November 2020 list by Katherine N.
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All Things Left Wild
by James Wade
After an attempted horse theft goes tragically wrong, sixteen-year-old Caleb Bentley is on the run with his mean-spirited older brother across the American Southwest at the turn of the twentieth century. Wealthy and bookish Randall Dawson is begrudgingly chasing after the Bentley brothers. With little sense of how to survive, much less how to take his revenge, Randall meets Charlotte, a woman experienced in the deadly ways of life in the West. Together they navigate the murky values of vigilante justice.
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Betty
by Tiffany McDaniel
Born in a bathtub in 1954 to a white mother and a Cherokee father, Betty is the sixth of eight siblings. The world they inhabit is one of poverty and violence--both from outside the family and, devastatingly, from within. Despite the hardships, Betty is resilient, curious, and fiercely loves her sisters. Betty discovers an escape: she begins to write. She recounts the horrors of her family's past and present with pen and paper and buries them deep in the dirt--moments that have stung her so deeply she could not tell them, until now.
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Bronte's Mistress
by Finola Austin
Yorkshire, 1843: 25-year-old Branwell Bronte is hired as a tutor for 43-year-old Lydia Robinson—mistress of Thorp Green Hall. A love of poetry, music, and theatre bring mistress and tutor together, and Branwell’s colorful tales of his sisters’ elaborate play-acting and made-up worlds form the backdrop for seduction. Soon, it falls on Lydia to save not just her reputation, but her way of life, before those clever girls reveal all her secrets in their novels.
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The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne
by Elsa Hart
London, 1703. In a time when the old approaches to science coexist with the new, one elite community attempts to understand the world by collecting its wonders. Sir Barnaby Mayne, the most formidable of these collectors, has devoted his life to filling his cabinets. Cecily Kay, an herbalist, visits the collector's home in hopes of identifying plant specimens, but instead finds herself investigating her host’s untimely murder.
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Daughter of the Reich
by Louise Fein
As the daughter of a high-ranking Nazi officer, Hetty Heinrich is keen to play her part in the glorious new Reich. That is until she encounters Walter, a Jewish friend from the past, who stirs dangerous feelings in her. Realizing she is taking a huge risk—but unable to resist the intense attraction she has for Walter—she embarks on a secret love affair with him. But as the rising tide of anti-Semitism threatens to engulf them, Hetty and Walter will be forced to take extreme measures.
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A Duke, The Lady, and a Baby
by Vanessa Riley
When headstrong West Indian heiress Patience Jordan questioned her English husband's mysterious suicide, she lost everything: her newborn son, Lionel, her fortune—and her freedom. Falsely imprisoned, she risks her life to be near her child, and is secretly hired as her own son's nanny. But working for his unsuspecting new guardian, Busick Strathmore, Duke of Repington, has perils of its own. Especially when Patience discovers his military strictness belies an ex-rake of unswerving honor—and unexpected passion.
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The Jane Austen Society
by Natalie Jenner
Just after the Second World War, in the small English village of Chawton, an unusual but like-minded group of people band together to attempt something remarkable: restore the final home of Jane Austen. These people―a laborer, a young widow, the local doctor, and a movie star, among others―could not be more different and yet they are united in their love for the works of Austen. As each of them endures their own quiet struggle with war loss and trauma, they rally together to create the Jane Austen Society.
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Mexican Gothic
by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
A reimagining of the classic gothic suspense novel follows the experiences of Noemi, a courageous socialite in 1950s Mexico, who is drawn into the treacherous secrets of an isolated mansion called High Place, nestled in the Mexican countryside, after she receives a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom.
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Paris Never Leaves You
by Ellen Feldman
Charlotte, with her young daughter Vivi, lived through WWII working in a Paris bookstore, but can she survive the next chapter of her life? Alternating between wartime Paris and 1950s New York, this story explores how survival never comes without a cost.
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The Royal Governess
by Wendy Holden
Accepting the position of a lifetime tutoring the princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, young Marion Crawford defies protocol to introduce the princesses to the experiences of everyday people while witnessing some of the 20th century's most seismic events.
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Universe of Two
by Stephen P Kiernan
Graduating from Harvard at the height of World War II, brilliant mathematician Charlie Fish is assigned to the Manhattan Project, working alongside the brilliant scientists who create the atom bomb. But soon Charlie suffers a crisis of conscience, which his wife, Brenda—unaware of the true nature of Charlie’s top-secret task—mistakes as self-doubt. She urges him to set aside his qualms and continue. Once the bombs strike Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the feelings of culpability devastate him and Brenda.
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We Came Here to Shine
by Susie Orman Schnall
Vivi Holden has dreams of becoming a lead actress. Maxine Roth wants nothing more than to be a serious journalist for the New York Times. However, their worlds collide at the 1939 World's Fair, where Vivi has come to perform in a synchronized swimming spectacular, and Maxine is working on a publication dedicated to the event. The pair forge an enduring friendship, and together they realize just how daring and bold they really are during the most meaningful summer of their lives.
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