Maureen

by Rachel Joyce

Maureen and Harold Fry have settled into a quiet life, but when an unexpected message from the North disturbs their peaceful equilibrium, Maureen realizes that it’s now her turn to make a journey. But she is not like her affable, easygoing husband. By turns outspoken, then vulnerable, she struggles to form bonds with the people she meets–and the landscape she crosses has radically changed. Maureen has no sense of what she will find at the end of the road. All she knows is that she has to get there.

A deeply felt, lyrical, and powerful novel, Maureen explores love, loss, and how we come to terms with the past in order to understand ourselves a little better. While this book stands alone, it is also the extraordinarily moving finale to a trilogy that began with the phenomenal bestseller The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and continued in The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy. Like those beloved books, Maureen has all the power and weight of a classic.

The Forty Elephants

by Erin Bledsoe
Based on a true story: The Forty Elephants or Forty Thieves were a 19th to 20th century all-female London crime syndicate who specialized in shoplifting. This gang was notable for its longevity and skill in avoiding police detection. (Wikipedia)

An epic novel set in Roaring Twenties London, based on the real-life, all-female gang of the same name who specialized in crime as high art, targeting posh department stores and elites. London in the 1920s is no place for a woman with a mind of her own. Gang wars, violence, and an unforgiving world have left pickpocket Alice Diamond scrambling to survive in the Mint, the gritty neighborhood her family has run for generations.