August 10, 2016 | madame librarian
If you are a fan of historical fiction, are a fan of Jodi Picoult or Tracy Chevalier, but prefer Large Print...
A modern masterpiece from one of Italy's most acclaimed authors, My Brilliant Friend is a rich, intense, and generous-hearted story about two friends, Elena and Lila. Ferrante' s inimitable style lends itself perfectly to a meticulous portrait of these two women that is also the story of a nation and a touching meditation on the nature of friendship. The story begins in the 1950s, in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples. Growing up on these tough streets the two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else. As they grow, as their paths repeatedly diverge and converge, Elena and Lila remain best friends whose respective destinies are reflected and refracted in the other. They are likewise the embodiments of a nation undergoing momentous change. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighborhood, a city, and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her protagonists, the unforgettable Elena and Lila.
For fourteen years, Letty Espinosa has worked three jobs around San Francisco to make ends meet while her mother raised her children-- Alex, now fifteen, and Luna, six-- in their tiny apartment on a forgotten spit of wetlands near the bay. But now Letty's parents are returning to Mexico, and Letty must step up and become a mother for the first time in her life. Navigating this new terrain is challenging for Letty, especially as Luna desperately misses her grandparents and Alex, who is falling in love with a classmate, is unwilling to give his mother a chance. Letty comes up with a plan to help the family escape the dangerous neighborhood and heartbreaking injustice that have marked their lives, but one wrong move could jeopardize everything she's worked for and her family's fragile hopes for the future.
From the author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller Sister comes a compelling, thrilling story of a mother who will do anything to protect her child. The school is on fire. Her children are inside. Grace runs toward the burning building, desperate to reach them. In the aftermath of the devastating fire which tears her family apart, Grace embarks on a mission to find the person responsible and protect her children from further harm. This fire was not an accident, and her daughter Jenny may still be in grave danger. Grace is the only one who can discover the culprit, and she will do whatever it takes to save her family and find out who committed the crime that rocked their lives. While unearthing truths about her life that may help her find answers, Grace learns more about everyone around her -- and finds she has courage she never knew she possessed. Powerful and beautiful, with a riveting story and Lupton's trademark elegant style that made Sister such a sweeping success, Afterwards explores the depths of a mother's unswerving love.
Moving to the mill city of Lowell in 1832 to escape farm life, young Alice is disillusioned by the local factory's harsh working conditions and struggles to advocate on their behalf while recklessly falling in love with the mill owner's son, a situation that is complicated by a murder and sensational trial. .
An African-American man accused of rape by a humiliated girl. A vengeful father. A courageous attorney. A worshipful daughter. Think you know this story? Think again. Laura Lippman, the "extravagantly gifted" (Chicago Tribune) New York Times bestselling author, delivers "one of her best novels " (Washington Post)--a modern twist on To Kill a Mockingbird. Scott Turow writes in the New York Times, "Wilde Lake is a real success." Luisa "Lu" Brant is the newly elected state's attorney representing suburban Maryland--including the famous planned community of Columbia, created to be a utopia of racial and economic equality. Prosecuting a controversial case involving a disturbed drifter accused of beating a woman to death, the fiercely ambitious Lu is determined to avoid the traps that have destroyed other competitive, successful women. She's going to play it smart to win this case--and win big--cementing her political future. But her intensive preparation for trial unexpectedly dredges up painful recollections of another crime--the night when her brother, AJ, saved his best friend at the cost of another man's life. Only eighteen, AJ was cleared by a grand jury. Justice was done. Or was it? Did the events of 1980 happen as she remembers them? She was only a child then. What details didn't she know? As she plunges deeper into the past, Lu is forced to face a troubling reality. The legal system, the bedrock of her entire life, does not have all the answers. But what happens when she realizes that, for the first time, she doesn't want to know the whole truth?
It's the summer of 1914 and life in the sleepy village of Rye, England is about to take an interesting turn. Agatha Kent is expecting an unusual candidate to be the school's Latin teacher : Beatrice Nash, a young woman of good breeding in search of a position after the death of her father. Agatha's nephews, meanwhile, have come to spend the summer months, as always, both with dreams of their own. When Hugh is sent to pick up Beatrice from the train station-- life, of course, changes. Here, these characters and others we come to love and root for become characters we hope and pray for when the shadow of the Great War looms ever closer to home.
During the English Age of Reason, a woman cloistered since birth learns that knowledge is no substitute for experience. Raised by her father in near isolation in the English countryside, Emilie Selden is trained as a brilliant natural philosopher and alchemist. In the spring of 1725, father and daughter embark upon their most daring alchemical experiment to date--attempting to breathe life into dead matter. But when Emilie--against her father's wishes--experiences the passion of first love, she is banished to London, where she soon discovers she knows nothing about human nature--or her own family's complicated past. So begins her shocking journey to enlightenment.
In the middle of the twentieth century, in a home economics program at a prominent university, orphaned babies are used to teach mothering skills to young women. These "practice babies," are handed off from one mother-in-training to the next, usually staying in a "practice house" for a few years before being sent to adoptive families. For Henry House, the first practice baby to stay on at the university, finding love and learning to trust prove to be the work of a lifetime.
Gunning's blazing third historical (after Bound) takes readers into the heart of Revolutionary War-era Boston, where young Jane Clarke has been sent to care for her great-aunt Gill after refusing to marry the man her loyalist father has chosen for her. Not long after settling into her aunt's house near the British Custom House, Jane is thrust into the milieu of violence and intrigue that eventually leads to a declaration of independence by the American colonists. She befriends the bookseller Henry Knox and meets John Adams, who employs her brother as a clerk. As tensions mount, Jane watches the men around her grow more aggressive in their aversion to British rule, and less concerned with truth. When she is caught up in the Boston Massacre, she must come to terms with the importance of honesty over personal and political passions. There's a history textbook's worth of well-done cameos, but it's Gunning's fluid writing and attention to the larger issues of human nature that really make this move. Good historical fiction offers new perspectives on old stories.
Pen Calloway, estranged from her college friends Cat and Will for six years, has missed them through the birth of her daughter, the death of her father, and the struggles of single motherhood, and must decide how far she will go to get her friends back in her life after Cat ends the silence between them with an urgent summons to a college reunion.