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Historical Fiction February 2017
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| The Butcher's Hook: A Novel by Janet EllisAnne Jaccob, a precocious and troubled 19-year-old, despises her self-absorbed parents and their stifling London home. The only bright spot in her lonely life is Fub, the local butcher's apprentice, with whom she becomes infatuated. However, Anne's father, a prosperous merchant, wants her to marry one of his business associates. Unfortunately for everyone involved, Anne is not about to let her family's wishes keep her from her heart's desire. For another dark tale set in 18th-century England in which a young woman rebels against her circumstances, try Emma Donoghue's Slammerkin. |
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| Victoria by Daisy GoodwinIn 1837, 18-year-old Princess Alexandrina Victoria of the House of Hanover becomes Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. No one expects much from a sheltered teenager who collects dolls and still shares a room with her overbearing mother. But Victoria, determined to become the monarch her people deserve, sets out to prove herself as a ruler, aided by Prime Minister Lord Melbourne, who becomes her adviser and confidant. Fans of royalty-themed reads won't want to miss this novel by American Heiress author Daisy Goodwin, who also penned the screenplay for current Masterpiece Theatre miniseries Victoria. |
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Maiden Flight : A Novel
by Harry Haskell
Katharine Wright embodied the worldly, independent, and self-fulfilled New Woman of the early twentieth century, yet she remained in many ways a Victorian. Torn between duty and love, she agonized for months before making a devastating break with her world-famous and intensely possessive older brother Orville to marry newspaper editor Harry Haskell, the man she loved. Written by the grandson of Harry Haskell, Maiden Flight is imaginatively reconstructed from personal letters, newspaper reports, and other documents of the period—in particular, Katharine's lively and extraordinarily revealing love letters to Harry. Above all, the book celebrates Katharine’s abundant store of what she called “human nature”—her lively and perceptive outlook on life, her great capacity for both love and indignation, and her acute and sometimes crippling self-awareness.
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A Piece of the World
by Christina Baker Kline
"Later he told me that he’d been afraid to show me the painting. He thought I wouldn’t like the way he portrayed me: dragging myself across the field, fingers clutching dirt, my legs twisted behind. The arid moonscape of wheatgrass and timothy. That dilapidated house in the distance, looming up like a secret that won’t stay hidden." To Christina Olson, the entire world was her family’s remote farm in the small coastal town of Cushing, Maine. Born in the home her family had lived in for generations, and increasingly incapacitated by illness, Christina seemed destined for a small life. Instead, for more than twenty years, she was host and inspiration for the artist Andrew Wyeth, and became the subject of one of the best known American paintings of the twentieth century.
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Stolen Beauty : A Novel
by Laurie Lico Albanese
In the dazzling glitter of 1903 Vienna, Adele Bloch-Bauer—young, beautiful, brilliant, and Jewish—meets painter Gustav Klimt. Wealthy in everything but freedom, Adele embraces Klimt’s renegade genius as the two awaken to the erotic possibilities on the canvas and beyond. Though they enjoy a life where sex and art are just beginning to break through the façade of conventional society, the city is also exhibiting a disturbing increase in anti-Semitism, as political hatred foments in the shadows of Adele’s coffee house afternoons and cultural salons. Nearly forty years later, Adele’s niece Maria Altmann is a newlywed when the Nazis invade Austria—and overnight, her beloved Vienna becomes a war zone. When her husband is arrested and her family is forced out of their home, Maria must summon the courage and resilience that is her aunt’s legacy if she is to survive and keep her family—and their history—alive. Will Maria and her family escape the grip of Nazis’ grip? And what will become of the paintings that her aunt nearly sacrificed everything for?
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| Who Killed Piet Barol? A Novel by Richard MasonPiet Barol, the charming libertine first introduced in History of a Pleasure Seeker, is a Dutch con artist posing as a French aristocrat. Currently living in South Africa's Cape Colony, Barol recruits two Xhosa men to help him source mahogany for the creation of high-end furniture, a task made easier by The Natives Land Act, which strips black South Africans of their property rights. Obsession and greed lead to tragedy in this novel, which places flawed and fascinating characters in a lush and richly detailed African setting. |
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The Lonely Hearts Hotel
by Heather O'Neill
Canadian. Two babies are abandoned in a Montreal orphanage in the winter of 1910. One is a girl named Rose; the other, a boy named Pierrot. Each display rare gifts that bring them adoration and hatred. As they are made to travel around the city performing clown routines to raise funds for the orphanage, they make plans for a sensational future. They are separated as teenagers and sent off to work as menial servants, but both soon find themselves escaping into the criminal world, participating in the vicious and absurd and perverted underbelly of Montreal and New York City between the wars. They search for each other, and one night, under the snowflakes, they reunite, and the underworld will never look quite the same.
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The Chilbury Ladies' Choir
by Jennifer Ryan
As England enters World War II's dark early days, spirited music professor Primrose Trent, recently arrived to the village of Chilbury, emboldens the women of the town to defy the Vicar's stuffy edict to shutter the church's choir in the absence of men and instead "carry on singing." Resurrecting themselves as "The Chilbury Ladies' Choir," the women of this small village soon use their joint song to lift up themselves, and the community, as the war tears through their lives. As we come to know the struggles of the charismatic members of this unforgettable outfit-- a timid widow worried over her son at the front; the town beauty drawn to a rakish artist; her younger sister nursing an impossible crush and dabbling in politics she doesn't understand; a young Jewish refugee hiding secrets about her family, and a conniving midwife plotting to outrun her seedy past-- we come to see how the strength each finds in the choir's collective voice reverberates in her individual life. In turns funny, charming and heart-wrenching, this lovingly executed ensemble novel will charm and inspire, illuminating the true spirit of the women on the homefront, in a village of indomitable spirit, at the dawn of a most terrible conflict.
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| The Paris Architect: A Novel by Charles BelfoureIn 1942, Parisian architect Lucien Bernard accepts a lucrative commission from a wealthy businessman to design a secret room for the purpose of hiding Jewish fugitives from the Gestapo. Although Lucien has no particular love for the city's Jewish population, he loathes the occupying Germans and thrives on the challenge of deceiving them (the money doesn't hurt, either). But as Lucien's involvement in the scheme grows, he learns that no one can be trusted, not even those closest to him. Fans of suspenseful historical fiction set in Vichy France and featuring artists may also be interested in Paul Watkins' The Forger, in which a young American expatriate forges paintings to undermine the Third Reich. |
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| Mission to Paris: A Novel by Alan FurstArriving in Paris in 1938, Frederic Stahl, a Hollywood star on loan from Warner Bros. to a French studio, soon finds himself wooed by the "political warfare" branch of the Nazi progaganda machine. Born and raised in Vienna but naturalized in the U.S., Stahl has always steered clear of politics. However, his unease with the growing influence of the Third Reich in France and his distaste for being used prompts him to try his hand at espionage. Fans of noir-tinged historical spy fiction should enjoy this atmospheric stand-alone 12th installment of Alan Furst's Night Soldiers series. |
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| City of Women: A Novel by David R. GillhamSigrid Schröder is the perfect wife, or so it appears. Married to a soldier fighting on the front lines, she lives in Berlin with her mother-in-law and works as a stenographer. However, she also pines for her married lover while helping her neighbors shelter Jewish families from the Gestapo. Focusing on Sigrid's inner life and the moral dilemmas she faces, City of Women is an introspective but dramatic story of an ordinary individual's resistance to authoritarian government. |
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| The True Story of Hansel and Gretel: A Novel of War and Survival by Louise MurphyAbandoned in the woods by their father and stepmother, two Jewish siblings in Nazi-occupied Poland are rescued by Magda, an elderly woman believed to be a witch. Now known as "Hansel" and "Gretel" to conceal their identities from the authorities, the children adjust to their new lives. Then a German officer arrives in the village, threatening this fragile equilibrium. This haunting novel may remind readers of Jane Yolen's Briar Rose, which also adapted a classic fairy tale into a sensitive exploration of the horrors of the Holocaust. |
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