By Chris Cleave
288 pages; Simon & Schuster

The voice that speaks from the first page of Chris Cleave's Little Bee is one you might never have heard—the voice of a smart, wary, heartsick immigrant scarred by the terrors of her past. "When I say that I am a refugee, you must understand that there is no refuge," says "Little Bee," a young Nigerian who has made her way from a brutal British detention center to the home of a women's magazine editor whose life once intersected—horribly, mercifully—with the girl's own. Read this urgent and wryly funny novel for its insights into simple humanity, the force that can disarm fear.

— Cathleen Medwick