Seventeen-year-old Belle Boyd, an avowed rebel with a dangerous temper, shot a Union soldier in her home, and became a courier and spy for the Confederate army, using her considerable charms to seduce men on both sides. Emma Edmonds disguised herself as a man to enlist as a Union private named Frank Thompson, witnessing the bloodiest battles of the war and infiltrating enemy lines. The beautiful widow Rose O’Neal Greenhow engaged in affairs with powerful Northern politicians, and used her young daughter to send information to Southern generals. Elizabeth Van Lew, a wealthy Richmond abolitionist, hid behind her proper Southern manners as she orchestrated a far-reaching espionage ring—even placing a former slave inside the Confederate White House—right under the noses of increasingly suspicious rebel detectives.
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Newbery Medalist Laura Amy Schlitz brings her sharp wit and keen eye to early twentieth-century America in a comedic tour de force destined to become a modern classic.
Fourteen-year-old Joan Skraggs yearns for real life and true love—like the heroines in her beloved novels experience. But what hope is there for adventure, beauty, or art on a hardscrabble farm in Pennsylvania where the work never ends? Over the summer of 1911, Joan pours her heart out into her diary as she seeks a new, better life for herself—because maybe, just maybe, a hired girl cleaning and cooking for six dollars a week can become what a farm girl could only dream of—a woman with a future.
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Swedish Lapland, 1717. Maija, her husband Paavo and her daughters Frederika and Dorotea arrive from their native Finland, hoping to forget the traumas of their past and put down new roots in this harsh but beautiful land. Above them looms Blackåsen, a mountain whose foreboding presence looms over the valley and whose dark history seems to haunt the lives of those who live in its shadow.
One day, Frederika happens upon the mutilated body of one of their neighbors. The death is dismissed as a wolf attack, but Maija feels certain that the wounds could only have been inflicted by another man.
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With its tree-lined streets and curbside planters
brimming with spring bulbs, Amberley,
Massachusetts seems a good place for Cate Saunders
to start over. It’s been two years since her husband,
John, was killed in Iraq, and life has become
something to simply struggle through. Cate’s new
job as a caregiver doesn’t pay much, but the locals
are welcoming. Cate’s barely unpacked before she’s
drawn—reluctantly at first—into a circle of friends.
There’s Gaby, who nourishes her diner customers’ spirits as well as their
bodies;
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Set against the tumultuous background of apartheid South Africa, a powerful and moving debut about family, sacrifice, and discovering what it means to belong…
Celia Mphephu knows her place in the world. A black servant working in the white suburbs of 1960s Johannesburg, she’s all too aware of her limitations. Nonetheless, she has found herself a comfortable corner: She has a job, can support her faraway family, and is raising her youngest child, Miriam.
But as racial tensions explode, Celia’s world shifts. Her employers decide to flee the political turmoil and move to England—and they ask to adopt Miriam and take her with them.
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A Boston Globe Best Book of the Year
A simmering literary thriller of the unbreakable
bonds between mothers and their children, The
Winter People showcases the spellbinding talent
that has made Jennifer McMahon a bestselling
storyteller. This tale of ghostly secrets and dark
choices takes us to rural West Hall, Vermont, a
town known for strange disappearances. The most
legendary victim is Sara Harrison Shea. In 1908, she was found dead in the
field behind her house just months after the tragic death of her daughter,
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