DEBUT Esme Nicoll's love of words began underneath her father's desk inside the Scriptorium, a garden shed where a team of lexicographers and assistants fashioned the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. One day, a slip falls from a Scriptorium desk and lands in Esme's lap. Believing it to be discarded, Esme pockets the slip and stores it in a wooden chest. As she grows, Esme continues to collect words and slowly begins to understand that the words used by women and poor people are often deemed unworthy to be immortalized in print. As she diligently devotes her life to the Oxford English Dictionary, Esme decides to give voice to the unwritten words by writing her own lexicon in secret—the Dictionary of Lost Words. Set in England in the harrowing era of women's suffrage and the Great War, this fiction debut, by social researcher and memoirist Williams (One Italian Summer), uncovers perspectives that might have been lost if not for Esme's love and dedication. VERDICT Enchanting, sorrowful, and wonderfully written, the book is a one-of-a-kind celebration of language and its importance in our lives. A must-have for every library collection.—Carmen Clark, Elkhart Public Library, IN

In Williams's exuberant, meticulously researched debut, the daughter of a lexicographer devotes her life to an alternative dictionary. As a young child in 1880s Oxford, Esme Nicoll is enchanted by the "Scriptorium," a shed behind their house where her father, Harry, works with a team to sort and select words for the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. When she finds the word "bondmaid" on a discarded slip and realizes the term refers to a female slave, Esme begins her own effort, the "Dictionary of Lost Words," stowing slips of words deemed unfit for the OED in a chest belonging to their servant, Lizzie. In her teens, Esme becomes further obsessed with which words make the cut—decisions primarily made by men—and listens to women in the marketplace, returning with suggestions for Harry. The ensuing bildungsroman carries the reader at a rapid pace through Esme's 20s, when she rubs shoulders with suffragettes, finds romance, and bonds with Lizzie while struggling to get her book of lost words printed. Though this sweeping effort takes some time to build momentum, the payoff is deeply satisfying. Williams's feminist take on language will move readers. Agent: Linda Kaplan, DeFiore and Co. (Apr.)