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Brooks, Karen. The Good Wife of Bath. Morrow Paperbacks. Jan. 2022. 576p. ISBN 9780063142831. pap. $16.99. HISTORICAL

Cantor, Jillian. Beautiful Little Fools. Harper. Jan. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9780063051256. $26.99. lrg. prnt. HISTORICAL

Davis, Fiona. The Magnolia Palace. Dutton. Jan. 2022. 368p. ISBN 9780593184011. $27. lrg. prnt. Downloadable. HISTORICAL

Harrigan, Stephen. The Leopard Is Loose. Knopf. Jan. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9780525655770. $26. Downloadable. HISTORICAL

Matthews, Mimi. The Siren of Sussex. Berkley. Jan. 2022. 432p. ISBN 9780593337134. pap. $16. Downloadable. HISTORICAL

Wallace, Carol. Our Kind of People. Putnam. Jan. 2022. 368p. ISBN 9780525540021. pap. $17. Downloadable. HISTORICAL

Author of The Chocolate Maker's Wife, Brooks reimagines Geoffrey Chaucer’s rollicking story of The Good Wife of Bath from its heroine’s perspective, offering the nuanced tale of a girl married off at age 12 and learning to fight to survive. In Beautiful Little Fools, the USA Today best-selling Cantor reimagines the ending of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, with a diamond hairpin discovered near the scene of Gatsby’s murder casting suspicion on three key women: Daisy Buchanan; her best friend, Jordan Baker; and Catherine McCoy, suffragette sister of Tom’s mistress, Myrtle. In The Magnolia Palace, the New York Times best-selling Davis parallels the lives of two women: Lillian, a celebrated artist’s model in New York who loses her mother to the 1918 influenza and ends up working as secretary to the industrialist Henry Clay Frick’s imperious daughter, and Swinging Sixties English model Veronica, who discovers hidden messages while posing at the Frick Collection that lead her to a mystery surrounding the Frick family. From Harrigan, author of the New York Times best-selling The Gates of the Alamo, The Leopard Is Loose tells the 1952-set story of a five-year-old mourning the death of his fighter-pilot father, whose life is further upended when a big cat escapes from Oklahoma City’s zoo. In The Siren of Sussex, from the USA Today best-selling Matthews, bluestocking Evelyn Maltravers—from a family that has seen better times—knows she can make a mark in Victorian society only through her great skill as an equestrienne, though she will need a striking riding habit. And that brings her happily to Anglo-Indian dressmaker Ahmad Malik. From Wallace, whose New York Times best-selling To Marry an English Lord inspired Downton Abbey, Our Kind of People tells the story of a slightly outré family during New York City’s Gilded Age, with the wife especially clinging to her status among the elite even as her husband bets all on an elevated railroad that he says will change the city.

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