A wonderful novelWaters is almost Dickensian in her wealth of description and depth of characterChicago Tribune Moving back through the s through air raids blacked-out streets illicit partying and sexual adventure to end with its beginning in The Night Watch tells the story of four Londonersthree women and a young man with a pastwhose lives and those of their friends and lovers connect in tragedy stunning surprise and exquisite turns only to change irreversibly in the shadow of a grand historical event
Publisher: n/a
|
9781594489051
|
Hardcover
Bronte's Mistress
By Austin, Finola
This dazzling debut novel for fans of Mrs. Poe and Longbourn explores the scandalous historical love affair between Branwell Bronte and Lydia Robinson, giving voice to the woman who allegedly corrupted her son's innocent tutor and brought down the entire Bronte family.Yorkshire, 1843: Lydia Robinson - mistress of Thorp Green Hall - has lost her precious young daughter and her mother within the same year. She returns to her bleak home, grief-stricken and unmoored. With her teenage daughters rebelling, her testy mother-in-law scrutinizing her every move, and her marriage grown cold, Lydia is restless and yearning for something more. All of that changes with the arrival of her son's tutor, Branwell Bronte, brother of her daughters' governess, Miss Anne Bronte and those other writerly sisters, Charlotte and Emily.
Publisher: n/a
|
9781982137236
|
Hardcover
The House of Velvet and Glass
By Howe, Katherine
Katherine Howe, author of the phenomenal New York Times bestseller The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, returns with an entrancing historical novel set in Boston in , where a young woman stands on the cusp of a new century, torn between loss and love, driven to seek answers in the depths of a crystal ball. Still reeling from the deaths of her mother and sister on the Titanic, Sibyl Allston is living a life of quiet desperation with her taciturn father and scandal-plagued brother in an elegant town house in Bostons Back Bay. Trapped in a world over which she has no control, Sybil flees for solace to the parlor of a table-turning medium. But when her brother is suddenly kicked out of Harvard under mysterious circumstances and falls under the sway of a strange young woman, Sibyl turns for help to psychology professor Benton Jones, despite the unspoken tensions of their shared past.
Publisher: n/a
|
1401340911
|
Hardcover
Empire
By Saylor, Steven
"May Steven Saylor's Roman empire never fall. A modern master of historical fiction, Saylor convincingly transports us into the ancient world...enthralling!" --USA Today on Roma Continuing the saga begun in his New York Times bestselling novel Roma, Steven Saylor charts the destinies of the aristocratic Pinarius family, from the reign of Augustus to height of Rome's empire. The Pinarii, generation after generation, are witness to greatest empire in the ancient world and of the emperors that ruled it--from the machinations of Tiberius and the madness of Caligula, to the decadence of Nero and the golden age of Trajan and Hadrian and more. Empire is filled with the dramatic, defining moments of the age, including the Great Fire, the persecution of the Christians, and the astounding opening games of the Colosseum.
Publisher: n/a
|
9780312381011
|
Hardcover
Early Warning
By Smiley, Jane
From the Pulitzer Prize-winner: the second installment, following Some Luck, of her widely acclaimed, best-selling American trilogy, which brings the journey of a remarkable family with roots in the Iowa heartland into mid-century America Early Warning opens in 1953 with the Langdon family at a crossroads. Their stalwart patriarch, Walter, who with his wife, Rosanna, sustained their farm for three decades, has suddenly died, leaving their five children, now adults, looking to the future. Only one will remain in Iowa to work the land, while the others scatter to Washington, D.C., California, and everywhere in between. As the country moves out of post-World War II optimism through the darker landscape of the Cold War and the social and sexual revolutions of the 1960s and '70s, and then into the unprecedented wealth - for some - of the early 1980s, the Langdon children each follow a different path in a rapidly changing world.
Publisher: n/a
|
9780307700322
|
Hardcover
A Hero Born
By Yong, Jin
The epic Chinese classic and phenomenon published in the US for the first time! A fantastical generational saga and kung fu epic, A Hero Born is the classic novel of its time, stretching from the Song Empire (China 1200 AD) to the appearance of a warlord whose name will endure for eternity: Genghis Khan. Filled with an extraordinary cast of characters, A Hero Born is a tale of fantasy and wonder, love and passion, treachery and war, betrayal and brotherhood.And then a hero is born...After his father, a Song patriot, was murdered, Guo Jing and his mother fled to the plains and joined Ghengis Khan and his people. Loyal, humble and driven, he learned all he could from the warlord and his army in hopes of one day joining them in their cause. But what Guo Jing doesn't know is that he's destined to battle an opponent that will challenge him in every way imaginable and with a connection to his past that no one envisioned.With the help and guidance of his shifus, The Seven Heroes of the South, Guo Jing returns to China to face his foe and carry out his destiny. But in a land divided by treachery and war, betrayal and ambition, he'll have to put his courage and knowledge to the test to survive.
Publisher: n/a
|
9781250220608
|
Hardcover
The Other Typist
By Rindell, Suzanne
"Take a dollop of Alfred Hitchcock, a dollop of Patricia Highsmith, throw in some Great Gatsby flourishes, and the result is Rindell’s debut, a pitch-black comedy about a police stenographer accused of murder in 1920s Manhattan.... A deliciously addictive, cinematically influenced page-turner, both comic and provocative." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review For fans of The Talented Mr. Ripley and The Great Gatsby comes one of the most memorable unreliable narrators in years. Rose Baker seals men’s fates. With a few strokes of the keys that sit before her, she can send a person away for life in prison. A typist in a New York City Police Department precinct, Rose is like a high priestess. Confessions are her job.
Publisher: n/a
|
399161465
|
Hardcover
Simon the Fiddler
By Jiles, Paulette
The critically acclaimed author returns to Texas in this atmospheric story, set at the end of the Civil War, about an itinerant fiddle player, a ragtag band of musicians with whom he travels trying to make a living, and the charming young Irish lass who steals his heart.
Publisher: n/a
|
9780062966742
|
Book
Kings and Emperors
By Lambdin, Dewey
In Kings and Emperors, the twenty-first book in Dewey Lambdin's beloved Alan Lewrie series, Captain Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, is still in Gibraltar, his schemes for raids along the coast of southern Spain shot to a halt. He is reduced to commanding a clutch of harbor defense gunboats in the bay while his ship, HMS Sapphire, slowly grounds herself on a reef of beef bones! Until Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of peaceful Portugal and his so-called collaborative march into Spain change everything, freeing Sapphire to roam against the King's enemies once more!As kings are overthrown and popular uprisings break out all across Spain, Lewrie's right back in the action, ferrying weapons to arm Spanish patriots, scouting within close gun range of the impregnable fort of Ceuta, escorting the advance units of British expeditionary armies to aid the Spanish, and even going ashore to witness the first battles between Sir Arthur Wellesley, later the Duke of Wellington, and Napoleon's best Marshals, as the long Peninsular War that broke Imperial France begins to unfold.
Publisher: n/a
|
9781250030061
|
Hardcover
Sin Eater
By Campisi, Megan
The Handmaid's Tale meets Alice in Wonderland in this gripping and imaginative historical novel about a shunned orphan girl in 16th-century England who is ensnared in a deadly royal plot and must turn her subjugation into her power.The Sin Eater walks among us, unseen, unheard Sins of our flesh become sins of Hers Following Her to the grave, unseen, unheard The Sin Eater Walks Among Us. For the crime of stealing bread, fourteen-year-old May receives a life sentence: she must become a Sin Eater - a shunned woman, brutally marked, whose fate is to hear the final confessions of the dying, eat ritual foods symbolizing their sins as a funeral rite, and thereby shoulder their transgressions to grant their souls access to heaven. Orphaned and friendless, apprenticed to an older Sin Eater who cannot speak to her, May must make her way in a dangerous and cruel world she barely understands.
Publisher: n/a
|
9781982124106
|
Hardcover
Medicus
By Downie, Ruth
"The highest praise I can offer this wonderfully entertaining portrait of the Roman Empire at its most far-flung is that I hope Downie is planning a series. Ruso is too good a character for just one book." -- Malcolm Jones, Newsweek Divorced and down on his luck, Gaius Petreius Ruso has made the rash decision to seek his fortune in an inclement outpost of the Roman Empire, namely Britannia. In a moment of weakness, after a straight thirtysix- hour shift at the army hospital, he succumbs to compassion and rescues an injured slave girl, Tilla, from the hands of her abusive owner. Now he has a new problem: a slave who won't talk and can't cook, and drags trouble in her wake. Before he knows it, Ruso is caught in the middle of an investigation into the deaths of prostitutes working out of the local bar.
Publisher: n/a
|
9781596914278
|
Paperback
The Gods of Tango
By Robertis, Carolina De
A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2015An NBC Latino Selection for Ten Great Latino Books Published in 2015February 1913: seventeen-year-old Leda, clutching a suitcase and her father's cherished violin, leaves her small Italian village for a new home (and husband) halfway across the world in Argentina. Upon her arrival in Buenos Aires, Leda is shocked to find that her bridegroom has been killed. Unable to fathom the idea of returning home, she remains in this unfamiliar city, living in a commune, without friends or family, on the brink of destitution. She finally acts on a passion she has kept secret for years: mastering the violin. Leda is seduced by the music that underscores life in the city: tango, born from lower-class immigrant voices, now the illicit, scandalous dance of brothels and cabarets.
Publisher: n/a
|
9781101872857
|
Paperback
Under a dark summer sky
By Llc., Vanessa Lafaye; Karen Chilton; Recorded Books
Florida, 1935. In Heron Key, relationships are as tangled as the swamp's mangrove roots. It's been eighteen long years since Henry went away to war. Still, Missy has waited, cleaning the Kincaids' house and counting the stars. Now he's back, but she barely recognizes the desperate, destitute veteran he's become--unsure of his future, ashamed of his past. When a white woman is found beaten nearly to death after the Fourth of July barbecue, suspicion falls on him immediately. As tensions rise in the small community, the barometer starts to plummet--a massive hurricane is on its way.
Publisher: n/a
|
9781490633480
|
Audiobook
The Paying Guests
By Waters, Sarah
The New York Times bestselling novel that has been called "a tour de force" (Wall Street Journal) , "unputdownable" (The Washington Post) , "a delicious hothouse of a novel" (USA Today) , "effortless" (The Economist) , "seductive" (Vanity Fair) and "pitch perfect" (Salon) "Superb, bewitching ... Forget about Fifty Shades of Grey; this novel is one of the most sensual you will ever read, and all without sacrificing either good taste or a "G" rating" - NPR "One of the year's most engrossing and suspenseful novels ... a love affair, a shocking murder, and a flawless ending ... Will keep you sleepless for three nights straight and leave you grasping for another book that can sustain that high.
Publisher: n/a
|
1594633118
|
Hardcover
The Glass Ocean
By Williams, Beatriz
From the New York Times bestselling authors of The Forgotten Room comes a captivating historical mystery, infused with romance, that links the lives of three women across a century - two deep in the past, one in the present - to the doomed passenger liner, RMS Lusitania.May 2013Her finances are in dire straits and bestselling author Sarah Blake is struggling to find a big idea for her next book. Desperate, she breaks the one promise she made to her Alzheimer's-stricken mother and opens an old chest that belonged to her great-grandfather, who died when the RMS Lusitania was sunk by a German U-Boat in 1915. What she discovers there could change history. Sarah embarks on an ambitious journey to England to enlist the help of John Langford, a recently disgraced Member of Parliament whose family archives might contain the only key to the long-ago catastrophe. . . .April 1915Southern belle Caroline Telfair Hochstetter's marriage is in crisis. Her formerly attentive industrialist husband, Gilbert, has become remote, pre-occupied with business . . . and something else that she can't quite put a finger on. She's hoping a trip to London in Lusitania's lavish first-class accommodations will help them reconnect - but she can't ignore the spark she feels for her old friend, Robert Langford, who turns out to be on the same voyage. Feeling restless and longing for a different existence, Caroline is determined to stop being a bystander, and take charge of her own life. . . .Tessa Fairweather is traveling second-class on the Lusitania, returning home to Devon. Or at least, that's her story. Tessa has never left the United States and her English accent is a hasty fake. She's really Tennessee Schaff, the daughter of a roving con man, and she can steal and forge just about anything. But she's had enough. Her partner has promised that if they can pull off this one last heist aboard the Lusitania, they'll finally leave the game behind. Tess desperately wants to believe that, but Tess has the uneasy feeling there's something about this job that isn't as it seems. . . .As the Lusitania steams toward its fate, three women work against time to unravel a plot that will change the course of their own lives . . . and history itself.
Publisher: n/a
|
9780062642455
|
Hardcover
News of the World
By Jiles, Paulette
National Book Award Finalist - FictionIt is 1870 and Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels through northern Texas, giving live readings to paying audiences hungry for news of the world. An elderly widower who has lived through three wars and fought in two of them, the captain enjoys his rootless, solitary existence.In Wichita Falls, he is offered a $50 gold piece to deliver a young orphan to her relatives in San Antonio. Four years earlier, a band of Kiowa raiders killed Johanna's parents and sister; sparing the little girl, they raised her as one of their own. Recently rescued by the U.S. army, the ten-year-old has once again been torn away from the only home she knows.Their 400-mile journey south through unsettled territory and unforgiving terrain proves difficult and at times dangerous. Johanna has forgotten the English language, tries to escape at every opportunity, throws away her shoes, and refuses to act "civilized." Yet as the miles pass, the two lonely survivors tentatively begin to trust each other, forging a bond that marks the difference between life and death in this treacherous land.Arriving in San Antonio, the reunion is neither happy nor welcome. The captain must hand Johanna over to an aunt and uncle she does not remember - strangers who regard her as an unwanted burden. A respectable man, Captain Kidd is faced with a terrible choice: abandon the girl to her fate or become - in the eyes of the law - a kidnapper himself. Exquisitely rendered and morally complex, News of the World is a brilliant work of historical fiction that explores the boundaries of family, responsibility, honor, and trust.
The Night Watch
By Waters, Sarah
A wonderful novelWaters is almost Dickensian in her wealth of description and depth of characterChicago Tribune Moving back through the s through air raids blacked-out streets illicit partying and sexual adventure to end with its beginning in The Night Watch tells the story of four Londonersthree women and a young man with a pastwhose lives and those of their friends and lovers connect in tragedy stunning surprise and exquisite turns only to change irreversibly in the shadow of a grand historical event
Bronte's Mistress
By Austin, Finola
This dazzling debut novel for fans of Mrs. Poe and Longbourn explores the scandalous historical love affair between Branwell Bronte and Lydia Robinson, giving voice to the woman who allegedly corrupted her son's innocent tutor and brought down the entire Bronte family.Yorkshire, 1843: Lydia Robinson - mistress of Thorp Green Hall - has lost her precious young daughter and her mother within the same year. She returns to her bleak home, grief-stricken and unmoored. With her teenage daughters rebelling, her testy mother-in-law scrutinizing her every move, and her marriage grown cold, Lydia is restless and yearning for something more. All of that changes with the arrival of her son's tutor, Branwell Bronte, brother of her daughters' governess, Miss Anne Bronte and those other writerly sisters, Charlotte and Emily.
The House of Velvet and Glass
By Howe, Katherine
Katherine Howe, author of the phenomenal New York Times bestseller The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, returns with an entrancing historical novel set in Boston in , where a young woman stands on the cusp of a new century, torn between loss and love, driven to seek answers in the depths of a crystal ball. Still reeling from the deaths of her mother and sister on the Titanic, Sibyl Allston is living a life of quiet desperation with her taciturn father and scandal-plagued brother in an elegant town house in Bostons Back Bay. Trapped in a world over which she has no control, Sybil flees for solace to the parlor of a table-turning medium. But when her brother is suddenly kicked out of Harvard under mysterious circumstances and falls under the sway of a strange young woman, Sibyl turns for help to psychology professor Benton Jones, despite the unspoken tensions of their shared past.
Empire
By Saylor, Steven
"May Steven Saylor's Roman empire never fall. A modern master of historical fiction, Saylor convincingly transports us into the ancient world...enthralling!" --USA Today on Roma Continuing the saga begun in his New York Times bestselling novel Roma, Steven Saylor charts the destinies of the aristocratic Pinarius family, from the reign of Augustus to height of Rome's empire. The Pinarii, generation after generation, are witness to greatest empire in the ancient world and of the emperors that ruled it--from the machinations of Tiberius and the madness of Caligula, to the decadence of Nero and the golden age of Trajan and Hadrian and more. Empire is filled with the dramatic, defining moments of the age, including the Great Fire, the persecution of the Christians, and the astounding opening games of the Colosseum.
Early Warning
By Smiley, Jane
From the Pulitzer Prize-winner: the second installment, following Some Luck, of her widely acclaimed, best-selling American trilogy, which brings the journey of a remarkable family with roots in the Iowa heartland into mid-century America Early Warning opens in 1953 with the Langdon family at a crossroads. Their stalwart patriarch, Walter, who with his wife, Rosanna, sustained their farm for three decades, has suddenly died, leaving their five children, now adults, looking to the future. Only one will remain in Iowa to work the land, while the others scatter to Washington, D.C., California, and everywhere in between. As the country moves out of post-World War II optimism through the darker landscape of the Cold War and the social and sexual revolutions of the 1960s and '70s, and then into the unprecedented wealth - for some - of the early 1980s, the Langdon children each follow a different path in a rapidly changing world.
A Hero Born
By Yong, Jin
The epic Chinese classic and phenomenon published in the US for the first time! A fantastical generational saga and kung fu epic, A Hero Born is the classic novel of its time, stretching from the Song Empire (China 1200 AD) to the appearance of a warlord whose name will endure for eternity: Genghis Khan. Filled with an extraordinary cast of characters, A Hero Born is a tale of fantasy and wonder, love and passion, treachery and war, betrayal and brotherhood.And then a hero is born...After his father, a Song patriot, was murdered, Guo Jing and his mother fled to the plains and joined Ghengis Khan and his people. Loyal, humble and driven, he learned all he could from the warlord and his army in hopes of one day joining them in their cause. But what Guo Jing doesn't know is that he's destined to battle an opponent that will challenge him in every way imaginable and with a connection to his past that no one envisioned.With the help and guidance of his shifus, The Seven Heroes of the South, Guo Jing returns to China to face his foe and carry out his destiny. But in a land divided by treachery and war, betrayal and ambition, he'll have to put his courage and knowledge to the test to survive.
The Other Typist
By Rindell, Suzanne
"Take a dollop of Alfred Hitchcock, a dollop of Patricia Highsmith, throw in some Great Gatsby flourishes, and the result is Rindell’s debut, a pitch-black comedy about a police stenographer accused of murder in 1920s Manhattan.... A deliciously addictive, cinematically influenced page-turner, both comic and provocative." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review For fans of The Talented Mr. Ripley and The Great Gatsby comes one of the most memorable unreliable narrators in years. Rose Baker seals men’s fates. With a few strokes of the keys that sit before her, she can send a person away for life in prison. A typist in a New York City Police Department precinct, Rose is like a high priestess. Confessions are her job.
Simon the Fiddler
By Jiles, Paulette
The critically acclaimed author returns to Texas in this atmospheric story, set at the end of the Civil War, about an itinerant fiddle player, a ragtag band of musicians with whom he travels trying to make a living, and the charming young Irish lass who steals his heart.
Kings and Emperors
By Lambdin, Dewey
In Kings and Emperors, the twenty-first book in Dewey Lambdin's beloved Alan Lewrie series, Captain Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, is still in Gibraltar, his schemes for raids along the coast of southern Spain shot to a halt. He is reduced to commanding a clutch of harbor defense gunboats in the bay while his ship, HMS Sapphire, slowly grounds herself on a reef of beef bones! Until Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of peaceful Portugal and his so-called collaborative march into Spain change everything, freeing Sapphire to roam against the King's enemies once more!As kings are overthrown and popular uprisings break out all across Spain, Lewrie's right back in the action, ferrying weapons to arm Spanish patriots, scouting within close gun range of the impregnable fort of Ceuta, escorting the advance units of British expeditionary armies to aid the Spanish, and even going ashore to witness the first battles between Sir Arthur Wellesley, later the Duke of Wellington, and Napoleon's best Marshals, as the long Peninsular War that broke Imperial France begins to unfold.
Sin Eater
By Campisi, Megan
The Handmaid's Tale meets Alice in Wonderland in this gripping and imaginative historical novel about a shunned orphan girl in 16th-century England who is ensnared in a deadly royal plot and must turn her subjugation into her power.The Sin Eater walks among us, unseen, unheard Sins of our flesh become sins of Hers Following Her to the grave, unseen, unheard The Sin Eater Walks Among Us. For the crime of stealing bread, fourteen-year-old May receives a life sentence: she must become a Sin Eater - a shunned woman, brutally marked, whose fate is to hear the final confessions of the dying, eat ritual foods symbolizing their sins as a funeral rite, and thereby shoulder their transgressions to grant their souls access to heaven. Orphaned and friendless, apprenticed to an older Sin Eater who cannot speak to her, May must make her way in a dangerous and cruel world she barely understands.
Medicus
By Downie, Ruth
"The highest praise I can offer this wonderfully entertaining portrait of the Roman Empire at its most far-flung is that I hope Downie is planning a series. Ruso is too good a character for just one book." -- Malcolm Jones, Newsweek Divorced and down on his luck, Gaius Petreius Ruso has made the rash decision to seek his fortune in an inclement outpost of the Roman Empire, namely Britannia. In a moment of weakness, after a straight thirtysix- hour shift at the army hospital, he succumbs to compassion and rescues an injured slave girl, Tilla, from the hands of her abusive owner. Now he has a new problem: a slave who won't talk and can't cook, and drags trouble in her wake. Before he knows it, Ruso is caught in the middle of an investigation into the deaths of prostitutes working out of the local bar.
The Gods of Tango
By Robertis, Carolina De
A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2015An NBC Latino Selection for Ten Great Latino Books Published in 2015February 1913: seventeen-year-old Leda, clutching a suitcase and her father's cherished violin, leaves her small Italian village for a new home (and husband) halfway across the world in Argentina. Upon her arrival in Buenos Aires, Leda is shocked to find that her bridegroom has been killed. Unable to fathom the idea of returning home, she remains in this unfamiliar city, living in a commune, without friends or family, on the brink of destitution. She finally acts on a passion she has kept secret for years: mastering the violin. Leda is seduced by the music that underscores life in the city: tango, born from lower-class immigrant voices, now the illicit, scandalous dance of brothels and cabarets.
Under a dark summer sky
By Llc., Vanessa Lafaye; Karen Chilton; Recorded Books
Florida, 1935. In Heron Key, relationships are as tangled as the swamp's mangrove roots. It's been eighteen long years since Henry went away to war. Still, Missy has waited, cleaning the Kincaids' house and counting the stars. Now he's back, but she barely recognizes the desperate, destitute veteran he's become--unsure of his future, ashamed of his past. When a white woman is found beaten nearly to death after the Fourth of July barbecue, suspicion falls on him immediately. As tensions rise in the small community, the barometer starts to plummet--a massive hurricane is on its way.
The Paying Guests
By Waters, Sarah
The New York Times bestselling novel that has been called "a tour de force" (Wall Street Journal) , "unputdownable" (The Washington Post) , "a delicious hothouse of a novel" (USA Today) , "effortless" (The Economist) , "seductive" (Vanity Fair) and "pitch perfect" (Salon) "Superb, bewitching ... Forget about Fifty Shades of Grey; this novel is one of the most sensual you will ever read, and all without sacrificing either good taste or a "G" rating" - NPR "One of the year's most engrossing and suspenseful novels ... a love affair, a shocking murder, and a flawless ending ... Will keep you sleepless for three nights straight and leave you grasping for another book that can sustain that high.
The Glass Ocean
By Williams, Beatriz
From the New York Times bestselling authors of The Forgotten Room comes a captivating historical mystery, infused with romance, that links the lives of three women across a century - two deep in the past, one in the present - to the doomed passenger liner, RMS Lusitania.May 2013Her finances are in dire straits and bestselling author Sarah Blake is struggling to find a big idea for her next book. Desperate, she breaks the one promise she made to her Alzheimer's-stricken mother and opens an old chest that belonged to her great-grandfather, who died when the RMS Lusitania was sunk by a German U-Boat in 1915. What she discovers there could change history. Sarah embarks on an ambitious journey to England to enlist the help of John Langford, a recently disgraced Member of Parliament whose family archives might contain the only key to the long-ago catastrophe. . . .April 1915Southern belle Caroline Telfair Hochstetter's marriage is in crisis. Her formerly attentive industrialist husband, Gilbert, has become remote, pre-occupied with business . . . and something else that she can't quite put a finger on. She's hoping a trip to London in Lusitania's lavish first-class accommodations will help them reconnect - but she can't ignore the spark she feels for her old friend, Robert Langford, who turns out to be on the same voyage. Feeling restless and longing for a different existence, Caroline is determined to stop being a bystander, and take charge of her own life. . . .Tessa Fairweather is traveling second-class on the Lusitania, returning home to Devon. Or at least, that's her story. Tessa has never left the United States and her English accent is a hasty fake. She's really Tennessee Schaff, the daughter of a roving con man, and she can steal and forge just about anything. But she's had enough. Her partner has promised that if they can pull off this one last heist aboard the Lusitania, they'll finally leave the game behind. Tess desperately wants to believe that, but Tess has the uneasy feeling there's something about this job that isn't as it seems. . . .As the Lusitania steams toward its fate, three women work against time to unravel a plot that will change the course of their own lives . . . and history itself.
News of the World
By Jiles, Paulette
National Book Award Finalist - FictionIt is 1870 and Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels through northern Texas, giving live readings to paying audiences hungry for news of the world. An elderly widower who has lived through three wars and fought in two of them, the captain enjoys his rootless, solitary existence.In Wichita Falls, he is offered a $50 gold piece to deliver a young orphan to her relatives in San Antonio. Four years earlier, a band of Kiowa raiders killed Johanna's parents and sister; sparing the little girl, they raised her as one of their own. Recently rescued by the U.S. army, the ten-year-old has once again been torn away from the only home she knows.Their 400-mile journey south through unsettled territory and unforgiving terrain proves difficult and at times dangerous. Johanna has forgotten the English language, tries to escape at every opportunity, throws away her shoes, and refuses to act "civilized." Yet as the miles pass, the two lonely survivors tentatively begin to trust each other, forging a bond that marks the difference between life and death in this treacherous land.Arriving in San Antonio, the reunion is neither happy nor welcome. The captain must hand Johanna over to an aunt and uncle she does not remember - strangers who regard her as an unwanted burden. A respectable man, Captain Kidd is faced with a terrible choice: abandon the girl to her fate or become - in the eyes of the law - a kidnapper himself. Exquisitely rendered and morally complex, News of the World is a brilliant work of historical fiction that explores the boundaries of family, responsibility, honor, and trust.