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Historical Fiction October 2020
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| Northernmost by Peter GeyeWhat it's about: the parallel narratives of two members of a Norwegian family living a century apart -- tundra-stranded 19th-century fisherman Odd Einar and modern day Minnesota journalist Greta Nansen -- and their shared struggles with isolation, grief, and marital problems.
Series alert: This is the 3rd and final entry in Peter Geye's series following the Eide family, preceded by The Lighthouse Road and Wintering. |
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| The Two Mrs. Carlyles by Suzanne RindellStarring: Violet, a resourceful young woman who grew up in a San Francisco orphanage and has recently married a wealthy man; Violet's new husband Harry Carlyle, who says first wife Madeleine died in the massive earthquake that recently hit the city (in 1906).
For fans of: Daphne DuMaurier's classic novel Rebecca, which inspired this novel's gothic tone and Violet's suspicious curiosity about her husband's first wife. |
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| Jack by Marilynne RobinsonSeries alert: Jack is the 4th novel starring the characters from the Gilead series, which began as a letter from dying Presbyterian minister John Ames Broughton to his son and spans events from the Civil War to the 1950s.
This time with more...moving, star-crossed romance (it's 1957 and the titular Jack's love interest is Della, a Black woman he met in St. Louis); well-crafted dialogue (much of the story unfolds in conversations between Jack and Della); and reflections on faith (in the divine and in each other). |
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| The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. SchwabWhat it's about: Village girl Addie is chafing at the restrictions of life as a woman in early 17th-century France, so she makes a deal with the devil for "a chance to live and be free."
The problem: The devil grants her wish...literally. So now Addie is immortal, and for 300 years everyone she meets forgets her. Everyone but the man who just caught her returning some books she previously "borrowed" from a New York bookshop.
For fans of: other time-focused tales of loss, love, and loneliness such as Kate Atkinson's Life After Life or Laura Barnett's The Versions of Us. |
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| Here We Are by Graham SwiftWhat it is: an engaging, character-driven story set in postwar Brighton, where a dying artform has one last great summer thanks to an equally doomed variety act.
The players: show emcee Jack Robinson, the "Compere Comedian"; Jack's army buddy Ronnie Deane, who performs sleight-of-hand as "The Great Pablo"; Evie White, newly hired as the proverbial magician's "lovely assistant" until she becomes much more than that to both men she shares the stage with. |
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The pillars of the earth
by Ken Follett
A prior, a master builder, and their community try to build a cathedral to protect themselves while Stephen and the Empress Maud fight for the crown of England
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| The City of Brass by S.A. ChakrabortyThe setting: Eighteenth-century Cairo, where a young woman who survives as a con artist accidentally summons a djinn, who takes her back to the parallel world of the djinn to face her destiny.
Reviewers say: "This lyrical historical fantasy debut brings to vivid life the ancient mythological traditions of an Islamic world unfamiliar to most American readers" (Library Journal). |
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The Afrika Reich : a novel
by Guy Saville
A tale set in an alternate world where a victorious Nazi Germany has enslaved the native populations of Africa traces the efforts of former assassin Burton Cole to stop a threat against Britain's surviving colonies by a messianic racist with ties to a brutal plot. A first novel. 35,000 first printing.
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11/22/63 : a novel
by Stephen King
Receiving a horrific essay from a GED student with a traumatic past, high-school English teacher Jake Epping is enlisted by a friend to travel back in time to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy, a mission for which he must reacclimate to 1960s culture and befriend troubled loner Lee Harvey Oswald. By the best-selling author of Full Dark, No Stars. Reprint.
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| The Underground Railroad by Colson WhiteheadThe setting: an antebellum South that looks quite like the one in our reality, only the Underground Railroad literally has train tracks, inspiring the slavecatchers to create increasingly bizarre, elaborate, and disturbing obstacles between escapees and their freedom.
Reviewers say: "Imagine a runaway slave novel written with Joseph Heller's deadpan voice leasing both Frederick Douglass' grim realities and H.P. Lovecraft's rococo fantasies" (Kirkus Reviews). |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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