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English
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"A gripping historical mystery based on the real-life diary entries of Martha Ballard, an 18th-century midwife who defied the legal system and wrote herself into American history. Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of...
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Description
"Jake volunteers at a nursing home because he likes helping people. He likes skating and singing, playing Bingo and Name That Tune, and reading mysteries and comics aloud to his teachers. He also likes avoiding people his own age . . . and the cruelty of mirrors . . . and food. Jake has read about kids like him in books--the weird one, the outsider--and would do anything not to be that kid, including shrink himself down to nothing. But the less he...
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"A novel about the extraordinary partnership between First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune--an unlikely friendship that changed the world, from the New York Times bestselling authors of the Good Morning America Book Club pick The Personal Librarian. The daughter of formerly enslaved parents, Mary McLeod Bethune refuses to back down as white supremacists attempt to thwart her work. She marches on as an activist...
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English
Description
Sent into an arranged marriage, Tan Yunxian, forbidden to continue her work as a midwife-in-training as well as see her forever friend Meiling, is ordered to act like proper wife and seeks a way to continue treating women and girls from every level of society in fifteenth-century China
According to Confucius, "an educated woman is a worthless woman," but Tan Yunxian--born into an elite family, yet haunted by death, separations, and loneliness--is...
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English
Description
"At age nineteen, young Eton graduate Eric Blair set sail for India, dreading the assignment ahead. Along with several other young conscripts, he would be trained for three years as a servant of the British Empire, overseeing the local policemen in Burma. Navigating the social, racial, and class politics of his fellow British at the same time as he learned the local languages and struggled to control his men would prove difficult enough. But doing...
Author
Pub. Date
2023
Language
English
Description
"In the midst of World War II, an English musician, Norah Chambers, places her eight-year-old daughter Sally on a ship leaving Singapore, desperate to keep her safe from the Japanese army as they move down through the Pacific. Norah remains to care for her husband and elderly parents, knowing she may never see her child again. Sister Nesta James, a Welsh Australian nurse, has enlisted to tend to Allied troops. But as Singapore falls to the Japanese...
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English
Description
They could have been allies: two self-made millionaires who invented a global industry, in an era when wife and mother were supposed to be the highest goals for their sex. Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein each founded empires built on grit and determination...and yet they became locked in a feud spanning three continents, two world wars, and the Great Depression. Brought up in poverty, Canadian-born Elizabeth Arden changed popular opinion, persuading...
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Description
"The international bestselling author of The Secret River and A Room Made of Leaves returns with a fictionalized account of her grandmother's life, commemorating a strong female character making the best out of the times and society she was born in. Dolly Maunder is born at the end of the nineteenth century, when society's long-locked doors are just starting to creak ajar for determined women. Growing up in a poor farming family in rural New South...
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Description
"April,1912: It's the perfect finale to a Grand Tour of Europe--sailing home on the largest, most luxurious ocean liner ever built. For the Fortune sisters, the voyage offers a chance to reflect on the treasures of the past they've seen--magnificent castles and museums in Italy and France, the ruins of Greece and the Middle East--and contemplate the futures that await them. For Alice, there's foreboding mixed with her excitement. A fortune teller...
11) Three fires
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English
Description
Reimaging the "Bonfire of the Vanities" through a series of fires lit throughout Florence at the end of the fifteenth century, this modern take on a fascinating historical story follows Girolamo Savonarola, a Dominican friar who, railing against the vice and avarice of the ruling Medici family, was instrumental in their removal from power
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Description
Arriving in Hollywood to become an actress, Anna May Wong discovers her beauty and talent aren't enough to overcome the racism that relegates her to supporting roles and, over the years, fights to win lead roles, accept risqué parts, and keep her illicit love affairs hidden-even as she finds global stardom
At the dawn of a new century, America is falling in love with silent movies. Wong Liu Tsong and her sister, daughters of Chinese immigrants who...
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English
Description
"How did sisters Emily, Charlotte, and Anne write literary landmarks Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Agnes Grey? What in their lives and circumstances, in the choices they made, and in their close but complex relationships with one another made such greatness possible? In her new novel, Rachel Cantor melds biographical fact with unruly invention to illuminate their genius, their bonds of love and duty, periods of furious creativity, and the ongoing...
Author
Pub. Date
2023
Language
English
Description
"A young woman gets pulled into Estée Lauder's enigmatic orbit as the future cosmetic icon prepares to take the world by storm. From the USA Today bestselling author of The Social Graces and Park Avenue Summer comes a story of friendship, glitz, and glamour in 1940s New York. New York City, 1938. Gloria Downing is done with lies. Eager to distance herself from a family scandal, what she needs is a total makeover and a friend she can lean on-and into...
15) Diva
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English
Description
"New York Times bestselling author Daisy Goodwin returns with a story of the scandalous love affair between the most celebrated opera singer of all time and one of the richest men in the world. In the glittering and ruthlessly competitive world of opera, Maria Callas was known simply as la divina: the divine one. With her glorious voice, instinctive flair for the dramatic and striking beauty, she was the toast of the grandest opera houses in the world....
16) Learned by heart
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English
Description
A heartbreakingly gorgeous novel based on the true story of two girls who fall secretly, deeply, and dangerously in love at boarding school in 19th century York, from the bestselling author of Room and The Wonder. Drawing on years of investigation and Anne Lister's five-million-word secret journal, Learned by Heart is the long-buried love story of Eliza Raine, an orphan heiress banished from India to England at age six, and Anne Lister, a brilliant,...
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Description
"Acclaimed historical novelist Vanessa Riley is back with another novel based on the life of an extraordinary Black woman from history: Haiti's Queen Marie-Louise Coidavid, who escaped a coup in Haiti to set up her own royal court in Italy during the Regency era, where she became a popular member of royal European society"--
In 1810 Louise is crowned queen as her husband begins his reign over the first and only free Black nation in the Western Hemisphere....
Author
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English
Description
"Raised on tales of her revolutionary ancestors, Frances Perkins arrives in New York City at the turn of the century, armed with her trusty parasol and an unyielding determination to make a difference. When she's not working with children in the crowded tenements in Hell's Kitchen, Frances throws herself into the social scene in Greenwich Village, befriending an eclectic group of politicians, artists, and activists, including the millionaire socialite...
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Description
"New York City, 1911. Edith Wharton, almost equally famed for her novels and her sharp tongue, is bone-tired of Manhattan. Finding herself at a crossroads with both her marriage and her writing, she makes the decision to leave America, her publisher, and her loveless marriage. And then, dashing novelist David Graham Phillips - a writer with often notorious ideas about society and women's place in it - is shot to death outside the Princeton Club. Edith...
20) The postcard
Author
Language
English
Description
"Anne Berest's The Postcard is among the most acclaimed and beloved French novels of recent years. Luminous and gripping to the very last page, it is an enthralling investigation into family secrets, a poignant tale of mothers and daughters, and a vivid portrait of twentieth-century Parisian intellectual and artistic life. January, 2003. Together with the usual holiday cards, an anonymous postcard is delivered to the Berest family home. On the front,...
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