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THE HEARTS OF HORSES

 In the winter of 1917, nineteen-year-old Martha Lessen saddles her horses and heads for a remote county in eastern Oregon, looking for work “gentling” wild horses. She chances on a rancher, George Bliss, who is willing to hire her on. Many of his regular hands are off fighting the war, and he glimpses, beneath her showy rodeo garb, a shy but strong-willed girl with a serious knowledge of horses.

So begins the irresistible tale of a young but determined woman trying to make a go of it in a man’s world. Over the course of several long, hard winter months,

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LIVE THROUGH THIS

With four young daughters and a miserably failed marriage, Debra Gwartney moves halfway across the country to Eugene, Oregon, for a new job and what she hopes will be a new life for herself and her daughters. The two oldest, Amanda, 15, and Stephanie, 13, have a symbiotic relationship so intense they barely know where one begins and the other leaves off. They come to blame their mother for their family’s dislocation and one day the two run off together—to the streets of their own city, then San Francisco, then utterly gone.

Faced with the unraveling of the family she thought she could hold together through blind love,

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HENRY’S SISTERS

 Cathy Lamb, the acclaimed author of Julia’s Chocolates and The Last Time I Was Me, delivers her most heartwarming novel to date as three sisters reunite during a family crisis.

Ever since the Bommarito sisters were little girls, their mother, River, has written them a letter on pink paper when she has something especially important to impart. And this time, the message is urgent and impossible to ignore—River requires open-heart surgery, and Isabelle and her sisters are needed at home to run the family bakery and take care of their brother and ailing grandmother.

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A GUIDE TO THE BIRDS OF EAST AFRICA

 For the past three years, Mr. Malik has been secretly in love with Rose Mbikwa, a woman who leads the weekly bird walks sponsored by the East African Ornithological Society. Just as Malik is getting up the nerve to invite Rose to the Nairobi Hunt Club Ball (the premier social occasion of the Kenyan calendar), Harry Khan, a nemesis from his school days, arrives in town. Khan has also become enraptured with Rose and announces his intent to invite her to the Ball. Rather than force Rose to choose between the two men, a clever solution is proposed. Whoever can identify the most species of birds in one week’s time gets the privilege of asking Ms.

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THE RETURN

From the internationally bestselling author of The Island comes a dazzling new novel of family betrayals, forbidden love, and historical turmoil.

 

Sonia knows nothing of the Granada’s shocking past, but ordering a simple cup of coffee in a quiet cafe will lead her into the extraordinary tale of a family’s fight to survive the horror of the Spanish Civil War.

Seventy years earlier, in the Ramirez family’s cafe, Concha and Pablo’s children relish an atmosphere of hope. Antonio is a serious young teacher, Ignacio a flamboyant matador, and Emilio a skilled musician.

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THE COURTIER’S SECRET

 France, 1680. Louis XIV, the Sun King, is at the height of his power. The court at Versailles is a paradise for privileged young women. Jeanne Yvette Mas Du Bois is unlike most other courtiersand her thirst for knowledge often incurs her father’s brutal wrath. But her uncle encourages Jeanne’s independence, secretly teaching her fencing in the palace’s labyrinthine basement.

When two of the king’s Musketeers are beset by criminals who are mere feet from Jeanne’s fencing lesson, she intervenes, saving one of the Musketeers’ lives. Hidden behind her mask, Jeanne is mistaken for a man.

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