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The Pindar Diamond: A Novel by Katie Hickman from Bloomsbury USA is $1.80

Book Description

In a small town on the Italian coast, a mysterious woman washes ashore. She is crippled, mute, and clutches a bundle to her chest-a baby the townspeople insist is a real-life mermaid. It can only bring bad luck; they pay a troupe of acrobats to carry mother and child away.
In the bustling trade center of Venice, merchant Paul Pindar is the subject of his colleagues' concern. Since his return from Constantinople, they have found him changed; raging over the loss of his beloved, Celia, he has gambled away his fortune at the gaming tables. But when a priceless blue diamond surfaces in the city, Pindar recognizes the opportunity to regain everything he has lost-including, perhaps, the woman he loves.
A celebrated writer of history and travel books, Katie Hickman has always been a master of evoking time and place. With The Pindar Diamond, her follow-up to The Aviary Gate, she brings early-seventeenth-century Italy vividly to life, and also demonstrates her maturity as a novelist. A tale of love and avarice, with a touch of the mystical, The Pindar Diamond is rich with historical detail, and unfolds with urgency and grace. It is accomplished, wholly satisfying historical fiction.

The Fatal Touch: A Commissario Alec Blume Novel by Conor Fitzgerald from Bloomsbury USA is $2.40

Book Description

Alec Blume returns to action in this intricate and heart-pounding new novel. With the help of his associate Caterina, Blume is called to the scene of a death connected to a spate of muggings. Though the Carabinieri-military police-are trying to control the investigation, Blume, never one to bow to authority, pursues it his own way.

When it becomes clear that the victim is an art forger, enemies-and hidden treasures-begin to emerge. Relying on old friends and intuitions, Blume hurls himself into the center of the mystery, risking his job, his neck, and just about anyone who trusts him.

Immersed in its old-world setting and written with satisfying detail about inks and signatures and the tools of forgery, this is a riveting novel, with rich characters and a spectacular conclusion.

The Cowgirl Way: Hats Off to America's Women of the West by Holly George-Warren from Houghton Mifflin Books for Children is $2.03

Book Description
Age Level: 10 and up | Grade Level: 5 and up

The 1840s ushered in the beginning of the largest migration in US history. People in crowded Eastern cities and Missouri River towns were feeling the pull of the Western frontier. It was the dawn of a new era of expansion, and over the next few decades, the making of a new kind of pioneer. It was the birth of the cowgirl!

Welcome to the world of nimble equestriennes, hawkeyed sharpshooters, sly outlaws, eloquent legislators, expert wranglers and talented performers who made eyes pop and jaws drop with their skills, savvy and bravery. In this fascinating account of an ever-evolving American icon, Holly George-Warren invites readers to saddle up with a host of these trailblazers who helped settle the West and define the cowgirl spirit.

Red Flags by Juris Jurjevics from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is $1.26

Book Description

Army cop Erik Rider prefers to fight his war in the saloons and streets of Saigon. When he is sent to disrupt a Vietcong opium operation deep in the jungle, he could not be less interested. But when Rider lands in Cheo Reo, things get complicated. The American outpost is home to battle-hardened soldiers, intelligence operatives, and profiteers of all stripes. Meanwhile, Vietcong battalions are massing in the hills, and sixty thousand Montagnard tribespeople are advancing with the goal of reclaiming their mountain homeland.

With a bounty on his head, Rider must hunt for the opium smugglers, avoid enemy patrols, and defend the undermanned U.S. base. As he closes in on the smuggling operation, he discovers that someone inside the base has a stake in it, and is willing to kill to protect that stake.

Lost Rights: The Misadventures of a Stolen American Relic by David Howard from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is $1.78

Book Description

Near the close of the Civil War, as General Sherman blazed his path to the sea, an unknown infantryman rifled through the North Carolina state house.The soldier was hunting for simple Confederate mementos—maps, flags, official correspondence—but he wound up discovering something far more valuable. He headed home to Ohio with one of the touchstones of our republic: one of the fourteen original copies of the Bill of Rights.

Lost Rights follows that document’s singular passage over the course of 138 years, beginning with the Indiana businessman who purchased the looted parchment for five dollars, then wending its way through the exclusive and shadowy world of high-end antiquities—a world populated by obsessive archivists, oddball collectors, forgers, and thieves— and ending dramatically with the FBI sting that brought the parchment back into the hands of the government.

For fans of The Billionaire’s Vinegar and The Lost Painting, Lost Rights is “a tour de force of antiquarian sleuthing” (Hampton Sides).