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Easy Reads for Uneasy Times
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The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend
by Katarina Bivald
A Swedish tourist opens a bookstore in Broken Wheel, Iowa, to honor her deceased pen pal and makes some unconventional choices that threaten to bring long-hidden secrets to light as she attempts to share her love of reading with the locals. Original.
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The Ingredients of You and Me : a novel
by Nina Bocci
A successful bakery owner trades in her city life for a small town world after visiting her best friend and deciding to stay in the latest addition to the series following Meet Me on Love Lane.
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Emergency contact
by Mary H. K. Choi
A chance encounter leads Penny and Sam to become each other's emergency contacts and they soon find themselves falling in love digitally, without the humiliating weirdness of having to see each other
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Fried green tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
by Fannie Flagg
Mrs. Threadgoode's tale of two high-spirited women of the 1930s, Idgie and Ruth, helps Evelyn, a 1980s woman in a sad slump of middle age, to begin to rejuvenate her own life.
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The Little Paris Bookshop
by Nina George
Monsieur Perdu calls himself a literary apothecary. From his floating bookstore in a barge on the Seine, he prescribes novels for the hardships of life. Using his intuitive feel for the exact book a reader needs, Perdu mends broken hearts and souls. The only person he can't seem to heal through literature is himself; he's still haunted by heartbreak after his great love disappeared. She left him with only a letter, which he has never opened. After Perdu is finally tempted to read the letter, he hauls anchor and departs on a mission to the south of France, hoping to make peace with his loss and discover the end of the story.
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How to stop time
by Matt Haig
Tom Hazard has just move back to London to settle down and become a history teacher. But while he may look like an ordinary forty-one-year-old, owing to a rare condition, he's been alive for centuries. Unfortunately for Tom, the Albatross Society, the secretive group that protects people like him, has one rule: Never fall in love
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The Elephant Keepers' Children
by Peter Høeg
Enjoying life on an island where all faiths coexist peacefully, precocious 14-year-old Peter and his siblings are shocked when their devout vicar father and eccentric artisan mother go missing at the height of a relentless effort to boost church attendance.
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The keeper of lost things : a novel
by Ruth Hogan
Collecting things dropped or left behind by others and writing stories about them as a tribute to the fiancée who died the day he lost one of her keepsakes, a man bequeaths his estate to his unsuspecting assistant, who bonds with new neighbors while attempting to reunite the objects with their owners. A first novel. 50,000 first printing.
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Evvie Drake Starts Over : a novel
by Linda Holmes
Young widow Evvie Drake and major league pitcher Dean Tenney, who has lost his game and needs a chance to reset his life, form an unlikely relationship when Dean moves into an apartment at the back of Evvie's house
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The unlikely pilgrimage of Harold Fry
by Rachel Joyce
Harold Fry is convinced that he must deliver a letter to an old love in order to save her, meeting various characters along the way and reminiscing about the events of his past and people he has known, as he tries to find peace and acceptance.
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The house in the cerulean sea
by TJ Klune
Given a curious classified assignment to evaluate the potential risks posed by six supernatural orphans, a case worker at the Department in Charge of Magical Youth bonds with an enigmatic caregiver who hides dangerous secrets.
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You had me at hello
by Mhairi McFarlane
Ten years after everything fell apart between Ben and Rachel, a chance encounter on a rainy day brings them together, and in that moment, the friendship they shared is rekindled in spite of the lives that they have built for themselves over the years
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The flatshare
by Beth O'Leary
Entering a flatshare arrangement with a man on an opposite work shift, a heartbroken woman begins exchanging notes with the roommate she has never met and becomes his best friend, and possibly soulmate, through their correspondence. A first novel.
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Dear Mrs. Bird : a novel
by A. J . Pearce
London, 1940. Emmeline Lake is doing her bit for the war effort, volunteering as a telephone operator with the Auxiliary Fire Services. When Emmy sees an advertisement for a job at the London Evening Chronicle, her dreams of becoming a Lady War Correspondent suddenly seem achievable. But the job turns out to be working as a typist for the fierce and renowned advice columnist, Henrietta Bird. Emmy is disappointed, but gamely bucks up and buckles down. Mrs. Bird is very clear: letters containing any Unpleasantness must go straight in the bin. But when Emmy reads poignant notes from women who may have Gone Too Far with the wrong men, Emmy secretly begins to write back to the readers who have poured out their troubles.
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The authenticity project
by Clare Pooley
When Julian Jessup, an eccentric, lonely artist who believes that most people aren’t really honest with each other, writes the truth about his own life in a green journal and leaves it behind, others start writing in their own truth, which leads to unexpected friendship and love.
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Where'd you go, Bernadette : a novel
by Maria Semple
When her talented, troubled, and agoraphobic mother goes missing, teenage Bee begins a trip that takes her to the ends of the earth to find her.
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The Sunday Philosophy Club
by Alexander McCall Smith
The editor of The Review of Applied Ethics and an irrepressibly curious lover of puzzles, Isabel Dalhousie decides to investigate when she witnesses the fatal fall of a young man and discovers that he had been probing misdeeds at his brokerage firm, in the first in a new series by the creator of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. Reader's Guide available.
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Red, White & Royal Blue
by Casey McQuiston
After an international incident affects U.S. and British relations, the president's son Alex and Prince Henry must pretend to be best friends, but as they spend time together, the two begin a secret romance that could derail a presidential campaign
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One Day
by David Nicholls
Falling in love on the eve of their 1988 college graduations, Dexter and Emma embark on a heady relationship marked throughout subsequent decades by their disparate personalities, conflicts and misconceptions, in a tale told on the anniversaries of the day they met.
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St. Francis Society for Wayward Pets
by Annie England Noblin
When down-and-out Maeve Stephens arrives at an inherited house, she is greeted by a cheerful bulldog on her front porch and discovers a set of friends at the St. Francis Society for Wayward Pets, where women knit sweaters for the dogs and cats in their care.
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Ellie and the Harpmaker
by Hazel Prior
On the anniversary of her beloved father’s death, Ellie Jacobs takes a walk in the woods on the English moors and comes across the barn of Dan Hollis, who carves beautiful Celtic harps. A first novel.
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Attachments
by Rainbow Rowell
Gossiping and sharing their personal secrets on e-mail in spite of their company's online monitoring practices, Beth and Jennifer unwittingly amuse Internet security officer Lincoln, who unexpectedly falls for Beth while reading their correspondences. Reprint.
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The Three Weissmanns of Westport
by Cathleen Schine
A modern tale inspired by Sense and Sensibility finds financially strapped literary sisters Miranda and Annie moving in with divorcée Betty in a run-down Connecticut beach cottage, where they find love among the suburban aristocracy. Reprint. A best-selling novel.
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A tree grows in Brooklyn
by Betty Smith
Young Francie Nolan, having inherited both her father's romantic and her mother's practical nature, struggles to survive and thrive growing up in the slums of Brooklyn in the early twentieth century
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I Capture the Castle
by Dodie Smith
A reissue of a classic story by the best-selling author of The Hundred and One Dalmatians follows the experiences of 17-year-old Cassandra, who records in her journal her family's struggles with poverty and her experiences with an all-consuming first love. Simultaneous eBook.
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Miss Pettigrew lives for a day
by Winifred Watson
Miss Pettigrew, a governess looking for work, is sent by mistake to the home of Delysia LaFosse, a glamorous nightclub singer involved with three different men and is invited to stay after offering Miss LaFosse common sense advice about her love life
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The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
by Gabrielle Zevin
When his most prized possession, a rare collection of Poe poems, is stolen, bookstore owner A.J. Fikry begins isolating himself from his friends, family, and associates before receiving a mysterious package that compels him to remake his life
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