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THE RIVER QUEEN

Julienne Ashby, 24, must change her pampered ways after her father, a prominent businessman in Natchez, Mississippi, loses their fortune and family home to a bad gambling habit in 1850. Like a fish out of water, she aims to refit their one remaining possession, an old riverboat, in hopes of making a profit and restoring the Cuvier name along the mighty Mississippi.

Desperate for help in doing the restoration work, prideful Julienne hires Dallas Bronte, a humiliated captain whose drinking problem stopped his water ways many years ago. Despite initial success, the struggles they will face with other ship owners are almost as challenging as the fiery feelings –

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NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE

The year is 1968 and the Vietnam War is at its height. William

Carson, a World War II veteran teaching in a small New England Prep

School, has for more than two decades been haunted by nightmares whose

content he has never shared with his wife, Anne, or their two sons,

Joshua, a Marine on active duty in Vietnam, and Andrew, an ROTC college

senior bound for active duty following graduation. When Joshua is

reported missing in combat, the web of secrets and denial that has kept

the family together for more than twenty years begins to unravel as

Anne and William face the possible loss of their sons,

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THE LAST TIME I SAW PARIS

A stunning debut novel of a young American woman who becomes a spy in Paris during World War II.

May 1940. Fleeing a glamorous Manhattan life built on lies, Claire Harris arrives in Paris with a romantic vision of starting anew. But she didn’t anticipate the sight of Nazi soldiers marching under the Arc de Triomphe. Her plans smashed by the German occupation, the once- privileged socialite’s only option is to take a job in a flower shop under the tutelage of a sophisticated Parisian florist.

In exchange for false identity papers, Claire agrees to aid the French Resistance.

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THREE MAIDS FOR A CROWN

In the second novel from Ella March Chase, we meet sixteen-year-old Jane Grey, a quiet and obedient young lady destined to become the shortest reigning English monarch. Her beautiful middle sister Katherine Grey charms all the right people–until loyalties shift. And finally Lady Mary Grey, a dwarf with a twisted spine whose goal is simply to protect people she loves–but at a terrible cost.  

In an age in which begetting sons was all that mattered and queens rose and fell on the sex of their child, these three girls with royal Tudor blood lived under the dangerous whims of parents with a passion for gambling.

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PRIVATE LIFE

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres: the powerful and deeply affecting story of one woman’s life, from post Civil-War Missouri to California in the midst of World War II. 

When Margaret Mayfield marries Captain Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early at the age of twenty-seven, she narrowly avoids condemning herself to life as an old maid. Instead, knowing little about marriage and even less about her husband, she moves with Andrew to his naval base in California. Margaret stands by Andrew during tragedies both historical and personal, but as World War II approaches and the secrets of her husband’s scientific and academic past begin to surface,

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WENCH

wench ‘wench n. from Middle English “wenchel,”

1 a: a girl, maid, young woman; a female child.

Situated in Ohio, a free territory before the Civil War, Tawawa House is

an idyllic retreat for Southern white men who vacation there every summer

with their enslaved black mistresses. It’s their open secret. Lizzie,

Reenie, and Sweet are regulars at the resort, building strong friendships over the

years. But when Mawu, as fearless as she is assured, comes along and starts talking

of running away, things change.

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