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  The Dressmaker - A Novel

  Beryl Bainbridge

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  Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize: This psychological drama set in Liverpool during WWII follows the courtship of a US soldier and an English working-class girl. Rita is a passive and naïve seventeen-year-old who has been raised by two middle-aged aunts: Nellie, a curmudgeonly dressmaker obsessed with polishing the furniture, and Margo, a lively widow wise to the ways of the world. Rita’s father, whom she calls Uncle Jack, is too busy with his butcher shop the next town over to pay much attention to his daughter. Regardless, surrounded by the ruins of houses bombed in the Blitz, this strange family is bound together as they face wartime life in Liverpool. The government is enforcing stringent rations on even the smallest pleasures, and an influx of well-off American soldiers is wooing all the local girls.   Though World War II has dramatically changed the family’s standard of living and altered their perspective of the world, Nellie is determined to enforce her traditional ideas about the proper behavior and priorities of the lower middle class. This includes hampering the romantic desires of both Rita and Margo.   It is no wonder, then, that Rita starts lying to her aunts about where she goes on Saturday nights. She has fallen in love with a Yankee GI named Ira. Or rather, she has fallen in love with the idea of this young soldier and all that he represents as someone who can make her a bride and whisk her away to a lavish life in the United States. But Ira is hardly the man she’s dreamed of, and a relationship is the last thing on his mind.   In a sinister turn of events, the years of stifled happiness finally catch up to Margo and she betrays her young niece. And through this transgression, Nellie reveals just how far she will go to enforce her rules, especially when it comes to the furniture . . .   Written in strategically-doled-out prose that keeps readers on the edge of their seats, The Dressmaker is a thrilling historical novel about repressed sexuality, sibling rivalry, and the dire consequences of bigotry. An immediate classic in British fiction, it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and made into a film starring Jane Horrocks, Billie Whitelaw, and Joan Plowright.  This ebook features an illustrated biography of Beryl Bainbridge including rare images from the author’s estate.  

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  Freedom Road

  Howard Fast

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  It was everywhere. You couldn't talk about the revolution without using the word freedom in the same breath. But Gideon Jackson knew that freedom meant something different if your skin was black. Fast's fictional account of the post Civil War era takes us into the life of Gideon Jackson, a black man, newly freed, and determined to make a difference.

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  Invitation from a Mobster

  Jiří Ovečka

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  Invitation from a Mobster is inspired by real events. It tells the story of one of the most important and feared journalists of the 1990s and is set during the Wild West Gold Rush era of Czech politics following the Velvet Revolution. Vitas is a journalist who uncovers injustice and crime in the chaos of democratic beginnings in a formerly Communist nation. He works in an environment  in which all things are affected by the pursuit of money and all human values fall to the wayside. Vitas uncovers various scams involving by one of the biggest mobsters in the Czech Republic, Kromen. The story moves to Tibet and its forcible annexation during the last century by China. A young girl is being raised in a monastery of Tibetan Buddhists near the Indian border. No one in the monastery has any idea that a destiny of great historical significance lies in wait for her. Because of the girl the monastery becomes a significant source of interest for Chinese officials.

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  Call Down the Thunder - A Crime...

  Dietrich Kalteis

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  Desperate times call for desperate measures in Kalteis’s lightning-fast crime caper story
  		 
  Sonny and Clara Myers struggle on their Kansas farm in the late 1930s, a time the Lord gave up on: their land’s gone dry, barren, and worthless; the bankers are greedy and hungry, trying to squeeze them and other farmers out of their homes; and, on top of that, their marriage is in trouble. The couple can struggle and wither along with the land or surrender to the bankers and hightail it to California like most of the others. Clara is all for leaving, but Sonny refuses to abandon the family farm. 
  		 
  In a fit of temper, she takes off westward in their old battered truck. Alone on the farm and determined to get back Clara and the good old days, Sonny comes up with an idea, a way to keep his land and even prosper while giving the banks a taste of their own misery. He sets the scheme in motion under the cover of the commotion being caused by a rainmaker hired by the mayor to call down the thunder and wash away everyone’s troubles.

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  The Mermaid's Child

  Jo Baker

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  Malin has always been different, and when her father dies, leaving her alone, her choice is clear: stay, and remain an outsider forever, or leave in search of the mythical inheritance she is certain awaits her. Apprenticed to a series of strange and wonderful characters, Malin embarks on a grueling journey that crosses oceans and continents—from the high seas to desert plains - and leads to a discovery that she could never have expected. Beautifully written and hauntingly strange, The Mermaid's Child is a remarkable piece of storytelling, and an utterly unique work of fantasy from literary star Jo Baker.

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  Hap and Hazard and the End of...

  Diane DeSanders

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  For Dick and Jane, Dallas after World War II is a place of promise and prosperity: the first home air conditioners are making summertime bearable and Dick's position at his father's business, the Cadillac dealership, is assured. Jane has help with the house and the children, and garden parties and holiday celebrations are spirited social affairs. For the oldest of their three daughters, however, life is full of frustrating mysteries. The stories the adults tell her don't make sense. Too curious for comfort, she finds her questions only seem to annoy them. Why won't they tell the truth about Santa? What is that Holy Spirit business, and what is the difference between an angel and a ghost? Why is her mother often so tense and sad? And why does her father keep flying into violent rages? 
  Hap and Hazard and the End of the World is an intimate, finely crafted novel about the innocence and vulnerability of childhood and the dangers posed by adults who cannot cope with life's complexities. It is also about the ingenuity born of loneliness and neglect, and the surprising, strange beauty of the world.

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