January 2021 list by Katherine N.
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All God's Children
by Aaron Gwyn
In 1827, Cecelia, a young slave in Virginia, well known for her escape attempts, is rescued from a slave auction by frontiersman Sam Fisk. Sensing an opportunity for freedom, she travels with Sam to Texas, where he has a homestead. In this new territory, where the law is an instrument for the cruel and the wealthy, they begin an unlikely life together, unaware that their fates are intertwined with those of Sam’s former army mates and others who harbor dangerous dreams of their own.
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Atomic Love
by Jennie Fields
Chicago, 1950. Rosalind Porter has always defied expectations--in her work as a physicist on the Manhattan Project and in her passionate love affair with colleague Thomas Weaver. Five years after the end of both, her guilt over the bomb and her heartbreak over Weaver are intertwined. After she is recruited by the FBI to spy on her former lover, she becomes torn between lingering feelings for her ex and her growing attraction to a special agent, a former prisoner of war.
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Confessions in B-flat
by Donna Hill
In Harlem, 1963, the epicenter of Black culture, the fight for equality has never been stronger. Yet even within its ranks, a different kind of battle rages. Love thy neighbor? Or rise up against your oppressors? Jason Tanner is a mentor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and newly arrived in New York City. Anita Hopkins is a beat poet who believes, as Malcolm X does, that the way to true freedom is “by any means necessary.” When Jason sees Anita perform her poetry at the iconic B-Flat lounge, he’s transfixed. And Anita has never met anyone who can match her wit for wit like this. One movement, two warring ideologies—can love be enough to unite them?
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Crooked Hallelujah
by Kelli Jo Ford
Abandoned by her husband in 1974, Justine―a mixed-blood Cherokee woman― and her daughter, Reney, move from Eastern Oklahoma’s Indian Country in hope of starting a new, more stable life in Texas amid the oil bust of the 1980s. However, life in Texas isn’t easy, and Reney feels unmoored from her family in Indian Country. The novel depicts what this family of proud, stubborn, Cherokee women sacrifice for those they love, amid larger forces of history, religion, class, and culture.
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Eli's Promise
by Ronald H. Balson
Eli's Promise spans three eras—Nazi-occupied Poland, the American Zone of post-war Germany, and Chicago at the height of the Vietnam War. 1939: Eli Rosen's construction business is appropriated by the Nazis. 1946: Eli resides with his son in a displaced persons camp in Allied-occupied Germany. His wife is missing. 1965: Eli rents a room in Albany Park, Chicago, searching for the truth. The novel explores the human cost of war, the mixed blessings of survival, and the strength of family bonds.
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Escaping Dreamland
by Charlie Lovett
Robert Parrish’s childhood obsession with series books like the Hardy Boys and Tom Swift inspired him to become an author. Just as his debut novel becomes a bestseller, his relationship with his girlfriend, Rebecca, begins to fall apart. Robert realizes he must confront his secret demons by fulfilling a youthful promise to solve a mystery surrounding his favorite series—the Tremendous Trio.
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The Hooligans
by Peter T. Deutermann
After the Pearl Harbor raid plunges America into war, young surgical resident Lincoln Anderson enlists in the Navy medical corps. His first deployment is to Guadalcanal, where he triages hundreds of casualties under relentless Japanese air and land attacks. But with the navy short of doctors, Anderson is transferred to serve aboard a PT boat. From Guadalcanal to the Solomon Islands to the climactic, tide-turning battle of Leyte Gulf, Anderson and the crew must lead a division of boats in a seemingly-impossible mission against a Japanese battleship formation—and learn the true nature of their character.
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The Lost Jewels
by Kirsty Manning
Present Day: When respected American jewelry historian, Kate Kirby, receives a call about the Cheapside jewels, she knows she’s must discover why years ago someone buried a bucketful of valuable gems and jewels, and then abandoned them. Summer of 1912: impoverished Irish immigrant Essie Murphy happens to be visiting her brother when a workman’s pickaxe strikes through the floor of an old tenement house in Cheapside, uncovering a stash of treasure―and then the finds disappear again! . Based on a fascinating true story, The Lost Jewels is a riveting, dual-time historical mystery.
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A Most English Princess
by Clare McHugh
This historical novel tells the story of Victoria, daughter of England's Queen Victoria. As a child, she was the apple of her father Albert's eyes. At 18, she married Prince Frederick, heir to the powerful kingdom of Prussia, where she worked with her husband to bring about a liberal and united Germany. Nonetheless, she struggled to thrive in the constrained Prussian court, where each day she seemed to take a wrong step. While fighting for the throne—and the soul of a nation, the couple endure tragedy, including their son, Wilhelm, rejecting all they stand for.
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The Night Portrait
by Laura Morelli
A dual-timeline historical novel about the creation of one of Leonardo da Vinci's most famous paintings, Portrait of a Lady with an Ermine, and the woman who fought to save it from Nazi destruction during World War II. Milan, 1492: When a 16-year old beauty becomes the mistress of the Duke of Milan, she must fight for her place in the palace. Soon, she finds herself sitting before Leonardo da Vinci, who endeavors to paint his most ambitious portrait to date. Munich, World War II: After a modest conservator unwittingly places a priceless Italian Renaissance portrait into the hands of a high-ranking Nazi leader, she risks her life to recover it.
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The Orphan Collector
by Ellen Marie Wiseman
In the fall of 1918, as Spanish influenza sweeps the nation, Bernice Groves, who lost her baby to the disease, comes to the life-altering decision that her son could have been saved if doctors' had not been overwhelmed with hordes of immigrants. She makes it her sinister mission to transform the city's orphans and immigrant children into what she feels are "true Americans." Meanwhile, 13-year-old German immigrant Pia, who has been left in charge of her infant twin brothers, leaves her brothers alone as she searches the city for food. When she returns to find her brothers gone, it begins a long and arduous journey to learn what happened.
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Remember Me
by Mario Escobar
Spain 1934. Frightened by the violence of the Spanish Civil War, Madrid parents send their three children, unaccompanied, across the ocean to Morelia, Mexico, where the Mexican government has promised to protect the imperiled children. But what ensues is a harrowing journey and a series of heartbreaking events. As the growing children work to care for themselves and each other, they feel their sense of home, family, and identity slipping away. And as their memories of Spain fade and the news from abroad grows more grim, they begin to wonder if they will ever see their parents again or the glittering streets of the home they once loved.
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The Two Mrs. Carlyles
by Suzanne Rindell
San Francisco, 1906. Violet is one of three people grateful for the destruction of the big earthquake. It leaves her and her two best friends unexpectedly wealthy--if the secret that binds them together stays buried beneath the rubble. Reinventing herself, Violet marries the city's most eligible widower, Harry Carlyle. It seems like her dreams of happiness and love have come true. But all is not right in the Carlyle home, and Violet soon finds herself trapped by the lingering specter of the first Mrs. Carlyle, and by the inescapable secrets of her own violent history.
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When We Were Young & Brave
by Hazel Gaynor
China, December 1941. Ten-year-old Nancy Plummer has always felt safe at Chefoo School, protected by her British status. But when Japan declares war on Britain and America, Japanese forces take control of the school and the security and comforts Nancy and her friends are used to are replaced by privation, uncertainty and fear. Separated from their parents, the children look to their teachers – to Miss Kent and her new Girl Guide patrol especially – to provide a sense of unity and safety.
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The Woman Before Wallis
by Bryn Turnbull
In the summer of 1926, when Thelma Morgan marries Viscount Duke Furness after a whirlwind romance, she’s immersed in a gilded world of extraordinary wealth and privilege. For Thelma, the daughter of an American diplomat, her new life as a member of the British aristocracy is like a fairy tale—even more so when her husband introduces her to Edward, Prince of Wales. She begins a love affair with Edward, but then a crisis sends Thelma back to America, so she leaves Edward in the hands of her trusted friend Wallis, never imagining the consequences that will follow.
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