Step out of the inspirational aisle
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Aunt Dimity's Death by Nancy Atherton Lori Shepherd learns that she will inherit a sizeable estate from her recently deceased Aunt Dimity, but there is a catch—Lori must first discover the secret hidden in the letters in Dimity’s cottage. Catalog Link |
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Dream When You're Feeling Blue by Elizabeth Berg After sending their men off to fight in the war, sisters Kitty and Louise Heaney join their flirtatious younger sister, Tish, in writing letters to servicemen overseas. A study of life during World War II from the perspective of the young men on the battlefield and the women left behind on the home front. Catalog Link |
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The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, begins her adventure when a dead bird is found on the doorstep of her family’s mansion in the summer of 1950, thus propelling her into a mystery that involves an investigation into a man’s murder where her father is the main suspect. Catalog Link |
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Prayers for Sale by Sandra Dallas Drawn to the newly married seventeen-year-old Nit Spindle, who has moved to their small mountain Colorado town to escape the ravages of the Great Depression, octogenarian Hennie Comfort forges a friendship with the young woman based on shared hardships and secrets. Catalog Link |
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Can't Wait to Get to Heaven by Fannie Flagg Strange things begin to happen when Mrs. Shimfissle, an eighty-year-old woman, falls out of a fig tree in her own front yard, in a novel about one woman’s offbeat experiences in the hereafter. Catalog Link |
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The Sweet By and By by Todd Johnson Brought together by circumstance, five North Carolina women protect and provoke each other while they struggle with limited prospects, career ambitions, and vulnerable hearts. Catalog Link |
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The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King A chance meeting with an elderly beekeeper turns into a pivotal, personal transformation when fifteen-year-old Mary Russell discovers that the beekeeper is the reclusive Sherlock Holmes, who soon takes on the role of mentor and teacher Catalog Link |
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Oh My Stars: A Novel by Lorna Landvik In a novel set during the early days of rock ‘n roll, the life of Violet Mathers, a down-and-out woman, becomes embroiled with that of a handsome musical pioneer. By the author of Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons. Catalog Link |
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The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey After her widowed father drowns, Gemma Hardy leaves Iceland to live with family in Scotland where she encounters many difficulties as she grows up. Catalog Link |
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La's Orchestra Saves the World by Alexander McCall Smith It’s 1939 and the war in Europe casts a long, all-encompassing shadow. In a sleepy town in Suffolk, La, the generous and determined widow, forms an amateur orchestra to entertain the locals and soothe her own broken heart. She recruits Feliks, a refugee from Poland, to play the flute, and a touching friendship emerges. Catalog Link |
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The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton Abandoned on a 1913 voyage to Australia, Nell is raised by a dock master and his wife who do not tell her until she grows up that she is not their child, a situation that causes her to return to England and eventually hand down her quest for answers to her granddaughter. Catalog Link |
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The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa A relationship blossoms between a brilliant math professor suffering from short-term memory problems following a traumatic head injury and the young housekeeper, the mother of a ten-year-old son, hired to care for him. Catalog Link |
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Eat Cake by Jeanne Ray Ruth draws on her talent for concocting delectable cakes and desserts when her family begins to disintegrate around her—her husband loses his job, her mother moves in, and her long-estranged father shows up at the door with no place to go. Catalog Link |
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Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind by Ann B. Ross Recently widowed and newly wealthy, Miss Julia is visited one day by Hazel Marie who claims that her nine-year-old son is the child of Julia’s late husband, and when Julia is left to care for the child, she reveals the scandal that precipitated her husband’s death. Catalog Link |
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The Light Between Oceans by ML Stedman Moving his young bride to an isolated lighthouse home on Australia’s Janus Rock where the couple suffers miscarriages and a stillbirth, Tom allows his wife to claim an infant that has washed up on the shore, a decision with devastating consequences. Catalog Link |
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The Help by Kathryn Stockett Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. It is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone. Catalog Link |
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The Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama Shortly before World War II, a Chinese man, sent to Japan to recover from tuberculosis, meets a lovely Japanese girl and four older residents, in a story of passion and sacrifice. Catalog Link |
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Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson Miss Pettigrew, a governess looking for work, is sent by mistake to the home of Delysia LaFosse, a glamorous nightclub singer involved with three different men and is invited to stay after offering Miss LaFosse common sense advice about her love life. Catalog Link |
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Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear Private detective Maisie Dobbs must investigate the reappearance of a dead man who turns up at a cooperative farm called the Retreat that caters to men who are recovering their health after World War I. Catalog Link |