| The Summer I Met Jack by Michelle GableWhat it is: an inspired-by-real-life tale of love, politics, and glamour, starring a young Jack Kennedy -- an up-and-coming congressman from Hyannis Port, MA -- and Alicia Darr, the Polish immigrant with whom he fell in love.
For fans of: multi-generational family sagas -- or, of course, the Kennedy family.
Reviewers say: “An alternate Kennedy family history that will leave readers wondering whether America knew the real JFK at all” (Kirkus Reviews). |
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| The Wanderers by Tim PearsWhat it’s about: In 1912 England, just after the events in The Horseman, 13-year-old horseman Leo Sercombe has been banished from home because of his love for the master’s daughter, Lottie. He is surviving alone -- but just barely. Will he and Lottie ever find each other again?
Try this next: If you like the quiet, lyrical writing style in this 2nd in the West Country trilogy, you might also like Rae Meadows’ I Will Draw Rain. |
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On Leopard Rock : An Adventure in Books by Wilbur A. SmithThe first ever memoir from the Number One global bestselling adventure author. Wilbur Smith has lived an incredible life of adventure, and now he shares the extraordinary true stories that have inspired his fiction. "I've been writing novels for over fifty years. I was lucky enough to miss the big wars and not get shot, but lucky enough to grow up among the heroes who had served in them and learn from their example. I have lucked into things continuously. I have done things which have seemed appalling at the time,disastrous even, but out of them have come another story or a deeper knowledge of human character and the ability to express myself better on paper, write books which people enjoy reading. "
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| The Removes by Tatjana SoliFeaturing: fifteen-year-old Anne Cummins, who is the sole survivor after her family is brutally attacked on their homestead by the Cheyenne; and Libbie Custer, who faces a difficult life on the plains with her husband, Civil War hero General George Armstrong Custer.
Why you might like it: This thrilling historical novel is an epic tale of the clashing cultures on the American frontier.
For further reading: Savage Country by Robert Olmstead, which also focuses on women settlers in the American West. |
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| The Madonna of the Mountains by Elise ValmorbidaWhat it’s about: In 1923 Italy, 25-year-old Maria Vittoria is almost too old to marry, but her life’s path changes when she weds Achille, a veteran of the Great War. Together they open a small grocery, and over the next few decades, Maria experiences all the good and the bad that life offers.
Is it for you? Yes, if you like multi-generational sagas about women’s lives, Italian history, and are interested in the period between the World Wars. |
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Hard Road : Bernie Guindon and the Reign of the Satan's Choice Motorcycle Club by Peter Edwards
You could call Bernie Guindon the Sonny Barger of Canadian bikers (but not to his face). The founder of Satan's Choice, Guindon led what was in the 1960s the second-largest biker club in the world (after the Hells Angels, which Bernie would join briefly in the early 2000s) to national prominence and international infamy. His life wasn't all bikes and crime. He was also a medalist in boxing for Canada at the Pan Am Games. That tension between the very rough life he was born into and the possibility for success in the straight world (and how aspirations in each fed his success in the other) layer Guindon's story, one of the great untold stories in biker history. Friends from the biker world and Guindon's family have given extensive interviews for Hard Road, including his son, Harley, a convict and outlaw biker himself."-- |
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| The Kid by Ron HansenWhat it's about: In 1880s New Mexico Territory, young gunslinger Billy the Kid falls in with a gang of thieves and becomes enmeshed in the Lincoln County War, giving birth to the myth we all know today.
Reviewers say: Author Ron Hansen presents this "very good and tangled story in a spry and inventive way” (The New York Times).
Further reading: If you also enjoy nonfiction, you might want to seek out Michael Wallis’ biography Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride. |
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| World, Chase Me Down by Andrew HillemanWhat it’s about: In the first great crime of the 20th century, an out-of-work butcher, Pat Crowe, makes a name for himself when he kidnaps the teenage son of a meatpacking tycoon and ransoms him for $25,000 -- and that’s just the start of Crowe’s incredible story, which takes him around the globe as he evades capture.
Why you might like it: If you like raucous, bawdy antiheroes whom you can’t help but cheer for, World, Chase Me Down will hit the spot. |
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| The Outcasts by Kathleen KentStarring: epileptic prostitute Lucinda Carter, who plans to rendezvous with her lover and hunt for buried treasure in tiny Middle Bayou, Texas; and Oklahoma transplant and new police recruit Nate Cannon, who has been tasked with tracking down murderer William McGill.
Read it for: the surprising convergence of these parallel storylines, as the colorful characters at the heart of them pursue their separate goals. Also watch for the richly atmospheric and starkly beautiful landscape of post-Civil War Texas.
You might also like: the female outlaw in Courtney Collins' The Untold. |
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| Becoming Bonnie: The Crash of the Century: When Bonnie Met Clyde by Jenni L. WalshWhat it’s about: We’ve all heard of the notorious couple Bonnie and Clyde -- but what led Bonnelyn Parker down the primrose path to a life of crime? Follow her from her poverty-stricken Texas beginnings into a 1927 speakeasy, where she takes a second job to help support her family -- and meets one Clyde Barrow.
Further reading: Bonnie and Clyde by Bill Brooks.
Keep an eye out for: Side by Side, the sequel to Becoming Bonnie, which published in June. |
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