On the worst of many bad days, Nora Seed decides to kill herself. Her cat died. She was fired from the music store where she worked. Her last piano student is quitting. Her brother won't forgive her for backing out of the band they were in when a music label wanted to sign them. She realizes she has no friends. After swallowing a large quantity of pills and alcohol, she finds she isn't dead. She's in a library facing Mrs. Elm, her grade school librarian. "Between life and death there is a library,’ Mrs. Elm tells her. ‘And within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be different if you had made other choices . . ." But first, Nora needs to read THE BOOK OF REGRETS, all the things she wished she'd done differently during her life: pursued swimming, making her father happy, and possibly going to the Olympics; becoming a glaciologist; marrying the man she'd aba...
By Kate Quinn Kate Quinn's latest World War II novel is set in Bletchley Park, Britain's famed code-breaking center. For Osla Kendall, Mab Churt and Beth Finch, Bletchley offers a way to contribute to the war effort using talents previously rarely appreciated. Osla is a debutante who wants to be recognized for her brains as well as her beauty. With a finishing school education and an excellent command of German, she translates previously coded messages. Mab wants to rise above her impoverished Shoreditch background. She taught herself to speak and dress properly and earned her way through secretarial school. She does clerical and administrative functions at Bletchley Park. Beth is a town girl, born and raised in Bletchley. Held tightly under her controlling mother's thumb, she never imagined she could be a code-breaker until Osla recognizes her talent for crossword- and puzzle- solving and recommends her for a job at Bletchley. But in time, Bletchley's world of s...