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MISS ALCOTT’S E-MAIL

In searching for the answers to life’s enduring questions, Kit Bakke sends an e-mail to her heroine, Louisa May Alcott and is amazed to receive a reply. Their correspondence – a mixture of biography, history and autobiography – becomes an intertwined dance of ideas and stories, bridging the mix-1800s and the twenty-first century. Together, they discuss issues of women’s rights, the obligation to help the sick and needy, and the moral and personal responsibility to resist injustice and initiate reform.

For Kit Bakke, Alcott is considerably more than the author of Little Women. “Her abolitionist zeal,

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THE SEA CAPTAIN’S WIFE

 Award-winning historian Martha Hodes brings us into the extraordinary world of Eunice Connolly. Born white and poor in New England, Eunice followed her first husband to the Deep South and soon found her relatives fighting on opposite sides of the Civil War. Back in New England, Eunice and her children struggled to get by — until Eunice fell in love with a well-to-do black sea captain, married him, and moved to his home in the British Caribbean. Tracking every lead in the family letters, Hodes retraced Eunice’s footsteps and met descendants along the way. The Sea Captain’s Wife takes up grand themes of American history —

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ALONG THIS WAY

 First published in 1933, this is the extraordinary story of a truly remarkable American life, that of James Weldon Johnsona leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance who triumphed over institutionalized racism to become a celebrated educator, lawyer, diplomat, editor, novelist, poet, and reformer. Johnson illustrates through his multiple careers the full contexts of the black struggle and the importance to produce great literature and art, to advance the placement of African-Americans in America.

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MONEY CHANGES EVERYTHING

 The editors of The Friend Who Got Away are back with a new anthology that will do for money what they did for women’s friendships.

Ours is a culture of confession, yet money remains a distinctly taboo subject for most Americans. In this riveting anthology, a host of celebrated writers explore the complicated role money has played in their lives, whether they’re hiding from creditors or hiding a trust fund. This collection will touch a nerve with anyone who’s ever been afraid to reveal their bank balance.

In these wide-ranging personal essays,

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THE NEW EARTH

The Power of Now established Eckhart Tolle as one of the leading spiritual teachers writing today. Now, his long-awaited follow-up brings his inspiring and profound message to a whole new audience.

Building on the astonishing success of The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle takes us beyond our own lives to show that we now have the opportunity to birth a new, more loving world. This involves a radical inner leap of consciousness from the current identification with our ego to an entirely new way of thinking about who we are. For this to happen,

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THE GENTLE AX

 Fresh off the case of a deranged student who murdered his landlady, noted police investigator Porfiry Petrovich barely takes a breath before a bizarre and very grisly double murder lands him back on the streets of the tsarist St. Petersburg he knows all too well. The sardonic sleuth follows a trail from the drinking dens of the Haymarket district to an altogether more genteel stratum of society—a hunt that leads him to a conclusion even he will find shocking. In the tradition of such first-rate historical novels such as The Alienist and The Dante Club,

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