Helen Plum Library

In November 1944, eighteen-year-old June Walker boards an unmarked bus, destined for a city that doesn't officially exist. Oak Ridge, Tennessee has sprung up in a matter of months--a town of trailers and segregated houses, 24-hour cafeterias, and constant security checks. There, June joins hundreds of other young girls operating massive machines whose purpose is never explained. They know they are helping to win the war, but must ask no questions...

"Superintendent of Nurses Julia Stimson and sixty-five inexperienced young nurses arrive on the front lines of WWI to find chaos. With 1,300 soldiers stuffed into a facility built for 500, providing even the most basic care is challenging-and Julia quickly learns that male doctors see her as a threat to their authority. Based on a true story, The War Nurse follows Julia through WWI in France, while the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic overwhelms medical...

An enchanting historical epic of grand passion and adventure, this debut novel tells the captivating story of one of India's most controversial empresses, a woman whose brilliance and determination trumped myriad obstacles and whose love shaped the course of the Mughal Empire. Skillfully blending the textures of historical reality with the rich and sensual imaginings of a timeless fairy tale, The Twentieth Wife sweeps listeners up in Mehrunnisa's...

"More goes wrong than could be imagined when Iris Sparks and Gwendolyn Bainbridge of The Right Sort Marriage Bureau are unexpectedly engaged to dig into the past of a suitor of a royal princess in Allison Montclair's delightful second novel, A Royal Affair. In London 1946, The Right Sort Marriage Bureau is just beginning to take off and the proprietors, Miss Iris Sparks and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge, are in need of a bigger office and a secretary...

"In 1866 as Tom and his guardian, Eliza Bethune, struggle to adjust to their fashionable apartment in the city in the aftermath of riots that had driven them away a few years before. But soon a stranger arrives from the mysterious island of Edgemere, inhabited solely by African settlers and black refugees from the war and riots, who intends to reunite Tom with his now-liberated mother."--Page [4] of cover

A novel set in the French royal court of Catherine de' Medici during the Renaissance follows Pedro Gonzales, an unusual man who, delivered by a slave broker into France's royal court, becomes the favorite of the queen who is determined to find him a bride 1547: Pedro Gonzales, a young boy living on the island of Tenerife, understands that he is different from the other children in his village. He is mercilessly ridiculed for the hair covering his...

Before they became legendary writers, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, and Anne Brontë were "lady detectors" in this charming historical mystery. Not yet published novelists, they have well-honed imaginations and are expert readers. And, as Charlotte remarks, "detecting is reading between the lines--it's seeing what is not there."

Osnat Barzani, also known as Asnat or Asenath Barzani, the world's first female rabbi, was born almost five hundred years ago, during a time when few girls were allowed to read. Her father was a great scholar whose house was filled with books, and she convinced him to teach her. She grew up to teach others, becoming a wise and famous scholar in her own right.-- Adapted from inside front jacket flap, Amazon.com, and a Jerusalem Post article about the...

"A World War II novel about a Dutch family who is separated during the war when the Japanese occupy the Dutch East Indies"-- "Based on a true story, this gripping WWII novel captures the resilience, hope, and courage of a Dutch family who is separated during the war when the Japanese occupy the Dutch East Indies, Java Island, 1941. Six-year-old Rita Vischer cowers in her family's dug-out bomb shelter, listening to the sirens and waiting for a bomb...

Edward Dickens, the tenth child of author Charles Dickens, has consistently let down his parents. Unable to apply himself at school and adrift in life, the teenaged boy is sent to Australia in the hopes that he can make something of himself - or at least fall out of the public eye. Determined to prove to his parents and more importantly, himself, that he can succeed in this vast and unfamiliar wilderness, Edward works hard at his new life amidst various...