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English
Description
With her marriage prospects limited, teenage Varina Howell agrees to wed the much-older widower Jefferson Davis, with whom she expects a life of security as a Mississippi landowner. He instead pursues a career in politics and is eventually appointed president of the Confederacy, placing Varina at the white-hot centre of one of the darkest moments in American history - culpable regardless of her intentions. Intimate in its detailed observations of...
Author
Language
English
Description
From The New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Came Home comes a historical novel inspired by true events, and the extraordinary female lighthouse keepers of the past two hundred years. "They call me a heroine, but I am not deserving of such accolades. I am just an ordinary young woman who did her duty." 1838: Northumberland, England. Longstone Lighthouse on the Farne Islands has been Grace Darling's home for all of her twenty-two years....
Author
Language
English
Description
At the beginning of this powerful novel, we meet Aurore Dupin as she is leaving her estranged husband, a loveless marriage, and her family’s estate in the French countryside to start a new life in Paris. There, she gives herself a new name—George Sand—and pursues her dream of becoming a writer, embracing an unconventional and even scandalous lifestyle. Paris in the nineteenth century comes vividly alive, illuminated by the story of the loves,...
Author
Language
English
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...
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Language
English
Description
"New York Times bestselling author Karen Harper tells the tale of Consuelo Vanderbilt, her 'The Wedding of the Century' to the Duke of Marlborough, and her quest to find meaning behind 'the glitter and the gold.' Consuelo finds the inner strength to makethe best of a life she did not choose"--
Author
Language
English
Description
"Two decades before the Civil War, a middle-class farmer named Samuel Maddox lies on his deathbed. Elsewhere in his Virginia home, a young woman named Kitty knows her life is about to change. She is one of the Maddox family's slaves--and Samuel's biological daughter. When Samuel's wife, Mary, inherits her husband's property, she will own Kitty, too, along with Kitty's three small children. Already in her fifties and with no children of her own, Mary...
Author
Language
English
Description
1939. As the wife of King George VI and mother of the future queen, Elizabeth-“the queen mother”-shows a warm, smiling face to the world. But it's no surprise that Hitler himself calls her the “Most Dangerous Woman in Europe.” For behind that soft voice and kindly demeanor is a will of steel. Two years earlier, George was thrust onto the throne when his brother Edward abdicated, determined to marry his divorced, American mistress Mrs. Simpson....
9) Martin Eden
Author
Series
Lexile measure
1020L
Language
English
Description
The novel is a classic Künstlerroman -- a coming of age story centered on its titular protagonist, a self-taught would-be writer, struggling to rise above his impoverished proletarian roots in working-class Oakland, California, to achieve a place among the literary elite. The driving force behind Martin Eden's ambition is his love for Ruth Morse and a desire to accumulate enough wealth and prestige to satisfy her bourgeois family.
10) The Paris wife
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Series
Language
English
Description
Meeting through mutual friends in Chicago, Hadley is intrigued by brash "beautiful boy" Ernest Hemingway, and after a brief courtship and small wedding, they take off for Paris, where Hadley makes a convincing transformation from an overprotected child to a game and brave young woman who puts up with impoverished living conditions and shattering loneliness to prop up her husband's career.
11) Terrible virtue
Author
Language
English
Description
A fictional portrait of one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century follows the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, who sacrificed two husbands, three children, and scores of lovers in her fight for sexual equality and freedom.
Author
Language
English
Description
"The world would not look upon his like again. John Wilkes Booth--driven son of an acclaimed British stage actor and a Covent Garden flower girl, whose misguided quest to avenge the vanquished Confederacy led him to commit one of the most notorious acts in the annals of America--has been the subject of scholarship, speculation, and even obsession. Though in his plot to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln Booth did not act alone--"I am determined...
13) The other Alcott
Author
Language
English
Description
A tale inspired by the life of Louisa May Alcott's youngest sister finds young May longing to study art outside of the confines of her Concord home before turning down a marriage proposal and pursuing an identity in contrast to the spoiled and worldly character of Amy in her sister's famed novel.
Author
Series
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 5.6 - AR Pts: 34
Language
English
Description
Assuming the power recently lost by the disgraced Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell counsels a mercurial Henry VIII on the latter's efforts to marry Anne Boleyn against the wishes of Rome, a successful endeavor that comes with a dangerous price.
Author
Language
English
Description
"In Poland in 1891, Marie Curie (then Marya Sklodowska) was engaged to a budding mathematician, Kazimierz Zorawski. But when his mother insisted she was too poor and not good enough, he broke off the engagement. A heartbroken Marya left Poland for Paris, where she would attend the Sorbonne to study chemistry and physics. Eventually Marie Curie would go on to change the course of science forever and be the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. But what...
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Language
English
Description
"Mrs. Post, the President and First Lady are here to see you. . . . So begins another average evening for Marjorie Merriweather Post. Presidents have come and gone, but she has hosted them all. Growing up in the modest farmlands of Battle Creek, Michigan, Marjorie was inspired by a few simple rules--always think for yourself, never take success for granted, and work hard--even when deemed American royalty, even while covered in imperial diamonds....
Author
Language
English
Description
In 1918, a fearless 22 year old arrives in bohemian San Francisco from the Northeast, determined to make her own way as an independent woman. Renaming herself Dorothea Lange she is soon the celebrated owner of the city's most prestigious and stylish portrait studio and wife of the talented but volatile painter, Maynard Dixon. By the early 1930s, as America's economy collapses, her marriage flounders and Dorothea must find ways to support her two young...
Author
Language
English
Description
"Inspiring historical fiction based on the real life of Bertha Benz, whose husband built the first prototype automobile, which eventually evolved into the Mercedes-Benz marque. "Unfortunately, only a girl again." From a young age, Cäcilie Bertha Ringer is fascinated by her father's work as a master builder in Pforzheim, Germany. But those five words, which he wrote next to her name in the family Bible, haunt Bertha. Years later, Bertha meets Carl...
Author
Language
English
Description
The only legitimate child of Lord Byron, the most brilliant, revered, and scandalous of the Romantic poets, Ada was destined for fame long before her birth. But her mathematician mother, estranged from Ada's infamous and destructively passionate father, is determined to save her only child from her perilous Byron heritage. Banishing fairy tales and make-believe from the nursery, Ada's mother provides her daughter with a rigorous education grounded...
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