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THE DESERT DWELLERS TRILOGY

This packaged set of three acclaimed novels, covers twelve transformative years—1875 to 1887—in the life of the series’ big-hearted protagonist. The Reformer’s Apprentice opens with Frieda juggling a double life: adoring follower of a pioneer feminist and unpaid, harassed cook at her father’s San Francisco kosher boardinghouse. At twenty-two, she flees with an Arizona pioneer, a Jew, of sorts. In the First Lady of Dos Cacahuates Frieda survives sandstorms, flashfloods, heat, infidelity (surprisingly hers), fraudulence, and poverty. But Bennie’s love for her, Dos Cacahuates, and the desert proves contagious. Reckoning occurs in On Her Way Home, when her visiting kid sister is kidnapped by a mur­derer.

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EVENING FERRY

Following the success of Snow Island (2002), Katherine Towler returns to the fictional New England island with Evening Ferry— the second installment of the multi-generational trilogy about family bonds, unexpected love, and the threat of war.

In the summer of 1965, Rachel returns to Snow Island to care for her injured father and discovers her mother’s diaries hidden in a closet. Reading Phoebe Shattuck’s account of her life as a wife and a mother, Rachel learns the truth about her own family’s history, her mother’s death, and her own aspirations to lead a new life.

In elegant prose and inspired storytelling,

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THE FAMILY TREE

When Rebecca Monroe—married to Alistair, a scientist who doesn’t believe in fate, but rather genetic disposition—discovers that she is pregnant, she begins to question what makes us who we are and whether her own precarious family history will play a role in her future.

For Rebecca, the wry and observant narrator of The Family Tree, simple things said over breakfast take on greater meaning; a home-improvement project foreshadows darker things to come; the color of one’s eyes, the slope of a forehead are all missing pieces to the truth behind the family tree.

At once nostalgic and refreshingly original,

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THE GILDED CHAMBER

For centuries her name has been a byword for feminine beauty, guile, and wisdom. This sweeping, meticulously researched novel restores Esther to her full, complex humanity while reanimating the glit­tering Persian Empire in which her story unfolded. Esther comes to that land as a terrified Jewish orphan betrothed to her cousin, a well-connected courtier. She finds a world racked by intrigue and unfathomable hatreds and realizes that the only way to survive is to win the heart of its king. Pas­sionate, suspenseful, and historically authentic, The Gilded Chamber illu­minates the dilemma of a woman torn between her heart and her sense of duty,

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IF YOU COULD SEE ME NOW

In her third novel, bestselling author Cecelia Ahern introduces us to two sisters at odds with each other. Elizabeth’s life is an organized mess. The organized part is all due to her own efforts. The mess is entirely due to her sister, Saoirse, whose personal problems leave Elizabeth scrambling to pick up the pieces. One of these pieces is Saoirse’s six-year-old son, Luke. Luke is quiet and contemplative, until the arrival of a new friend, Ivan, turns him into an outgoing, lively kid. And Elizabeth’s life is about to change in wonderful ways she has only dreamed of.

With all the warmth and wit that fans have come to expect from Cecelia Ahern,

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THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB

 In California’s Central Valley, five women and one man meet to discuss Jane Austen’s novels. Over the six months they get together, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suit­able, and love happens. With her eye for the frailties of human behavior and her ear for the absurdities of social intercourse, Karen Joy Fowler has never been wittier or her characters more appealing. The result is a deli­cious dissection of modern relationships.

Dedicated Austenites will delight in unearthing the echoes of Austen that run through the novel, but most readers will simply enjoy the vision and voice that,

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