Staff Recommendations: Historical Fiction

"In San Francisco in 1866, an Irish nun, abandoned following a torrid relationship with a Chilean aristocrat, gives birth to a daughter named Emilia del Valle. Raised by a loving stepfather, Emilia grows into an independent thinker and a self-sufficient young woman. To pursue her passion for writing, she is willing to defy societal norms. At the age of seventeen, she begins to publish pulp fiction using a man's pen name. When these fictional worlds...

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"A gripping, powerful read. A valuable lesson for our own times." —Heather Morris, New York Times bestselling author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz

From the author of Cradles of the Reich comes a poignant and inspiring tale for fans of The Forest of Vanishing Stars and The German Wife about resistance, friendship, and the dangers of propaganda, based on the real story

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"Set in Syracuse, Sicily, during the Peloponnesian War but told in contemporary Irish dialect, Glorious Exploits follows Lampo and Gelon, best friends since childhood. Thrilled to have survived the Athenians' recent invasion and as shocked by the Syracusan victory as everyone else, these unemployed potters are in a mood to celebrate. Of course, they hate the Athenians. Still, that doesn't mean you can't love the theatre of their great playwright Euripides,...

"Egypt, 1936: When anthropology student Charlotte Cross is offered a coveted spot on an archaeological dig in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, she leaps at the opportunity. But after an unbearable tragedy strikes, Charlotte knows her future will never be the same. New York City, 1978: Eighteen-year-old Annie Jenkins is thrilled when she lands an opportunity to work for iconic former Vogue fashion editor Diana Vreeland, who's in the midst of organizing...

"In 1919, as civil and social unrest grips the country, there is a little corner of America, a place called Harlem where something special is stirring. Here, the New Negro is rising and Black pride is evident everywhere... in music, theatre, fashion and the arts. And there on stage in the center of this renaissance is Jessie Redmon Fauset, the new literary editor of the preeminent Negro magazine The Crisis. W.E.B. Du Bois, the founder and editor of...

"The New York Times bestselling author of 'The mystery of Mrs. Christie' returns with a thrilling story of Christie's legendary rival Dorothy Sayers, the race to solve a murder, and the power of friendship among women. London, 1930. The five greatest women crime writers have banded together to form a secret society with a single goal: to show they are no longer willing to be treated as second class citizens by their male counterparts in the legendary...

1800s China. Tightly bound feet, or "golden lilies," are the mark of an honorable woman, eclipsing beauty, a rich dowry and even bloodline in the marriage stakes. When Little Flower is sold as a maidservant to Linjing, a daughter of the prominent Fong family, she clings to the hope that one day her golden lilies will lead her out of slavery. Not only does Little Flower have bound feet, uncommon for a muizai, but she is extraordinarily gifted at embroidery,...

"In 1979, Vincent Bianco has just graduated high school. His only desire: collect a little beer money and enjoy his final summer before college. So he lands a job as a laborer on a construction crew. Working alongside two Vietnam vets, one suffering from PTSD, Vincent gets the education of a lifetime. Now forty years later, with his own son leaving for college, the lessons of that summer - Vincent's last taste of innocence and first taste of real...

"The story of Andrée Geulen and Ida Sterno, who worked with the Committee for the Defense of Jews to hide more than three thousand Jewish children in Belgium during World War II"-- Provided by publisher. "Based on the true story of two World War II heroines who risked everything to save Jewish children from the Gestapo by hiding them throughout Belgium. ... Young schoolteacher Andrée Geulen secretly defies the Nazis in Belgium who are forcing Jews...

Unable to speak or remember the events surrounding her mother's mysterious death eleven years earlier, sixteen-year-old Sadie Rose, the foster child of a corrupt senator in 1920s northern Minnesota, struggles to regain her voice, memory, and identity.