Ell Potter
Author
Language
English
Description
A scintillating, gorgeously written historical novel about a mother and a daughter in eighteenth-century France, beginning with decadence and palace intrigue at Versailles and ending in an explosive new era of revolution.
During the reign of Louis XV, impoverished but lovely teenage girls from all over France are, sent to a discreet villa in the town of Versailles. Overseen by the King's favorite mistress, Madame de Pompadour, they will be, trained...
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Adult Summer Reading 2023: Award-Winning Books
ASR 2022: Award-Winning Books
Literary Fiction!
Mothers in Literature
ASR 2022: Award-Winning Books
Literary Fiction!
Mothers in Literature
Description
"A thrilling departure: a short, piercing, deeply moving novel about the death of Shakespeare's 11 year old son Hamnet--a name interchangeable with Hamlet in 15th century Britain--and the years leading up to the production of his great play. England, 1580. A young Latin tutor--penniless, bullied by a violent father--falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman--a wild creature who walks her family's estate with a falcon on her shoulder...
Author
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Description
"A sweeping, tenderhearted love story, Beyond That, the Sea by Laura Spence-Ash tells the story of two families living through World War II on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean, and the shy, irresistible young woman who will call them both her own. As German bombs fall over London in 1940, working-class parents Millie and Reginald Thompson make an impossible choice: they decide to send their eleven-year-old daughter, Beatrix, to America. There,...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Ignite your imagination with this immersive page-turner!
"Weaves a spell of darkness that's mysterious and magical, and binds it with a knot of deathless love." —New York Times bestselling author Susanna Kearsley on A Lullaby for Witches
In post–World War I England, a young woman inherits a mysterious library...
"Weaves a spell of darkness that's mysterious and magical, and binds it with a knot of deathless love." —New York Times bestselling author Susanna Kearsley on A Lullaby for Witches
In post–World War I England, a young woman inherits a mysterious library...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
England, 1835. London is awash with thrilling new ingredients, from rare spices to exotic fruits. But no one knows how to use them. When Eliza Acton is told by her publisher to write a cookery book instead of the poetry she loves, she refuses--until her bankrupt father is forced to flee the country. As a woman, Eliza has few options. Although she's never set foot in a kitchen, she begins collecting recipes and teaching herself to cook. Much to her...
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
A reunited couple search for a valuable treasure, a precious jewelry box, stolen from the Nazis and hidden away since World War II, in this powerfully emotional and romantic novel of rekindled love?perfect for fans of Jodi Picoult, Josie Silver, and Jill Santopolo.Now?Years later, Frances?s son, Harry, opens the door of his late mother?s home, never expecting to see Tabitha?the lost love of his life?on the other side. Their angry parting had broken...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"A big, juicy biopic novel by the author of Mademoiselle Chanel about the scandalous life of Jennie Jerome Churchill, mother of Winston, an heiress from New York who married into one of England's most storied families but who always lived life on her own terms, as a royal mistress with a series of younger husbands and a son whose political rise she happily stage-managed"--
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Formats
Description
"Dare Me meets Black Swan and Luckiest Girl Alive in a captivating, voice-driven debut novel about a trio of ballerinas who meet as students at the Paris Opera Ballet School. Fourteen years ago, Delphine abandoned her prestigious soloist spot at the Paris Opera Ballet for a new life in St. Petersburg--taking with her a secret that could upend the lives of her best friends, fellow dancers Lindsay and Margaux. Now 36 years old, Delphine has returned...
9) Elsewhere
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Richly emotive and darkly captivating, with elements of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" and the imaginative depth of Margaret Atwood, Elsewhere by Alexis Schaitkin conjures a community in which girls become wives, wives become mothers and some of them, quite simply, disappear. Vera grows up in a small town, removed and isolated, pressed up against the mountains, cloud-covered and damp year-round. This town, fiercely protective, brutal and unforgiving...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
There are summers that will change your life.
There are summers that may end it.
In the lush green hills beyond Florence sits the Villa Medici-a graceful pensione surrounded by manicured gardens. Rachel, a college student from an unfashionable London suburb, can't believe her luck in landing a summer job here. Especially when she's drawn into a circle of privileged young sophisticates, including her glamorous coworker Diana, who promises to help...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
A mesmerizing novel set in the French royal court of Catherine de' Medici during the Renaissance, which recreates the touching and surprising true story behind the Beauty and the Beast legend, from the acclaimed author of The Clergyman's Wife and The Heiress.
1547: Pedro Gonsalvus, a young boy living on the island of Tenerife, understands that he is different from the other children in his village. He is mercilessly ridiculed for the shiny layer...
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
"A sapphic reimagining of Mary Shelley's youth, vividly exploring innocence, young love, gothic mystery and the roots of her literary masterpiece, Frankenstein. Switzerland, 1816. A volcanic eruption in Indonesia envelopes the whole of Europe in ash and cloud. Amid this "year without a summer," eighteen-year-old Mary Shelley and her lover Percy Bysshe Shelley arrive at Lake Geneva to visit Lord Byron and his companion John Polidori. Anguished by the...
Author
Language
English
Description
When a World War II widow inherits a dilapidated English estate, she uncovers a diary written by an adolescent girl named Maude Gower. Looking for answers, she begins reading, only to unravel more questions about the mysterious past and many secrets hidden deep within the walls of Orchard House.
In 1876, orphaned Maude is forced to leave London, and her adored brother, Frank, to live with a stranger. Everyone-especially Frank-tells her not to trust...
Author
Language
English
Description
From the acclaimed author of Mr. Dickens and His Carol, a richly-imagined reckoning with the life of another cherished literary legend: Mary Wollstonecraft – arguably the world’s first feminist
August, 1797. Midwife Parthenia Blenkinsop has delivered countless babies over the course of her career, and when she arrives at Mary Wollstonecraft’s door, everything appears normal. But after the baby girl is delivered, the women will spend the next...
15) The Heiress
Author
Language
English
Description
As a fussy baby, Anne de Bourgh’s doctor prescribed laudanum to quiet her, and now the young woman must take the opium-heavy tincture every day. Growing up sheltered and confined, removed from sunshine and fresh air, the pale and overly slender Anne grew up with few companions except her cousins, including Fitzwilliam Darcy. Throughout their childhoods, it was understood that Darcy and Anne would marry and combine their vast estates of Pemberley...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Combining history, the occult, human greed, and a touch of feminism, this is a fine addition to the gothic genre." -ALA's Booklist on The Last Heir to Blackwood Library
In the midst of the Napoleonic Wars and the rise of the floriography craze in Europe, two sisters separated at birth are bound together by a secret language of flowers passed down to them by the mother they never knew. When Cornelia leaves her cruel uncle's home to join Napoleon's...
17) The Bone Orchard
Author
Language
English
Description
Sara A. Mueller's Bone Orchard is a fascinating whodunit set in a lush, gothic world of secrets and magic, where a dying emperor charges his favorite concubine with solving his own murder, and preventing the culprit, which undoubtedly is one of his three terrible sons, from taking control of an empire.
Charm is a witch, and she is alone. The last of a line of conquered necromantic workers, now confined within the yard of regrown bone trees at Orchard...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
From Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, a sweeping, romantic compulsively readable historical saga about a Duke's daughter-the perfect Victorian lady-who secretly moonlights as an amateur sleuth for high society's inner circle.
Victorian London was notorious for its pickpockets. But, in the country houses of the elite, gentleman burglars, art thieves and con men preyed on the rich and titled. Wealthy victims- with their pride and reputation at...
20) Saint: a novel
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
After years of escaping deadly storms and gaining the reputation of being the luckiest to sail the Narrows, Elias's luck may have run out when he crosses paths with a young dredger from the Unnamed Sea, who tests his faith like never before.