Other books that might interest you

• 

  The Cage-maker - A Novel

  Nicole Seitz

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  A cache of secret documents unfolds a fascinating tale of fin de siècle New Orleans in this timeslip Southern gothic novel inspired by true events. 
   
  When Trish, a contemporary blogger, inherits an antique birdcage, she discovers a secret compartment full of letters, journals, and newspaper clippings. As she peruses the documents, Trish finds herself irresistibly drawn into the history of her family—a tale that is, as one letter puts it, “part love story and part horror and madness.” 
   
  In 1906 Dr. René Le Monnier is ready to retire as the coroner and physician of the New Orleans insane asylum. Still mourning his wife’s death, the Civil War veteran wants nothing more than to write his account of the Battle of Shiloh. But when a sixteen-year-old girl, Carmelite Kurucar, enlists his aid in saving her brother from a death sentence, the good doctor must reckon with old ghosts—including the case of a patient he may have tragically neglected. 
   
  Le Monnier’s efforts lead him to Bertrand Saloy, one of the richest men in New Orleans; to the Le Monnier mansion, which still haunts him; and down a dark family lineage “cursed” by a succession of wealth. Amid the mysteries and suspenseful intrigue, a French birdcage maker’s obsessive love for Madame Saloy emerges at the heart of the story.

  Show book

• 

  Wartime at Woolworths

  Elaine Everest

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  The Woolworths girls have come a long way together . . . 
  Fun loving Maisie, is devoted to her young family and her work at Woolworths. But her happy life with her RAF officer husband, their baby daughter leads her to think of the family she left behind . . . With the war now into its fourth year, what will she find when she sets about searching for them? 
  Sarah and her husband, Alan, are blissfully happy and long for a sibling for their daughter. But dark days lay ahead for this close family. 
  Freda heads home to Birmingham, to go in search of her family, back to the life she fled—far from the safety of Woolworths and her new friends. 
  With families’ separated by war, will the Woolworths girls be able to pull together? 
  Wartime at Woolworths is the third moving installment in the much-loved Woolworths series by bestselling author Elaine Everest.

  Show book

• 

  The Flight of the Maidens

  Jane Gardam

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  The Whitbread Award–winning author of the Old Filth trilogy captures a moment in time for three young women on the cusp of adulthood. Yorkshire, 1946. The end of the war has changed the world again, and, emboldened by this new dawning, Hetty Fallows, Una Vane, and Lieselotte Klein seize the opportunities with enthusiasm. Hetty, desperate to escape the grasp of her critical mother, books a solo holiday to the Lake District under the pretext of completing her Oxford summer coursework. Una, the daughter of a disconcertingly cheery hairdresser, entertains a romantically inclined young man from the wrong side of the tracks and the left-side of politics. Meanwhile, Lieselotte, the mysterious Jewish refugee from Germany, leaves the Quaker family who had rescued her, to test herself in London. Although strikingly different from one another, these young women share the common goal of adventure and release from their middle-class surroundings through romance and education. “Gardam’s lean, fast-paced prose is at turns hugely funny and deeply moving. . . . [Her] characters are acutely and compassionately observed.” —Atlantic Monthly “Quirky, enchanting . . . with lively, laugh-out loud elan.” —The Baltimore Sun “Splendid . . . Gardam’s style is perfect.” —The New York Times Book Review “With winning charm and wit . . . Gardam frames her story in dozens of crisp, brief scenes featuring deliciously dizzy conversation.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Ebullient, humorous, and wise, this is a novel to savor.” —Booklist “The portrait of postwar England as conventions crumble and the country is rebuilt is terrific.” —Publishers Weekly

  Show book

• 

  The Outcasts of Time

  Ian Mortimer

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  December 1348. What if you had just six days to save your soul? 
  With the country in the grip of the Black Death, brothers John and William fear that they will shortly die and suffer in the afterlife. But as the end draws near, they are given an unexpected choice: either to go home and spend their last six days in their familiar world, or to search for salvation across the forthcoming centuries—living each one of their remaining days ninety-nine years after the last. 
  John and William choose the future and find themselves in 1447, ignorant of almost everything going on around them. The year 1546 brings no more comfort, and 1645 challenges them in further unexpected ways. It is not just that technology is changing: things they have taken for granted all their lives prove to be short-lived. 
  As they find themselves in stranger and stranger times, the listener travels with them, seeing the world through their eyes as it shifts through disease, progress, enlightenment, and war. But their time is running out—can they do something to redeem themselves before the six days are up?

  Show book

• 

  Winter Wonderland

  Elizabeth Mansfield

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Ever since Miranda Pardew haughtily rejected his shy request for a dance, Barnaby Traherne has been a resigned bachelor. Ten years later, her circumstances have changed and the still-smitten Barnaby has an opportunity to hire the now-impoverished Miranda as governess to his brother's children. Barnaby must decide if he'll hold a long-stinging grudge or allow the spirit of Christmas into his heart.

  Show book

• 

  Forgetting the Alamo Or Blood...

  Emma Pérez

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  In this literary novel set in nineteenth-century Texas, a Tejana lesbian cowgirl embarks on an adventure after the fall of the Alamo.Micaela Campos witnesses the violence against Mexicans, African Americans, and indigenous peoples after the infamous battles of the Alamo and of San Jacinto, both in 1836. Resisting an easy opposition between good versus evil and brown versus white characters, the novel also features Micaela’s Mexican-Anglo cousin who assists and hinders her progress. Micaela’s travels give us a new portrayal of the American West, populated by people of mixed races who are vexed by the collision of cultures and politics. Ultimately, Micaela’s journey and her romance with a Black/American Indian woman teach her that there are no easy solutions to the injustices that birthed the Texas Republic . . .This novel is an intervention in queer history and fiction with its love story between two women of color in mid-nineteenth-century Texas. Pérez also shows how a colonial past still haunts our nation’s imagination. The battles of the Alamo and San Jacinto offered freedom and liberty to Texans, but what is often erased from the story is that common people who were Mexican, Indian, and Black did not necessarily benefit from the influx of so many Anglo immigrants to Texas. The social themes and identity issues that Pérez explores—political climate, debates over immigration, and historical revision of the American West—are current today.“Pérez’s sparse, clean writing style is a blend of Cormac McCarthy, Carson McCullers, and Annie Proulx. This makes for a quick and engrossing reading experience as the narrative has a fluid quality about it.” —Alicia Gaspar de Alba, professor and chair of Chicana and Chicano Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, and author of Sor Juana’s Second Dream “Riveting . . . Emma Pérez captures well the violence and the chaos of the southwest borderlands during the time of territorial and international disputes in the 1800s. . . . Perez vividly depicts the conflicts between nations with the authority of a historian and with language belonging to a poet. A fine, fine read.” —Helena Maria Viramontes, author of Their Dogs Came with Them“Pérez’s new novel . . . Powerfully presents a revenge tale from an unusual point of view, that of a displaced Chicana in 1836 Texas. . . . The writing is sharp and clever. The dialogue is realistic.” —Lambda Literary, Lambda Award Finalist “Filled with lush beauty, harshness, and horrifying brutality, this is one of those books in which you just KNOW what’s going to happen at the end—but you’re wrong.” —The Gay & Lesbian Review

  Show book