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Cafe Parlez Greatest Hits Favorite titles of the Fiction Book Group
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Memoirs of a geisha : a novel
by Arthur Golden
The "memoirs" of one of Japan's most celebrated geishas describes how, in 1929, as a little girl, she is sold into slavery; her efforts to learn the arts of the geisha; the impact of World War II; and her struggle to reinvent herself to win the man she loves.
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The red tent / Anita Diamant
by Anita Diamant
In a story based on the Book of Genesis, Jacob's only daughter, Dinah, shares her unique perspective on the origins of many of our modern religious practices and sexual politics, eager to impart the lessons in endurance and humanity she has learned from her father's wives.
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The double bind : a novel
by Chris Bohjalian
Withdrawing into her photography and a job at a homeless shelter after being attacked while riding her bike, student Laurel Estabrook encounters Bobbie Crocker, a man with a history of mental illness and a box of secret photos, but when Bobbie dies suddenly, Laurel is certain that the photos hide a dark family secret and embarks on an obsessive, potentially dangerous search for the truth.
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Midwives
by Christopher A. Bohjalian
In the winter of 1981, trapped by unpassable roads, midwife Sibyl Danforth makes a life-altering decision when she performs an emergency cesarean section on a woman she fears has died of a stroke
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Dark Tide : The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919
by Stephen Puleo
Describes the 1919 collapse of a steel tank containing more than two million gallons of molasses in Boston--a disaster that claimed the lives of twenty-one people, injured 150, and caused widespread destruction--the causes of the tragedy, its aftermath, and the sweeping social changes that transformed the era.
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Water for elephants
by Sara Gruen
Ninety-something-year-old Jacob Jankowski remembers his time in the circus as a young man during the Great Depression, and his friendship with Marlena, the star of the equestrian act, and Rosie, the elephant, who gave them hope
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The widow's war
by Sally Gunning
When Lyddie Berry's husband is lost in a whaling disaster, she becomes the dependent of her nearest male relative, her ruthless son-in-law, who tries to take everything she and her husband had worked for, but as Lyddie's social and legal defiance separate her from friends and family she discovers a deeper sense of self and a potential new love.
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The lace reader
by Brunonia Barry
Having left her hometown of Salem, Massachusetts, fifteen years ago under troubling circumstances, psychic Towner Whitney reluctantly returns after her eighty-five-year-old great-aunt Eva suddenly disappears and joins local cop John Rafferty in his investigation into the mystery.
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The secret life of bees
by Sue Monk Kidd
After her "stand-in mother," a bold black woman named Rosaleen, insults the three biggest racists in town, Lily Owens joins Rosaleen on a journey to Tiburon, South Carolina, where they are taken in by three black, bee-keeping sisters
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Sarah's Key
by Tatiana de Rosnay
On the sixtieth anniversary of the 1942 roundup of Jews by the French police in the Vel d'Hiv section of Paris, American journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article on this dark episode during World War II and embarks on investigation that leads her to long-hidden family secrets and to the ordeal of Sarah, a young girl caught up in the raid.
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The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
by Mary Ann Shaffer
In 1946, as England emerges from the shadow of World War II, writer Juliet Ashton finds inspiration for her next book in her correspondence with a native of Guernsey and his eccentric friends, who tell her about their island, the books they love, German occupation, and the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a book club born as an alibi during German occupation.
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The unlikely pilgrimage of Harold Fry
by Rachel Joyce
Jolted out of emotional numbness by a letter from an old friend who wants to say goodbye before she dies, Harold Fry embarks on a 600-mile hiking journey to his friend's side without supplies, an endeavor that stirs up memories of his unhappy marital and parenting experiences.
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Longbourn
by Jo Baker
A reimagining of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice from the perspectives of its below-stairs servants captures the romance, intrigue and drama of the Bennet household from the sideline perspective of Sara, an orphaned housemaid who becomes subject to the arrival of the militia and the attentions of an ambitious former slave.
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The little Paris bookshop
by Nina George
Prescribing books that offer therapeutic benefits to his customers, a literary apothecary in a floating bookstore on the Seine struggles with private heartbreak before embarking on a journey of healing at the side of a blocked writer and a lovelorn chef
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The Paris wife : a novel
by Paula McLain
Follows the life of Ernest Hemingway's first wife, Hadley, as she navigates 1920s Paris. By the author of A Ticket to Ride.
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Crooked heart : a novel
by Lissa Evans
A precocious orphan evacuee and a debt-ridden widow con artist forge an unlikely alliance to take advantage of unscrupulous money-making opportunities in the bombed suburbs of World War II England.
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Remarkable creatures
by Tracy Chevalier
On the windswept fossil-strewn beaches of the English coast Mary Anning learns that she has "the eye" - she finds what no one else can see. When Mary uncovers an unusual fossilized skeleton she sets the religious fathers on edge the townspeople to vicious gossip and the scientific world alight. But as a woman Mary is barred from the academic community. Luckily she finds a champion in prickly Elizabeth Philpot a recent exile from London
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Year of wonders : a novel of the plague
by Geraldine Brooks
Young Anna Frith, a vicar's maid, is faced with the loss of her family, the disintegration of her local community, and a passionate, illicit love as she and her village confront the horrors of the plague, in a historical novel based on real-life events in seventeenth-century England.
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Joseph H. Plumb Memorial Library 17 Constitution Way Rochester, Massachusetts 02770 (508)763-8600www.plumblibrary.com/ |
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