Washoe County Library System

Not since Anna Diamants The Red Tent or Geraldine Brookss People of the Book has a novel transported readers so intimately into the complex lives of women centuries ago or so richly into a story of intrigue that transcends the boundaries of history. A “lavishly detailed” (Elle Canada) debut that masterfully captures sixteenth-century Venice against a dramatic and poetic tale of suspense. Hannah Levi is renowned throughout Venice for her gift at...

"Quaker midwife Rose Carroll finds the body of a local suffrage organizer during the presidential election of 1888"-- A suffragist is murdered in Rose Carroll's Massachusetts town Excitement runs high during presidential election week in 1888. The Woman Suffrage Association plans a demonstration and movement leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton comes to town to rally the troops, one of whom is Quaker midwife Rose Carroll. But the next morning, Rose finds...

"It's "Call the Midwife" set in the U.S. homefront during World War II. If you loved Patricia Harman's Midwife of Hope River you'll love Once a Midwife! Named Best Midwife Book of the Year from the American College of Nurse Midwives The women of Hope River trust midwife Patience Hester, whose skill in delivering babies is known for miles around. But though the Great Depression is behind them, troubles are not, for Europe is at war…and it...

""Sam Thomas has created one of the most unique sleuths in modern mystery fiction." -The Plain Dealer. In this thrilling new mystery from the critically acclaimed author of The Witch Hunter's Tale, midwife Bridget Hodgson travels to London where she's forced into a new profession-as a spy. It's 1649. Three years have passed since midwife Bridget Hodgson and her deputy Martha Hawkins fled York for the safety of the English countryside. But when a mysterious...

"Born in West Africa in the mid-eighteenth century, Maryam Prescilla Grace-a.k.a 'Momma Grace' will live a long, wondrous life marked by hardship, oppression, opportunity, and love. Though she will be 'gifted' various names, her birth name is known to her alone. Over the course of 100-plus years, she survives capture, enslavement by several property owners, the Atlantic crossing when she is only eleven years of age, and a brief stint as a pirate's...

"In a village in a medieval fiefdom buffeted by natural disasters, a motherless shepherd boy finds himself the unlikely pivot of a power struggle that puts all manner of faith to a savage test, in a spellbinding novel that represents Ottessa Moshfegh's most exciting leap yet. Little Marek, the abused and delusional son of the village shepherd, never knew his mother; his father told him she died in childbirth. One of life's few consolations for Marek...

"In 1857 a young midwife braves the perilous journey west from New York City to Santa Fe, New Mexico Territory in this captivating epic from Sara Donati, the international bestselling author of Where the Light Enters. Carrie Ballentyne's life was upendedin 1845 when she had to leave the only home she'd ever known in the mountains of upstate New York. With her are her widowed mother and younger brother Nathan, but the separation from Bonner, Ballentyne,...

"Auschwitz, 1943: As I held the tiny baby in my arms, my fingers traced the black tattoo etched across her little thigh. And I prayed that one day this set of numbers, identical to her mother's, would have the power to reunite a family torn apart by war… Ana Kaminski is pushed through the iron gates of Auschwitz beside her frightened young friend Ester Pasternak. As they reach the front of the line, Ana steps forward and quietly declares herself...