When Hilary Thayer Hamann self-published Anthropology of an American Girl in 2003, she achieved an inordinate amount of success for any novel, let alone a self-published one. Now Random House is publishing a revised version of the visionary work.

Fresh out of college, Marina follows her girlfriend to rural Shika, Japan, to teach English for a year. But challenges arise as she navigates a host of cultural differences and soon finds that it is difficult to discard anything there. Literally.

Nothing happens in Molly Fox's Birthday. The plot is entirely uneventful, charting a day in the life of the narrator, a celebrated playwright, who is staying in Dublin at the home of her best friend, the Molly Fox of the title.

When 11-year-old Kimberly Chang and her mother move to New York City from Hong Kong, they are prepared for hard work and a difficult adjustment to a new life. But they are not prepared for just how difficult it proves to be.

The narrative of this wistful English love story jumps back and forth in time between the mid-20th century and the present day, alternating between the perspectives of the two main protagonists, Lexie and Elina.