Featured Books
Historical Fiction
The Christie Affair
by Nina de Gramont
Publisher: St. Martin’s Publishing Group
A Reese's Book Club Pick.
Why would the world's most famous mystery writer disappear for eleven days? What makes a woman desperate enough to destroy another woman's marriage? How deeply can a person crave revenge?
In 1925, Miss Nan O’Dea infiltrated the wealthy, rarefied world of author Agatha Christie and her husband, Archie. In every way, she became a part of their life––first, both Christies. Then, just Archie. Soon, Nan became Archie’s mistress, luring him away from his devoted wife, desperate to marry him. Nan’s plot didn’t begin the day she met Archie and Agatha.
What drives someone to murder? What will someone do in the name of love? What kind of crime can someone never forgive? Nina de Gramont’s brilliant, unforgettable novel explores these questions and more.
Her Hidden Genius
by Marie Benedict
Publisher: Sourcebooks
New from New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict--the story of a woman who unlocked the secrets of DNA only to die in anonymity
Rosalind Franklin knows if she just takes one more X-ray picture--—one more after thousands—--she can unlock the building blocks of life. Never again will she have to listen to her colleagues complain about her, especially Maurice Wilkins who'’d rather conspire about genetics with James Watson and Francis Crick than work alongside her. Then it finally happens--—the double helix structure of DNA reveals itself to her with perfect clarity. But what happens next, Rosalind could have never predicted.
Marie Benedict’s next powerful novel shines a light on a woman who died to discover our very DNA, a woman whose contributions were suppressed by the men around her but whose relentless drive advanced our understanding of humankind.
Three Sisters
by Heather Morris
Publisher: St. Martin’s Publishing Group
From Heather Morris, the New York Times bestselling author of the multi-million copy bestseller The Tattooist of Auschwitz and Cilka's Journey: a story of family, courage, and resilience, inspired by a true story.
Against all odds, three Slovakian sisters have survived years of imprisonment in the most notorious death camp in Nazi Germany: Auschwitz. Livia, Magda, and Cibi have clung together, nearly died from starvation and overwork, and the brutal whims of the guards in this place of horror. But now, the allies are closing in and the sisters have one last hurdle to face: the death march from Auschwitz, as the Nazis try to erase any evidence of the prisoners held there. Due to a last minute stroke of luck, the three of them are able to escape formation and hide in the woods for days before being rescued.
And this is where the story begins. From there, the three sisters travel to Israel, to their new home, but the battle for freedom takes on new forms. Livia, Magda, and Cibi must face the ghosts of their past - and some secrets that they have kept from each other - to find true peace and happiness.
Inspired by a true story, and with events that overlap with those of Lale, Gita, and Cilka, The Three Sisters will hold a place in readers' hearts and minds as they experience what true courage really is.
The War Nurse
by Tracey Enerson Wood
Publisher: Sourcebooks
A stunning tale - based on a true story - of one nurse in France during WWI who must battle the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic
She asked dozens of young women to lay their lives on the line during the Great War. Can she protect them?
Superintendent of Nurses Julia Stimson must recruit sixty-five nurses to relieve the battle-worn British, months before American troops are ready to be deployed. She knows that the young nurses serving near the front lines of will face a challenging situation, but nothing could have prepared her for the chaos that awaits when they arrive at British Base Hospital 12 in Rouen, France. The primitive conditions, a convoluted, ineffective system, and horrific battle wounds are enough to discourage the most hardened nurses, and Julia can do nothing but lead by example - even as the military doctors undermine her authority and make her question her very place in the hospital tent.
When trainloads of soldiers stricken by a mysterious respiratory illness arrive one after the other, overwhelming the hospital's limited resources, and threatening the health of her staff, Julia faces an unthinkable choice - to step outside the bounds of her profession and risk the career she has fought so hard for, or to watch the people she cares for most die in her arms.
Based on a true story, The War Nurse is a sweeping historical novel by international bestselling author Tracey Enerson Wood that takes readers on an unforgettable journey through WWI France.
The Girl in His Shadow
by Audrey Blake
Publisher: Sourcebooks
"An exquisitely detailed journey through the harrowing field of medicine in mid-19th century London."-Tracey Enerson Wood, international bestselling author of The Engineer's Wife and The War Nurse
An unforgettable historical fiction novel about one woman who believed in scientific medicine before the world believed in her.
London, 1845: Raised by the eccentric surgeon Dr. Horace Croft after losing her parents to a deadly pandemic, the orphan Nora Beady knows little about conventional life. While other young ladies were raised to busy themselves with needlework and watercolors, Nora was trained to perfect her suturing and anatomical illustrations of dissections. Women face dire consequences if caught practicing medicine, but in Croft's private clinic Nora is his most trusted-and secret-assistant. That is until the new surgical resident Dr. Daniel Gibson arrives. Dr. Gibson has no idea that Horace's bright and quiet young ward is a surgeon more qualified and ingenuitive than even himself. In order to protect Dr. Croft and his practice from scandal and collapse Nora must learn to play a new and uncomfortable role-that of a proper young lady.
But pretense has its limits. Nora cannot turn away and ignore the suffering of patients, even if it means giving Gibson the power to ruin everything she's worked for. And when she makes a discovery that could change the field forever, Nora faces an impossible choice.Remain invisible and let the men around her take credit for her work, or step into the light-even if it means being destroyed by her own legacy.
Fans of The Other Einstein and The Paris Library will relish this riveting and empowering story about one woman's fight to follow her dreams and build a life-and legacy-beyond what is expected of her.
The Mystery of Mrs. Christie
by Marie Benedict
Publisher: Sourcebooks
A master storyteller whose clever mind may never be matched, Agatha Christie's untold history offers perhaps her greatest mystery of all.
In December 1926, Agatha Christie goes missing. Investigators find her empty car on the edge of a deep, gloomy pond, the only clues some tire tracks nearby and a fur coat left in the car-strange for a frigid night. Her husband and daughter have no knowledge of her whereabouts, and England unleashes an unprecedented manhunt to find the up-and-coming mystery author. Eleven days later, she reappears, just as mysteriously as she disappeared, claiming amnesia and providingno explanations for her time away.
What is real, and what is mystery? The puzzle of those missing eleven days has persisted. With her trademark exploration into the shadows of history, acclaimed author Marie Benedict brings us into the world of Agatha Christie, imagining why such a brilliant woman would find herself at the center of such a murky story.
The Arctic Fury
by Greer Macallister
Publisher: Sourcebooks
A dozen women join a secret 1850s Arctic expedition-and a sensational murder trial unfolds when some of them don't come back.
Eccentric Lady Jane Franklin makes an outlandish offer to adventurer Virginia Reeve: take a dozen women, trek into the Arctic, and find her husband's lost expedition. Four parties have failed to find him, and Lady Franklin wants a radical new approach: put the women in charge. A year later, Virginia stands trial for murder. Survivors of the expedition willing to publicly support her sit in the front row. There are only five. What happened out there on the ice?
Set against the unforgiving backdrop of one of the world's most inhospitable locations, USA Today bestselling author Greer Macallister uses the true story of Lady Jane Franklin's tireless attempts to find her husband's lost expedition as a jumping-off point to spin a tale of bravery, intrigue, perseverance and hope.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
by V. E. Schwab
Publisher: Tor/Forge
In the vein of The Time Traveler's Wife and Life After Life, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is New York Times bestselling author V. E. Schwab's genre-defying tour de force.
A Life No One Will Remember. A Story You Will Never Forget.
France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever - and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.
But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.
The Engineer’s Wife
by Tracey Enerson Wood
Publisher: Sourcebooks
She built a monument for all time. Then she was lost in its shadow.
Emily Warren Roebling refuses to live conventionally--she knows who she is and what she wants, and she's determined to make change. But then her husband Wash asks the unthinkable: give up her dreams to make his possible.
Emily's fight for women's suffrage is put on hold, and her life transformed when Wash, the Chief Engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge, is injured on the job. Untrained for the task, but under his guidance, she assumes his role, despite stern resistance and overwhelming obstacles. Lines blur as Wash's vision becomes her own, and when he is unable to return to the job, Emily is consumed by it. But as the project takes shape under Emily's direction, she wonders whose legacy she is building--hers, or her husband's. As the monument rises, Emily's marriage, principles, and identity threaten to collapse. When the bridge finally stands finished, will she recognize the woman who built it?
Based on the true story of the Brooklyn Bridge, The Engineer's Wife delivers an emotional portrait of a woman transformed by a project of unfathomable scale, which takes her into the bowels of the East River, suffragette riots, the halls of Manhattan's elite, and the heady, freewheeling temptations of P.T. Barnum. It's the story of a husband and wife determined to build something that lasts--even at the risk of losing each other.
Lady Clementine
by Marie Benedict
Publisher: Sourcebooks
New from Marie Benedict, the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Woman in the Room! An incredible novel that focuses on one of the people who had the most influence during World War I and World War II: Clementine Churchill.
In 1909, Clementine Churchill steps off a train with her new husband, Winston. An angry woman emerges from the crowd to attack, shoving him in the direction of an oncoming train. Just before he stumbles, Clementine grabs him by his suit jacket. This will not be the last time Clementine Churchill saves her husband.
Lady Clementine is the ferocious story of the brilliant and ambitious woman beside Winston Churchill, the story of a partner who did not flinch through the sweeping darkness of war, and who would not surrender either to expectations or to enemies.
The Night Tiger
by Yangsze Choo
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Quick-witted, ambitious Ji Lin is stuck as an apprentice dressmaker, moonlighting as a dancehall girl to help pay off her mother's Mahjong debts. But when one of her dance partners accidentally leaves behind a gruesome souvenir, Ji Lin may finally get the adventure she has been longing for.
Eleven-year-old houseboy Ren is also on a mission, racing to fulfill his former master's dying wish: that Ren find the man's finger, lost years ago in an accident, and bury it with his body. Ren has 49 days to do so, or his master's soul will wander the earth forever.
As the days tick relentlessly by, a series of unexplained deaths wracks the district, along with whispers of men who turn into tigers. Ji Lin and Ren's increasingly dangerous paths crisscross through lush plantations, hospital storage rooms, and ghostly dreamscapes.
Yangsze Choo's The Night Tiger pulls us into a world of servants and masters, age-old superstition and modern idealism, sibling rivalry and forbidden love. But anchoring this dazzling, propulsive novel is the intimate coming of age of a child and a young woman, each searching for their place in a society that would rather they stay invisible.
The Only Woman in the Room
by Marie Benedict
Publisher: Sourcebooks
She possessed a stunning beauty. She also possessed a stunning mind. Could the world handle both?
Her beauty almost certainly saved her from the rising Nazi party and led to marriage with an Austrian arms dealer. Underestimated in everything else, she overheard the Third Reich's plans while at her husband's side, understanding more than anyone would guess. She devised a plan to flee in disguise from their castle, and the whirlwind escape landed her in Hollywood. She became Hedy Lamarr, screen star.
But she kept a secret more shocking than her heritage or her marriage: she was a scientist. And she knew a few secrets about the enemy. She had an idea that might help the country fight the Nazis? if anyone would listen to her.
The Fallen Architect
by Charles Belfoure
Publisher: Sourcebooks
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Architect
Someone has to take the blame.
When the Britannia Theatre's balcony collapses, killing over a dozen people, the fingers point at the architect. He should have known better, should have made it safer, should have done something.
Douglas Layton knows the flaw wasn't in his design, but he can't fight a guilty verdict. When he is finally released from prison, he has nothing: nojob, no family, nowhere to go. He needs to assume a new identity and rebuild his life.
But he soon finds himself digging up the past in a way he never anticipated. If the collapse was not an accident … who caused it? And why? And what if they find out who he used to be?