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Retired Staff Picks November 2017 Retired staff Carmen, Char, Chris, Debbie, Ellen, Jane, Linda, Sara, and Trish offer their reading suggestions.
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The Alice Network
by Kate Quinn
In 1947, pregnant Charlie St. Clair, an American college girl banished from her family, arrives in London to find out what happened to her beloved cousin Rose, who disappeared in Nazi-occupied France during the war, and meets a former spy who, torn apart by betrayal, agrees to help her on her mission.
Call Number: OVERDRIVE
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Before we were yours : a novel
by Lisa Wingate
A tale inspired by firsthand accounts about the notoriously corrupt Tennessee Children's Home Society follows the efforts of a Baltimore assistant D.A. to uncover her parents' fateful secrets in the wake of a political attack and a chance encounter with a stranger. By the best-selling author of Tending Roses.
Call Number: F WINGATE, LISA
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The book of speculation
by Erika Swyler
Simon Watson, a young librarian on the verge of losing his job, discovers a mysterious book that holds the key to a curse that has haunted a family of traveling circus performers for generations. A first novel.
Call Number: F SWYLER, ERIKA
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A column of fire
by Ken Follett
A half-century love affair between a man in service to Elizabeth I and a woman on the opposing side of England's religious divide is challenged by violent ideological power shifts, torn loyalties and the queen's circle of spies, in a latest entry in the best-selling series that includes The Pillars of the Earth.
Call Number: F FOLLETT, KEN
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Every heart a doorway
by Seanan McGuire
Sent away to a home for children who have tumbled into fantastical other worlds and are looking for ways to return, Nancy triggers dark changes among her fellow schoolmates and resolves to expose the truth when a child dies under suspicious magical circumstances. By the best-selling author of the InCryptid series.
Call Number: F MCGUIRE, SEANAN
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A gentleman in Moscow
by Amor Towles
Deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal in 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is sentenced to house arrest in a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin, where he endures life in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history unfold. By the best-selling author of Rules of Civility.
Call Number: F TOWLES, AMOR
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The handmaid's tale
by Margaret Atwood
Offred, a handmaid, describes life in what was once the United States, now the Republic of Gilead, a shockingly repressive and intolerant monotheocracy, set in the near future.
Call Number: F ATWOOD, MARGARET
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Lara : the untold love story that inspired Doctor Zhivago
by Anna Pasternak
Revealing the true tragedy behind the timeless classic, a heartbreaking story of the love affair between the author of Doctor Zhivago and Olga Invinskaya, drawing on family sources and original interviews, reveals a powerful story of courage, loyalty, suffering, drama and loss.
Call Number: B PASTERNAK, BORIS
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The ninth hour
by Alice McDermott
A portrait of the Irish-American experience is presented through the story of an Irish immigrant's suicide and how it reverberates through innumerable lives in early 20th-century Catholic Brooklyn. By the National Book Award-winning author of Charming Billy.
Call Number: F MCDERMOTT, ALICE
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November 9
by Colleen Hoover
When Fallon meets Ben, an aspiring novelist, the day before her scheduled move, their attraction and her eventful life become the creative inspiration for his book, but as they lead separate lives and continue to meet on the same date every year, their relationship moves toward the ultimate plot twist. By a #1 New York Times best-selling author.
Call Number: F HOOVER, COLLEEN
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Saints for all occasions
by J. Courtney Sullivan
Moving from Ireland to America upon coming of age, a shy and responsible older sister and a gregarious young sister who thrives in their new Boston home endure the long-term repercussions of a fateful decision when the younger sister becomes pregnant.
Call Number: F SULLIVAN, J. COURTNEY
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Secrets of a charmed life
by Susan Meissner
An elderly Oxford woman reminisces about her childhood during World War II, during which she was evacuated from London during the Blitz and was separated from her sister. By the author of A Fall of Marigolds.
Call Number: F MEISSNER, SUSAN
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The sound of gravel : a memoir
by Ruth Wariner
An account of the author's coming-of-age in a polygamist Mormon Doomsday cult describes her childhood on a Mexico hills farm as one of her father's more than 40 welfare-dependent children, the extreme religious beliefs that haunted her daily life and her escape in the aftermath of a devastating tragedy.
Call Number: B WARINER, RUTH
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Where the past begins : a writer's memoir
by Amy Tan
The best-selling author of such novels as The Joy Luck Club presents an intimate memoir on her life as a writer that explores formative experiences from her childhood and her evolving perspectives on the symbiotic relationship between fiction and emotional memory.
Call Number: B TAN, AMY
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Wonder
by R. J. Palacio
Born with a facial deformity that initially prevented his attendance at public school, Auggie Pullman enters the fifth grade at Beecher Prep and struggles with the dynamics of being both new and different, in a sparsely written tale about acceptance and self-esteem.
Call Number: JF PALACIO, R. J.
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