January 2021 Releases Part 1

Our Darkest Night: A Novel of Italy and the Second World War by Jennifer Robson 

Release Date: January 5, 2021

It is the autumn of 1943, and life is becoming increasingly perilous for Italian Jews like the Mazin family. With Nazi Germany now occupying most of her beloved homeland, and the threat of imprisonment and deportation growing ever more certain, Antonina Mazin has but one hope to survive—to leave Venice and her beloved parents and hide in the countryside with a man she has only just met. 

(Full description at Goodreads)

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The Gates of Athens by Conn Iggulden  

Release Date: January 5, 2021

Under Darius the Great, King of Kings, the mighty Persian army—swollen by 10,000 warriors known as The Immortals—have come to subjugate the Greeks. In their path, vastly outnumbered, stands an army of freeborn Athenians. Among them is a clever, fearsome, and cunning soldier-statesman, Xanthippus. Against all odds, the Athenians emerge victorious.

Yet people soon forget that freedom is bought with blood.

(Full description at Goodreads)

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The Children's Blizzard: A Novel by Melanie Benjamin 

Release Date: January 12, 2021

The morning of January 12, 1888, was unusually mild, following a punishing cold spell. It was warm enough for the homesteaders of the Dakota Territory to venture out again, and for their children to return to school without their heavy coats—leaving them unprepared when disaster struck. At the hour when most prairie schools were letting out for the day, a terrifying, fast-moving blizzard blew in without warning. Schoolteachers as young as sixteen were suddenly faced with life and death decisions: Keep the children inside, to risk freezing to death when fuel ran out, or send them home, praying they wouldn’t get lost in the storm?

(Full description at Goodreads)

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Yellow Wife: A Novel by Sadeqa Johnson 

Release Date: January 12, 2021

Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, Pheby Delores Brown has lived a relatively sheltered life. Shielded by her mother’s position as the estate’s medicine woman and cherished by the Master’s sister, she is set apart from the others on the plantation, belonging to neither world.

She’d been promised freedom on her eighteenth birthday, but instead of the idyllic life she imagined with her true love, Essex Henry, Pheby is forced to leave the only home she has ever known.

(Full description from Goodreads)

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Glamour Girls: A Novel by Marty Wingate 

Release Date: January 12, 2021

Ever since she was 10 years old, Rosalie Wright's eyes have been on the skies. But at the age of 18, on the verge of earning her pilot's license, the English farmer's daughter watches her dreams of becoming an aviatrix fly away without her. Britain's entry into World War II brings civilian aviation to a standstill. Then, Rosalie's father dies, leaving her, her mother, and her brothers to run the farm.

Everything changes when she learns that the Air Transport Authority is recruiting women pilots to ferry warplanes across Britain to RAF bases.

(Full description at Goodreads)

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Lana's War: A Novel by Anita Abriel 

Release Date: January 12, 2021

Paris 1943: Lana Antanova is on her way to see her husband with the thrilling news that she is pregnant. But when she arrives at the convent where he teaches music, she’s horrified to see Gestapo officers execute him for hiding a Jewish girl in the piano.

A few months later, grieving both her husband and her lost pregnancy, Lana is shocked when she’s approached to join the resistance on the French Riviera.

(Full description at Goodreads)

December Releases Part 2

The Angel of Waterloo by Jackie French 

Release Date: December 1, 2020

She was Henrietta Bartlett, a surgeon's daughter, a survivor of the Napoleonic Wars. But now the battlefield is just a blood-soaked memory, and Hen dreams of peace, a home, and a society that allows women to practise medicine.

On the other side of the world, the newly founded colony of New South Wales seems a paradise. But Europe's wars cast long shadows ...

(Full description at Goodreads)

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The Mermaid from Jeju: A Novel by Sumi Hahn 

Release Date: December 8, 2020

In the aftermath of World War II, Goh Junja is a girl just coming into her own. She is the latest successful deep sea diver in a family of strong haenyeo. Confident she is a woman now, Junja urges her mother to allow her to make the Goh family's annual trip to Mt. Halla, where they trade abalone and other sea delicacies for pork. Junja, a sea village girl, has never been to the mountains, where it smells like mushrooms and earth. While there, she falls in love with a mountain boy Yang Suwol, who rescues her after a particularly harrowing journey. But when Junja returns one day later, it is just in time to see her mother take her last breath, beaten by the waves during a dive she was taking in Junja's place.

(Full description at Goodreads)

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The Chanel Sisters: A Novel by Judithe Little 

Release Date: December 29, 2020

Antoinette and Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel know they’re destined for something better. Abandoned by their family at a young age, they’ve grown up under the guidance of nuns preparing them for simple lives as the wives of tradesmen or shopkeepers. At night, their secret stash of romantic novels and magazine cutouts beneath the floorboards are all they have to keep their dreams of the future alive.

(Full description at Goodreads)

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The Mystery of Mrs. Christie: A Novel by Marie Benedict 

Release Date: December 29, 2020

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 World War I veteran husband and her 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 providing no explanations for her time away.

(Full description at Goodreads)

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The War Widow (A Billie Walker Novel) by Tara Moss 

Release Date: December 29, 2020

Sydney, 1946. Though war correspondent Billie Walker is happy to finally be home, for her the heady postwar days are tarnished by the loss of her father and the disappearance in Europe of her husband, Jack. To make matters worse, now that the war is over, the newspapers are sidelining her reporting talents to prioritize jobs for returning soldiers. But Billie is a survivor and she's determined to take control of her own future. So she reopens her late father's business, a private investigation agency, and, slowly, the women of Sydney come knocking.

(Full description at Goodreads)

December Releases Part 1

The Forgotten Orphan by Glynis Peters 

Release Date: December 1, 2020

Abandoned when she was tiny, Maisie Reynolds was separated from her twin brother and forced to grow up in Holly Bush orphanage – a place where she has never known love or kindness.

But with the world at war and Hitler’s devastating bombs coming ever closer, fate has other plans for Maisie and a secret from her past changes everything.

When she meets handsome Canadian paratrooper, Cam, Maisie learns that love might not be lost to her after all – but not before her past life and D Day bring a tragic twist to her happiness.

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Germania: A Novel of Nazi Berlin by Harald Gilbers 

Release Date: December 1, 2020

Berlin 1944: a serial killer stalks the bombed-out capital of the Reich, preying on women and laying their mutilated bodies in front of war memorials. All of the victims are linked to the Nazi party. But according to one eyewitness account, the perpetrator is not an opponent of Hitler's regime, but rather a loyal Nazi.

(Full description at Goodreads)

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The Arctic Fury: A Novel by Greer Macallister

Release Date: December 1, 2020

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?

(Full description at Goodreads)

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The Dead of Winter: Three Giordano Bruno Novellas by S. J. Parris

Release Date: December 1, 2020

Naples, 1566. During a sweltering summer, eighteen-year-old Giordano Bruno takes his final vows at San Domenico Maggiore and is admitted to the Dominican Order—despite doubts over his tendency to ask difficult questions.

Assisting in the infirmary, Bruno witnesses an illicit autopsy performed on the body of a young woman. Her corpse reveals a dark secret, and Bruno suspects that hers may not have been an accidental death.

(Full description at Goodreads)

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Under a Gilded Moon: A Novel by Joy Jordan-Lake

Release Date: December 1, 2020

Biltmore House, a palatial mansion being built by the Vanderbilts, American “royalty,” is in its final stages of construction in North Carolina. The country’s grandest example of privilege, it symbolizes the aspirations of its owner and the dreams of a girl, just as driven, who lives in its shadow.

Kerry MacGregor’s future is derailed when, after two years in college in New York City, family obligations call her home to the beautiful Appalachians.

(Full description at Goodreads)