May 2021 list by Katherine N.
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Annie and the Wolves
by Andromeda Romano-Lax
Ruth McClintock is obsessed with Annie Oakley. For nearly a decade, she has been studying the legendary sharpshooter, convinced that a scarring childhood event was the impetus for her crusade to arm every woman in America. This search has cost Ruth her doctorate, a book deal, and her fiancé—but finally it has borne fruit. She has managed to hunt down what may be a journal of Oakley’s midlife struggles, including secret visits to a psychoanalyst and the desire for vengeance against the “Wolves,” or those who have wronged her. As she solves Annie’s mysteries, Ruth confronts her own truths, including the link between her teenage sister’s suicide and an impending tragedy in her Minnesota town that Ruth can still prevent.
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A Dance in Donegal
by Jennifer Deibel
All of her life, Irish-American Moira Doherty has relished her mother's descriptions of Ireland. When her mother dies unexpectedly in the summer of 1920, Moira decides to fulfill her mother's wish that she become a teacher in Ballymann, her home village in Donegal, Ireland. Moira secures her job in Ireland, but is shocked to uncover a scandalous family reputation her mother left behind years ago, and, unexpectedly, falls for Sean, a local thatcher, who helps her navigate her new life.
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Dangerous Women
by Hope Adams
London, 1841. One hundred eighty English women convicts file aboard the Rajah, embarking on a three-month voyage to the other side of the world. They are being transported for petty crimes. But one of them has a deadly secret, and will do anything to flee justice. As the Rajah sails farther from land, the women forge a tenuous kinship. Until, in the middle of the cold and unforgiving sea, a young mother is mortally wounded, and the hunt is on for the assailant before he or she strikes again. Based on a true story.
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The Invisible Woman
by Erika Robuck
Based on a true story. 1940. American Virginia Hall does not want to stay home and worry about the tragic events happening in Europe, she wants to jump in head first. She becomes an Allied spy, and subverting the Nazis becomes her calling. But when her operation is betrayed and several brave people killed, Virginia will do everything in her power to avenge those who were lost. While her future is anything but certain, Virginia knows that failure is not an option this time. Especially when she discovers what-and whom-she's truly protecting.
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The Kitchen Front
by Jennifer Ryan
Two years into World War II, Britain is feeling her losses: The Nazis have won battles, the Blitz has destroyed cities, and U-boats have cut off the supply of food. In an effort to help housewives with food rationing, a BBC radio program called The Kitchen Front is holding a cooking contest—and the grand prize is a job as the program’s first-ever female co-host. For four very different women, winning the competition would present a crucial chance to change their lives.
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A Mother's Promise
by K. D. Alden
Virginia, 1927: All Ruth Ann Riley wanted was a chance to have a family. But because she was poor and unwed when she became pregnant, she was sent to an institution and her child was given to another woman. The institution also planned to forcibly sterilize her. Unable stand a childless future, Ruth fought for her rights and her child. Based on a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision.
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The Nature of Fragile Things
by Susan Meissner
Moving to early 20th-century San Francisco to escape New York tenement life, an Irish mail-order bride uncovers transformative secrets involving a silent child and two other women before her precarious existence is upended by the great earthquake of 1906.
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The Orchard House
by Heidi Chiavaroli
Two women, one living in present day Massachusetts and another in Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House soon after the Civil War, overcome their own personal demons and search for a place to belong. Present Day: Taylor is an abandoned child, who becomes a successful author after joining her best friend's family at Orchard House. But she struggles to fit in after her friend betrays her. 1860s: Johanna is a caretaker for Louisa May Alcott's aging parents, who falls in love and marries while working at Orchard House, and, too late, discovers her husband is abusive.
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The Paris Dressmaker
by Kristy Cambron
An haute couture dressmaker in 1939 Paris, Lila de Laurent's life is completely undone after the Nazi's march into Paris and take control. Lila joins the Resistance during the occupation and uses her skills to infiltrate the Nazi elite, sewing for them and collecting secrets at their glamorous headquarters in the Hôtel Ritz.
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Send For Me
by Lauren Fox
A baker’s daughter and her husband flee to America amid increasingly violent anti-Semitism in pre-World War II Germany two generations before her granddaughter learns the astonishing story of their heritage and losses.
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Vera
by Carol Edgarian
Vera Johnson, fifteen-year-old illegitimate daughter of a bordello madam, has grown up in San Francisco straddling two worlds: the madam’s alluring sphere of opera, henchmen, and scant morality; and the quiet domestic life of the family paid to raise her. On the morning of the great quake, Vera’s worlds collide. As the city burns and looters vie with the injured, orphaned, and starving, Vera and her guileless sister, Pie, are cast adrift. In the aftermath, Vera forges a new life with an unlikely family of survivors, with whom she navigates the disaster together.
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When Twilight Breaks
by Sarah Sundin
Munich, 1938. Evelyn Brand is an American foreign correspondent determined to prove her worth in a male-dominated profession as she is exposed to the growing tyranny in Nazi Germany. In another part of the city, American graduate student Peter Lang is working on his PhD in German. But when the brutality of the Nazi regime hits close, he begins to feed information to the shrewd reporter he can't get off his mind off.
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Wild Rain
by Beverly Jenkins
In the wake of the Civil War, a reporter travels to remote Paradise, Wyoming, to do a story on doctors for his Black newspaper back east. He thinks Colton Lee will be an interesting subject…until he meets Colton’s sister Spring. She runs her own ranch, wears denim pants instead of dresses, and is the most fascinating woman he’s ever met. But Spring isn’t looking for love from the enamored reporter, until his presence makes her rethink her resolve to avoid men.
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The Women of Chateau Lafayette
by Stephanie Dray
A multi-generational saga based on true events is set in an extraordinary castle in the heart of France, where a 1940s schoolteacher endures Nazi occupation, a socialite witnesses the devastation of WWI, and a noblewoman is threated by French revolutionaries. These events lead each woman in her time to question their roles and identities in the face of three major wars.
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Zorrie
by Laird Hunt
Cast adrift in the Depression-era West after the last of her relatives passes away, Zorrie Underwood survives by working at a radium processing plant before finding love, community and unexpected loss upon returning to her small Indiana hometown.
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