"All this came about because I was born on the day freedom came, or was supposed to come. I came into the world on that day, and like it or not, freedom came with me." ~ from Shelton Johnson's Gloryland
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Matariki Matariki – the Māori New Year – takes place on Pipiri 28 June. There will be Matariki storytimes and activities at our libraries throughout June.
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New and Recently Released!
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An appetite for violets
by Martine Bailey
That's how it is for us servants. No one pays you much heed; mostly you're invisible as furniture. Yet you overhear a conversation here, and add a little gossip there. A writing desk lies open and you cannot help but read a paper. Then you find something, something you should not have found. Irrepressible Biddy Leigh, under-cook at the foreboding Mawton Hall, only wants to marry her childhood sweetheart and set up her own tavern. But when her elderly master marries the young Lady Carinna, Biddy is unwittingly swept up in a world of scheming, secrets and lies.
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| The burial by Courtney CollinsSold by her parents to a traveling circus at age 12, Jessie Hickman becomes a tightrope walker, a horse thief, a convict, an abused wife, and, finally, a murderer. Pursued across the Australian Outback by law enforcement officials, Jessie's best hope for survival is to reunite with her aboriginal lover, stockman Jack Brown, who may or may not be in league with the authorities. Set in the 1920s and based on the life of a legendary Australian outlaw, bushranger, and all-around "wild woman." |
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| All the light we cannot see by Anthony DoerrWhen blind Marie-Laure LeBlanc and her father, a master locksmith at Paris' Museum of Natural History, flee the city on the eve of the German occupation, they seek sanctuary in St. Malo, at the home of Marie-Laure's eccentric great-uncle and his housekeeper, both members of the French Resistance. As Marie-Laure contributes to their efforts by broadcasting information over the wireless, her path crosses that of German soldier Werner Pfennig, whose intellect and technical aptitude are responsible for his current assignment: monitoring and reporting illicit radio transmissions. If you enjoy dramatic stories set during World War II, don't miss this lyrical story of love, loyalty, and betrayal. |
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| Secrecy by Rupert ThomsonSummoned to Florence in 1691 by Cosimo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany, Sicilian sculptor Gaetano Zummo is commissioned to create a life-sized wax replica of his patron's ideal woman. Zummo, an artist with a flair for the strange and macabre (his most famous work is a tableau of plague victims), embraces the challenge, even as he gets caught up in a life-changing love affair, a tangled web of political conspiracies, and the persecution of a zealous and corrupt Dominican priest. Drawing on real historical figures and events, this compelling, often unsettling novel conjures the atmosphere of 17th-century Florence through lyrical prose and well-researched period details. |
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Sisters of treason
by Elizabeth Fremantle
Reeling from the brutal execution of their elder sister, Jane Grey, Lady Catherine and Lady Mary Grey struggle with insecurities and prejudice while bonding with royal portrait artist, Levina, and navigating the dangers of the court. By the author of Queen's Gambit.
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The true and splendid history of the Harristown sisters
by Michelle Lovric
It's rural Ireland in the second half of the Nineteenth Century, when Europe burns with a passion for long, flowing locks. So when seven sisters, born into fatherless poverty, grow up with hair cascading down their backs,to their ankles, and beyond, men are not slow to recognize their potential. Soon, they're a singing and dancing septet: Irish jigs kicked out in dusty church halls. But it is not their singing or their dancing that fills the seats: it is the torrents of hair they let loose at the end of each show. It will bring them suitors and obsessive admirers, it will bring some of them love and each of them loss. For their past trails behind the sisters like the tresses on their heads and their fame and fortune will come at a terrible price.
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| True sisters by Sandra DallasIn July of 1856, a group of 650 immigrants, all recent Mormon converts, heeded Brigham Young's call and embarked on a 1,300 mile westward trek from Iowa to the new "Zion," in what is now Salt Lake City, Utah. Hauling their worldly possessions in crudely fashioned handcarts, few of the settlers reached their destination alive. In homespun and moving fashion, True Sisters documents the travels (and travails) of the real-life Martin Company from the perspectives of a diverse group of women who find common ground and friendship in the face of adversity. |
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| A good man by Guy VanderhaegheThe son of a wealthy Canadian timber baron, former mounted policeman Wesley Case relocates to the Montana Territory in 1876, where he purchases a ranch near the rough-and-tumble frontier outpost of Fort Benton - not far from the site of Custer's Last Stand. However, thanks to escalating tensions between the U.S. Army and the Sioux, Case's primary livelihood soon becomes the gathering and exchange of information. With its complex characterization and lyrical descriptions of rugged western landscapes, this concluding volume of Canadian author Guy Vanderhaeghe's Western trilogy -- which begins with The Englishman's Boy and The Last Crossing -- may appeal to fans of Gil Adamson's The Outlander. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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