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  The Kudzu Queen

  Mimi Herman

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  Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel PrizeFifteen-year-old Mattie Lee Watson dreams of men, not boys. So when James T. Cullowee, the Kudzu King, arrives in Cooper County, North Carolina, in 1941 to spread the gospel of kudzu—claiming that it will improve the soil, feed cattle at almost no cost, even cure headaches—Mattie is ready. Mr. Cullowee is determined to sell the entire county on the future of kudzu, and organizes a kudzu festival, complete with a beauty pageant. Mattie is determined to be crowned Kudzu Queen and capture the attentions of the Kudzu King. As she learns more about Cullowee, however, she discovers that he, like the kudzu he promotes, has a dark and predatory side. When she finds she is not the only one threatened, she devises a plan to bring him down. Based on historical facts, The Kudzu Queen unravels a tangle of sexuality, power, race, and kudzu through the voice of an irresistibly delightful (and mostly honest) narrator.

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  The Priest Fainted

  Catherine Temma Davidson

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  -A stunning fictional debut by an award-winning poet, Catherine Temma Davidson deftly blends memories, family stories, recipes, and Greek myths in this intricate and sensuous first-person narrative. During a year-long visit to her ancestral homeland, a young Greek-American woman discovers herself through stories from the past. As she comes of age, she finds her own meaning in the tales of Persephone, Athena, and other mythic figures. She is finally able to identify with her mother's and grandmother's lives and to appreciate the unspoken understandings they share like secret family recipes. Catherine Temma Davidson has won awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Dorothy Daniels Award from PEN, and first prize at the L.A. Poetry Festival. With her ardent reading, narrator Alyssa Bresnahan evokes the deep passion of the poet's language. Her performance carries you pleasurably through the rich cultural and psychological landscapes the novel traverses.

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  James Grant

  Stanislas M. Yassukovich

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  This story of James Grant, his family and the class they belong to is not of our time. That class still exists and its prosperity is unabated. But its position in the American national psyche is greatly diminished, its glitter dulled by the passage of time – and a change in the mores of society as a whole. But I have written it because I believe the foibles of the human heart and its redeeming strengths possess a universality which overcomes the angst of changing times. I have set the stage in an unfamiliar time to mine. Whether my characters that stride upon that cluttered stage would remain credible in a stark, modern setting, I cannot judge. I had no one in particular in mind in devising them. They are as the ghosts that populate our dreams – a compendium of hints and reflections of those who have crossed our consciousness in the ill-remembered past.

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  The Spinster and the Rake

  Eva Devon

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  Edward Stanhope, the icy Duke of Thornfield, likes his life in a certain order. Give him a strong drink, a good book, and his dog for company, and he’s content. But when he goes to his library and finds a woman sitting in his chair, petting his dog, what starts as a request for her to leave turns quickly to a fiery battle of wits, leading to a steamy kiss that could ruin them both if they’re caught. So, of course, damn it all, that’s when Edward’s aunt walks in and, thereafter, announces Miss Georgiana Bly as the future Duchess of Thornfield. Georgiana was content to be a spinster, spending her days reading and working to keep her family out of debt. But now her days are spent locked away with a growly duke, learning how to be the perfect duchess, and her nights are spent fighting her undeniable attraction to a man who was never meant for her. As their wedding day approaches, the attraction between them burns hot and fierce, but is it enough to melt the duke’s chilly facade?

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  Searching for Grace Kelly - A Novel

  Michael Callahan

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  This novel of three young workingwomen in 1950s Manhattan is “a delight” (People).   For a small-town girl with big-city dreams, there is no address more glamorous than New York’s Barbizon Hotel. Laura, a patrician beauty from Smith, arrives to work at Mademoiselle for the summer. Her hopelessly romantic roommate, Dolly, comes from a working-class upstate town to attend secretarial school. And Vivian, a brash British bombshell with a disregard for the hotel’s rules, rounds out the trio of friends.   Together, the girls embark on a journey of discovery that will take them from the penthouse apartments of Park Avenue to the Beat scene of Greenwich Village to Atlantic City’s Steel Pier—and into the arms of very different men who will alter their lives forever.   “You’ll rip through this novel, inspired by Grace Kelly’s pre-princess Barbizon stay.” —Marie Claire   “A gem of a story.” —Laura Moriarty, author of The Chaperone   “Pour yourself a highball and settle in . . . a fun, frothy romp through time.” —Manhattan   “[A] deliciously stylish, retro first novel . . . A fast-moving, heartwrenching tale of romance and tragedy in a time of tyrannically sexist social conventions.” —Booklist   “The New York of the 1950s shines through Callahan’s pages. His characters’ breathless excitement with their new lives pulls you into that time and place, and his deft plotting holds you there.” —The New York Times Book Review    

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  The Shadow's Voice

  David Green

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  In this second novel of the Elliot Blake series, Elliot is promoted to Head of Claims at his insurance company. While he's investigating a death claim filed on behalf of Leonard Lehnert, the star of a radio show called The Shadow’s Voice, he discovers private letters written during the Second World War that upend his investigation and his relationship with his lover, Vito Vellucci. Vito's letters give a voice to the lives and loves that had to be lived in the shadows, and reveal a hidden past, never acknowledged by the world at large.

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