New Fiction: Wednesday, May 21

What better way to spend your time on this rainy Wednesday than with a good book! Stop by when you can (we’re open til 8 pm). We have a steady stream of new material arriving every week, so there’s always something interesting to read. We will continue to offer “Grab and Go” services for those who prefer to place their books on hold online and then pick them up in the cabinet inside the library.

Here are a few of the new fiction books that have arrived at the library recently. We invite you to check them out.

Austen at Sea

In Boston, 1865, Charlotte and Henrietta Stevenson, have accomplished as much as women are allowed in those days. Chafing against those restrictions and inspired by the works of Jane Austen, they start a secret correspondence with Sir Francis Austen, her last surviving brother. He sends them an original letter from his sister and invites them to come visit him in England. In Philadelphia, Nicholas & Haslett Nelson—bachelor brothers, veterans of the recent Civil War, and rare book dealers—are also in correspondence with Sir Francis Austen, who lures them, too, to England, with the promise of a never-before-seen, rare Austen artifact. The Stevenson sisters sneak away without a chaperone to sail to England. It’s a voyage that will dramatically change each of their lives in ways that are unforeseen.

I will Blossom Anyway

The third of four children born to a middle-class Calcutta family, Durga is the first to leave the nest of her loving, overbearing family. She is not as charming as her older sister, Tia, as lighthearted as her brother, Arjun, or as clever as her younger sister, Parul. But when she arrives in Ireland to work at a tech company, she finds that for the first time ever she is free to sample everything that life has to offer. But freedom comes at a price. Durga falls in love with handsome, charismatic Jacob, and grows close with his sister, Joy, now Durga’s flatmate and best friend. But when Jacob breaks up with Durga, she’s unmoored. Will she stay in Ireland with her newfound identity and livelihood, or will she return to India, where she is comfortable?

Don’t Forget Me, Little Bessie

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Bessie Holland yearns for the love that she has never known. She finds a soulmate and mentor in a brilliant but tormented suffragette English teacher, who inspires Bessie to fight the forces of evil that permeate her world. Watching the vast Texas countryside being destroyed by an oil company and a menacing figure with a violent past, Bessie is prepared to defend her home and her family. But when she accidentally kills an unarmed man to defend her father, she must flee to New York. There, her older brother introduces her to boys who will grow into gangsters, but as children admire and respect Bessie’s spirit and fortitude as she is cast into a gangland that yearns for justice and mercy.