Robin

Robin has been with the St Helens Book Shop for 13 years.  We couldn't do without her!  She and her husband have three grown boys, and she loves literary and historical fiction titles, especially with strong female characters.  Read on for some of her favorites below.

 

 

 

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ISBN-13: 9780399155765
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Putnam Adult, 8/2009
A debut novel that will surely have readers talking, "The Wet Nurse's Tale" is a bright and clever story with a sharp-tongued, adventurous heroine who offers a candid and often funny look at the business of nursing babies in Victorian England.

Susan Rose isn't the average protagonist: she's scheming, promiscuous, plump, and she is also smart, funny, tender, and entirely lovable. Like many lower-class women of Victorian England, she was born into a world that offered very few opportunities for the poor and unlovely. But Susan is the kind of plucky heroine who seeks her fortune, and finds it . . . with some help from, well, her breasts. Susan, you see, is a professional wet nurse; she breast-feeds the children of wealthy women who can't or won't nurse their own babies.

But when her own child is sold by her father and sent to a London lady who had recently lost a baby, Susan manages to convince his new foster mother, Mrs. Norbert, to hire her as a wet nurse. Once reunited with her son, Susan discovers the Norbert home to be a much more sinister place than she'd ever expected. Dark and full of secrets, its master is in India, and the first baby who died there did so under very mysterious circumstances. Susan embarks on a terrifying journey to rescue her son before he meets the same fate.

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ISBN-13: 9780061763144
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Harper, 5/2009
This amazing true story reveals how two brothers--without a dime to their names nor a single meaningful contact in Hollywood--managed to write, produce, act in, and direct a feature film in less that a year.

When identical twin brothers Logan and Noah Miller's homeless father died alone in a jail cell, they vowed, come hell or high water, that their film, "Touching Home," would be made as a dedication to their love for him. Either You're in or You're in the Way" is the amazing story of how--without "a dime to their names nor a single meaningful contact in Hollywood--they managed to write, produce, direct, and act in a feature film alongside four-time Academy Award-nominated actor Ed Harris and fellow nominees Brad Dourif and Robert Forster.

"Either You're in or You're in the Way" tells of the desperate struggle of two sons fighting to keep a vow to their father, and in so doing, creating a better life for themselves. A modern-day Horatio Alger on steroids, this fast-paced thrill ride of heartbreak and redemption will both captivate and inspire.

$14.00
ISBN-13: 9781594483080
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Riverhead Trade, 5/2008
From the "New York Times"-bestselling author of "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" comes a glorious novel of unrequited love, longing and the meaning of friendship (Adriana Trigiani, "New York Times"-bestselling author of the Big Stone Gap novels).

Riley and Alice, two sisters now in their twenties, and as fiercely different as they are loyal, have spent every summer at their parents--a modest beach house on New Yorkas Fire Island. Each year, they return to the house and community they have known since they were children--and to Paul, the boy next door. But this summer marks a season of change: budding love and sexual interest, an illness, and a deep secret force all three to confront the increasing complexities of their lives and friendships.

Shanghai Girls (Hardcover)

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ISBN-13: 9781400067114
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Random House, 5/2009
In 1937, Shanghai is the Paris of Asia, a city of great wealth and glamour, the home of millionaires and beggars, gangsters and gamblers, patriots and revolutionaries, artists and warlords. Thanks to the financial security and material comforts provided by their father's prosperous rickshaw business, twenty-one-year-old Pearl Chin and her younger sister, May, are having the time of their lives. Though both sisters wave off authority and tradition, they couldn't be more different: Pearl is a Dragon sign, strong and stubborn, while May is a true Sheep, adorable and placid. Both are beautiful, modern, and carefree . . . until the day their father tells them that he has gambled away their wealth and that in order to repay his debts he must sell the girls as wives to suitors who have traveled from California to find Chinese brides.

As Japanese bombs fall on their beloved city, Pearl and May set out on the journey of a lifetime, one that will take them through the Chinese countryside, in and out of the clutch of brutal soldiers, and across the Pacific to the shores of America. In Los Angeles they begin a fresh chapter, trying to find love with the strangers they have married, brushing against the seduction of Hollywood, and striving to embrace American life even as they fight against discrimination, brave Communist witch hunts, and find themselves hemmed in by Chinatown's old ways and rules.

At its heart, Shanghai Girls is a story of sisters: Pearl and May are inseparable best friends who share hopes, dreams, and a deep connection, but like sisters everywhere they also harbor petty jealousies and rivalries. They love each other, but each knows exactly where to drive the knife to hurt the other the most. Along the way they face terrible sacrifices, make impossible choices, and confront a devastating, life-changing secret, but through it all the two heroines of this astounding new novel hold fast to who they are-Shanghai girls.