In this enthralling new novel, Barbara Quick re-creates eighteenth-century Venice at the height of its splendor and decadence. Her quest takes her beyond the cloister walls into the complex tapestry of Venetian society; from the impoverished alleyways of the Jewish Ghetto to a masked ball in the company of a king; from the passionate communal life of adolescent girls competing for their maestro's favor to the larger-than-life world of music and spectacle that kept the citizens of a dying republic in thrall.

. Fourteen-year-old anna maria, abandoned at the Ospedale della Pietà as an infant, is determined to find out who she is and where she came from. A virtuoso performance in the tradition of girl with a pearl Earring, Vivaldi's Virgins is a fascinating glimpse inside the source of Vivaldi's musical legacy, interwoven with the gripping story of a remarkable young woman's coming-of-age in a deliciously evocative time and place.

A story of longing and intrigue, half-told truths and toxic lies, Vivaldi's Virgins unfolds through the eyes of Anna Maria dal Violin, one of the elite musicians cloistered in the foundling home where Antonio Vivaldi—known as the Red Priest of Venice—is maestro and composer. In this world, where for fully half the year the entire city is masked and cloaked in the anonymity of Carnival, nothing is as it appears to be.

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The Baker's Daughter: A Novel

As the two women's lives become intertwined, both are forced to confront the uncomfortable truths of the past and seek out the courage to forgive. So when an escaped jewish boy arrives on Elsie’s doorstep on Christmas Eve, Elsie understands that opening the door would put all she loves in danger. Sixty years later, in el paso, texas, reba adams is trying to file a feel-good Christmas piece for the local magazine, and she sits down with the owner of Elsie's German Bakery for what she expects will be an easy interview.

But reba finds herself returning to the bakery again and again, anxious to find the heart of the story—a story that resonates with her own turbulent past. She and her family have been protected from the worst of the terror and desperation overtaking her country by a high-ranking Nazi who wishes to marry her.

In this new york times bestseller, the terrible choices we face in wartime, two women in different eras face similar life-altering decisions, the politics of exclusion, and the redemptive power of love. In 1945, elsie schmidt is a naive teenager, as eager for her first sip of champagne as she is for her first kiss.

. For elsie, reba’s questions are a stinging reminder of that last bleak year of World War II.

The Secret Lives of the Four Wives: A Novel

The struggles, intricate family politics, rivalries, and the interplay of personalities and relationships within the complex private world of a polygamous union come to life in The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives—Big Love and The 19th Wife set against a contemporary African background. African-born poet lola shoneyin makes her fiction debut with The Secret Lives of Babi Segi’s Wives, a perceptive, entertaining, and eye-opening novel of polygamy in modern-day Nigeria.

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Mistress of Rome The Empress of Rome Book 1

Many have tried to destroy the Emperor: a vengeful gladiator, a tormented soldier, an upright senator, a Vestal Virgin. So gripping, your hands are glued to the book, and so vivid it burns itself into your mind’s eye and stays with you long after you turn the final page. Diana gabaldon, #1 new york times bestselling author First-century Rome: A ruthless emperor watches over all—and fixes his gaze on one young woman.

. Thea is a slave girl from Judaea, purchased as a toy for the spiteful heiress Lepida Pollia. But the passions of an all-powerful man come with a heavy price, and Thea finds herself fighting for both her soul and her sanity. The first in an unforgettable historical saga from the USA Today bestselling author of The Alice Network.

But in the end, the life of Domitian lies in the hands of one woman: the Emperor’s mistress. Now she has infuriated her mistress by capturing the attention of Rome’s newest and most savage gladiator—and though his love brings Thea the first happiness of her life, their affair ends quickly when a jealous Lepida tears them apart.

Remaking herself as a singer for Rome’s aristocrats, Thea unwittingly attracts another admirer: the charismatic Emperor of Rome.

Ireland: A Novel

But these nights change young ronan forever, setting him on a years-long pursuit of the elusive, itinerant storyteller and the glorious tales that are no less than the saga of his tenacious and extraordinary isle. In the winter of 1951, the last practitioner of an honored, a storyteller, centuries-old tradition, arrives at the home of nine-year-old Ronan O'Mara in the Irish countryside.

For three wonderful evenings, the old gentleman enthralls his assembled local audience with narratives of foolish kings, fabled saints, and Ireland's enduring accomplishments before moving on.

How to Paint a Dead Man: A Novel

Moving from italy to england, spanning nearly half a century, and bringing together the lives of four disparate characters, How to Paint a Dead Man is Hall’s fierce and brilliant study of art and its place in our lives. From sarah hall, the acclaimed, award-winning author of daughters of the North and The Electric Michelangelo comes the Harper Perennial paperback original novel How to Paint a Dead Man, a daringly imaginative tale in which multiple lives are woven together through the prism of a still life painting.

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The Fire by Night: A Novel

And live to see her beloved friend Jo once more. When the conflict at last comes to an end, jo and Kay discover that to achieve their own peace, they must find their place—and the hope of love—in a world that’s forever changed. A powerful and evocative debut novel about two american military nurses during World War II that illuminates the unsung heroism of women who risked their lives in the fight—a riveting saga of friendship, valor, sacrifice, and survival combining the grit and selflessness of Band of Brothers with the emotional resonance of The Nightingale.

In war-torn france, an italian-irish girl from the tenements of Brooklyn, Jo McMahon, tends to six seriously wounded soldiers in a makeshift medical unit. There is a growing tenderness between her and one of her patients, a Scottish officer, but Jo’s heart is seared by the pain of all she has lost and seen.

Far from the familiar safety of the small pennsylvania coal town of her childhood, Kay clings to memories of her happy days posted in Hawaii, and the handsome flyer who swept her off her feet in the weeks before Pearl Harbor. Surrounded by cruelty and death, Kay battles to maintain her sanity and save lives as best she can.

Nearing her breaking point, to the times she shared with her best friend, she fights to hold on to joyful memories of the past, Kay, whom she met in nursing school. Half a world away in the pacific, women, one of thousands of Allied men, Kay is trapped in a squalid Japanese POW camp in Manila, and children whose fates rest in the hands of a sadistic enemy.

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A Burnable Book: A Novel

Bruce holsinger's a burnable book is an irresistible historical thriller reminiscent of the classics An Instance of the Fingerpost, The Name of the Rose, and The Crimson Petal and the White. London, 1385. Songs are heard across london--catchy verses said to originate from an ancient book that prophesies the end of England's kings--and among the book's predictions is Richard's assassination.

Gower discovers that the book and incriminating evidence about its author have fallen into the unwitting hands of innocents, who will be drawn into a labyrinthine conspiracy that reaches from the king's court to London's slums and stews--and potentially implicates his own son. In chaucer's london, betrayal, murder, royal intrigue, mystery, and dangerous politics swirl around the existence of a prophetic book that foretells the deaths of England's kings.

Surrounded by ruthless courtiers--including his powerful uncle, is in mortal peril, Richard II, and Gaunt's artful mistress, Katherine Swynford--England's young, still untested king, John of Gaunt, and the danger is only beginning. To find the manuscript, wily bureaucrat Geoffrey Chaucer turns to fellow poet John Gower, a professional trader in information with connections high and low.

As the intrigue deepens, it becomes clear that Gower, a man with secrets of his own, may be the last hope to save a king from a terrible fate. Medieval scholar bruce holsinger draws on his vast knowledge of the period to add colorful, authentic detail--on everything from poetry and bookbinding to court intrigues and brothels--to this highly entertaining and brilliantly constructed epic literary mystery that brings medieval England gloriously to life.

Only a few powerful men know that the cryptic lines derive from a "burnable book, " a seditious work that threatens the stability of the realm.

The Way to London: A Novel of World War II

Now grief stricken and all alone, she must cope with the realities of a grim, battle-weary England. Then she meets bill, a young evacuee sent to the country to escape the Blitz, and in a moment of weakness, Lucy agrees to help him find his mother in London. On the eve of pearl harbor, impetuous and overindulged, the granddaughter of an earl, Lucy Stanhope, is living a life of pampered luxury in Singapore until one reckless act will change her life forever.

Exiled to england to stay with an aunt she barely remembers, Lucy never dreamed that she would be one of the last people to escape Singapore before war engulfs the entire island, and that her parents would disappear in the devastating aftermath. Now lucy will be forced to finally confront the choices she has made if she ever hopes to have the future she yearns for.

. The unlikely runaways take off on a seemingly simple journey across the country, but her world becomes even more complicated when she is reunited with an invalided soldier she knew in Singapore. From the author of secrets of nanreath hall comes this gripping, beautifully written historical fiction novel set during World War II—the unforgettable story of a young woman who must leave Singapore and forge a new life in England.

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Belle: The Slave Daughter and the Lord Chief Justice

Growing up in his lavish estate, Dido was raised as a sister and companion to her white cousin, Elizabeth. When a joint portrait of the girls, was unveiled, commissioned by Mansfield, eighteenth-century England was shocked to see a black woman and white woman depicted as equals. Inspired by the painting, belle vividly brings to life this extraordinary woman caught between two worlds, and illuminates the great civil rights question of her age: the fight to end slavery.

Belle includes 20 pages of black-and-white photos. The illegitimate daughter of a captain in the royal navy and an enslaved African woman, Dido Belle was sent to live with her great-uncle, the Earl of Mansfield, one of the most powerful men of the time and a leading opponent of slavery. From acclaimed biographer paula byrne, the sensational true tale that inspired the major motion picture Belle May 2014 starring Tom Wilkinson, Miranda Richardson, Penelope Wilton, Emily Watson, and Matthew Goode—a stunning story of the first mixed-race girl introduced to high society England and raised as a lady.

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Wench: A Novel P.S.

It’s their open secret. Dolen perkins-valdez’s enchanting and unforgettable novel, based on little-known fact, combines the narrative allure of Cane River by Lalita Tademy and the moral complexities of Edward P. When a fire on the resort sets off a string of tragedies, the women of Tawawa House soon learn that triumph and dehumanization are inseparable and that love exists even in the most inhuman, brutal of circumstances—all while they bear witness to the end of an era.

An engaging, page-turning, with an unflinching eye, Wench explores, and wholly original novel, the moral complexities of slavery. Readers entranced by The Help will be equally riveted by Wench. From middle english “wenchel, ”1 a: a girl, maid, young woman; a female child. Situated in ohio, a free territory before the Civil War, Tawawa House is an idyllic retreat for Southern white men who vacation there every summer with their enslaved black mistresses.

But when mawu, comes along and starts talking of running away, as fearless as she is assured, things change. To run is to leave everything behind, and for some it also means escaping from the emotional and psychological bonds that bind them to their masters. Jones’s the known world as it tells the story of four black enslaved women in the years preceding the Civil War.

Wench 'wench n. A deeply moving, beautifully written novel told from the heart.