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In the 1920s, during the golden age of the big top, Mabel Stark was the superstar of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, and one of America's most eccentric and unlikely celebrities. A tiny, curvaceous Kentucky blonde in a white leather bodysuit, Mabel was brazen, sexually adventurous, and, as the greatest tiger trainer in history, fearlessly courageous. That was then. This is now.
It's 1968. Mabel is turning eighty and is about to...
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"A sapphic reimagining of Mary Shelley's youth, vividly exploring innocence, young love, gothic mystery and the roots of her literary masterpiece, Frankenstein. Switzerland, 1816. A volcanic eruption in Indonesia envelopes the whole of Europe in ash and cloud. Amid this "year without a summer," eighteen-year-old Mary Shelley and her lover Percy Bysshe Shelley arrive at Lake Geneva to visit Lord Byron and his companion John Polidori. Anguished by the...
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"Sweeping yet intimate, Flight of the Wild Swan tells the story of Florence Nightingale, a brilliant, trailblazing woman whose humanity has been obscured beneath the iconic weight of legend. From her adolescence, Nightingale was determined to fulfill her life's calling to serve the sick and suffering. Overcoming Victorian hierarchies, familial expectation, patriarchal resistance, and her own illness, she used her hard-won celebrity as a battlefield...
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They could have been allies: two self-made millionaires who invented a global industry, in an era when wife and mother were supposed to be the highest goals for their sex. Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein each founded empires built on grit and determination...and yet they became locked in a feud spanning three continents, two world wars, and the Great Depression. Brought up in poverty, Canadian-born Elizabeth Arden changed popular opinion, persuading...
7) Ghost light
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A collaborative effort between W. B. Yeats and resident playwright John Synge at the Abbey Theatre in 1907 gives way to a barrier-breaking affair with teen actress Molly Allgood, who after World War II looks back on her career and the great love of her life.
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"A meticulously researched, engrossing and intimate portrait of Jane Austen's life, sensitively told through the eyes of her sister Cassandra, this poignant and often painstakingly honest tribute is also a celebration of the enduring strength of sisterly love." - Syrie James, author of The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen
"Lively...a must-read for Austen fans." - Booklist
"Cassandra's voice is perfectly pitched, true to Austen's England, and jam-packed...
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Description
"On a warm night in September, Yvonne Rudellat's house is bombed. Almost everything she owns is destroyed. Yvonne has no one left. She and her husband have long been estranged; her daughter, Jackie, is married and occupied with war work. Yvonne is no use to anyone-older, diminutive, always overlooked. As she prepares to take her own life, fate offers her a new path. Almost no one believes she can do it. She is a woman, unaccustomed to this form of...
10) Exiles
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Description
With Exiles, Ron Hansen tells the story of a notorious shipwreck that prompted Gerard Manley Hopkins to break years of "elected silence" with an outpouring of dazzling poetry.
In December 1875 the steamship Deutschland left Bremen, bound for England and then America. On board were five young nuns who, exiled by Bismarck's laws against Catholic religious orders, were going to begin their lives anew in Missouri. Early one morning, the ship ran aground...
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"April,1912: It's the perfect finale to a Grand Tour of Europe--sailing home on the largest, most luxurious ocean liner ever built. For the Fortune sisters, the voyage offers a chance to reflect on the treasures of the past they've seen--magnificent castles and museums in Italy and France, the ruins of Greece and the Middle East--and contemplate the futures that await them. For Alice, there's foreboding mixed with her excitement. A fortune teller...
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Description
"The international bestselling author of The Secret River and A Room Made of Leaves returns with a fictionalised account of her grandmother's life, commemorating a strong female character making the best out of the times and society she was born in. Dolly Maunder is born at the end of the nineteenth century, when society's long-locked doors are just starting to creak ajar for determined women. Growing up in a poor farming family in rural New South...
Author
Pub. Date
2024.
Description
"Jake volunteers at a nursing home because he likes helping people. He likes skating and singing, playing Bingo and Name That Tune, and reading mysteries and comics aloud to his teachers. He also likes avoiding people his own age . . . and the cruelty of mirrors . . . and food. Jake has read about kids like him in books--the weird one, the outsider--and would do anything not to be that kid, including shrink himself down to nothing. But the less he...
Author
Pub. Date
[2023]
Description
"On the morning of July 4, 1910, thousands of boxing fans stormed a newly built stadium in Reno, Nevada, to witness an epic showdown. Jack Johnson, the world's first Black heavyweight champion--and most infamous athlete in the world because of his race--was paired against Jim Jeffries, a former heavyweight champion then heralded as the "great white hope." It was the height of the Jim Crow era, and spectators were eager for Jeffries to restore the...
15) Henry and Clara
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Description
On the evening of Good Friday, 1865, Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris joined the Lincolns in the presidential box at Ford's Theater, becoming eyewitnesses to one of the great tragedies of American history. In this riveting novel, Thomas Mallon re-creates the unusual love story of this young engaged couple whose fateful encounter with history profoundly affects the remainder of their lives. Lincoln's assassination is only one part of the remarkable...
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Series
Her Majesty the Queen investigates volume 3
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"Queen Elizabeth II is looking forward to a traditional Christmas gathering with her family in Sandringham when a shocking discovery interrupts holiday plans. A severed hand has been found--but even more unsettling, she recognizes the signet ring still attached to a finger. It belongs to a scion of the St. Cyr family, her old friends from nearby Ladybridge Hall. Despite the personal connection, the Queen wants to leave the investigation to the police--that...
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Description
In Dearest Cousin Jane, an enchanting new novel that draws on historical fact, Jill Pitkeathley paints a luminous portrait of the true-life cousin of a literary legend-from her flirtatious younger years to her profound influence on one of the world's most beloved authors.
Free-spirited and seductive-outrageous, precocious, and a well-known flirt-Countess Eliza de Feuillide has an unquenchable thirst for life and a glamorous air that captivates everyone...
Author
Pub. Date
2024.
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Description
"Raised on tales of her revolutionary ancestors, Frances Perkins arrives in New York City at the turn of the century, armed with her trusty parasol and an unyielding determination to make a difference. When she's not working with children in the crowded tenements in Hell's Kitchen, Frances throws herself into the social scene in Greenwich Village, befriending an eclectic group of politicians, artists, and activists, including the millionaire socialite...
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"Based on a true story, the author humorously recounts the time his grandfather got stranded with a friend on Surtsey, a brand new volcanic island in Iceland. The adventurers face epic challenges like molten lava, melted eyeglasses and scant supplies before finally getting rescued. Graphic novel-like layouts and spirited text invite readers to search for the one thing that's not actually true in this thrilling yet light-hearted tale of adventure....
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