when hope has gone, the tale comes with a warning. Every wish demands a price. Hanalei of Tamarind is the cherished daughter of an old island family. But when her father steals a seadragon egg meant for an ailing princess, she is forced into a life of exile. In the years that...

V. S. Pritchett called her "a genius." Gore Vidal described her as a "beloved novelist of singular brilliance... Of all the Southern writers, she is the most apt to endure..." And Tennessee Williams said, "The only real writer the South ever turned out, was Carson." She was born Lula Carson Smith in Columbus, Georgia. Her dream was to become a concert pianist, though she'd been writing since she was sixteen and the influence of music was evident throughout...

"Shortly after flight MAS370 goes missing, scholarship student Girl borads her own mysterious flight from Australia to London to work on a dissertation on Sylvia Plath and her "postcolonial novel" (If only she could work out just what that means). Though she is ambivalent towards academia and its trappings, Girl relishes the freedom that has come with distance from the expectation and judgements of her very tight-knit Malaysian-Australian family....