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Historical Fiction September 2017
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The Lost Letter : A Novel
by Jillian Cantor
Austria, 1938. Kristoff is a young apprentice to a master Jewish stamp engraver. When his teacher disappears during Kristallnacht, Kristoff is forced to engrave stamps for the Germans, and simultaneously works alongside Elena, his beloved teacher's fiery daughter, and with the Austrian resistance to send underground messages and forge papers. As he falls for Elena amidst the brutal chaos of war, Kristoff must find a way to save her, and himself. Los Angeles, 1989. Katie Nelson is going through a divorce and while cleaning out her house and life in the aftermath, she comes across the stamp collection of her father, who recently went into a nursing home. When an appraiser, Benjamin, discovers an unusual World War II-era Austrian stamp placed on an old love letter as he goes through her dad's collection, Katie and Benjamin are sent on a journey together that will uncover a story of passion and tragedy spanning decades and continents, behind the just fallen Berlin Wall.
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The Saboteur
by Andrew Gross
Kurt Nordstrum, an engineer in Oslo, puts his life aside to take up arms against the Germans as part of the Norwegian resistance. After the loss of his fiancée, his outfit whittled to shreds, he commandeers a coastal steamer and escapes to England to transmit secret evidence of the Nazis’s progress towards an atomic bomb at an isolated factory in Norway. There, he joins a team of dedicated Norwegians in training in the Scottish Highlands for a mission to disrupt the Nazis’ plans before they advance any further. Parachuted onto the most unforgiving terrain in Europe, braving the fiercest of mountain storms, Nordstrum and his team attempt the most daring raid of the war, targeting the heavily-guarded factory built on a shelf of rock thought to be impregnable, a mission even they know they likely will not survive. Months later, Nordstrum is called upon again to do the impossible, opposed by both elite Nazi soldiers and a long-standing enemy who is now a local collaborator—one man against overwhelming odds, with the fate of the war in the balance, but the choice to act means putting the one person he has a chance to love in peril.
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| The Body in the Clouds: A Novel by Ashley HayA lovingly rendered Sydney Harbor provides the setting for this stylistically complex novel. Three interconnected storylines introduce real-life 18th-century English astronomer William Dawes; 1930s laborer Ted Dawes, who watches a man fall off a bridge and miraculously survive; and 21st-century banker Dan Kopek, who returns to Australia after living abroad. The Body in the Clouds offers a lyrical meditation on the passage of time and the meaning of home. |
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The House at Bishopsgate
by Katie Hickman
Most men of stature wouldn't marry their betrothed after she'd been kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery in the harem of the Great Turk, but Paul Pindar, wealthy merchant and former ambassador to Constantinople, is not most men. When Paul and Celia, finally reunited, return to London in 1611, his house at Bishopsgate has stood empty for nearly a decade. Traumatized by her experiences, Celia is unprepared for English society. Paul arranges for Celia's old friend, Annetta, to join them in England as Celia's companion, but Annetta arrives to find that another woman, the widow Frances Sydenham, has insinuated herself into the Pindar household. Lady Sydenham seems to have a mysterious hold over Celia and increasingly over Paul. Who is this woman, and what are her motives? She is fascinated by the Sultan Blue, the legendary diamond Pindar has brought back from the Middle East. All of London wants to get their hands on the jewel, but Paul Pindar might be the only merchant who doesn't have a price.
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| Grace: A Novel by Paul Lynch"You are the strong one now," Grace Coyle's mother tells her as she cuts off the 14-year-old's hair and sends her out into the world disguised as a boy. Accompanied by her younger brother, Grace undertakes a harrowing trek across famine-stricken Ireland in a bleak yet achingly lyrical coming-of-age story that may remind readers of Sebastian Barry's A Long, Long Way or Days Without End. |
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| The Daughters of Ireland by Santa MontefioreIn the aftermath of the Irish Civil War, Castle Deverill lies in ruins, while its previous inhabitants, cousins Kitty and Celia Deverill, and their friend Bridie Doyle, assess the lives they're now living and the difficult choices they've made out of necessity. Driven by lost loves, hidden regrets, and scandalous family secrets, this historical family saga is the 2nd book in the Deverill Chronicles, after The Girl in the Castle. |
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Signs for Lost Children
by Sarah Moss
Ally Moberly, a recently qualified doctor, never expected to marry until she met Tom Cavendish. Only weeks into their marriage, Tom sets out for Japan, leaving Ally as she begins work at the Truro Asylum in Cornwall. Horrified by the brutal attitudes of male doctors and nurses toward their female patients, Ally plunges into the institutional politics of women's mental health at a time when madness is only just being imagined as treatable. She has to contend with a longstanding tradition of permanently institutionalizing women who are deemed difficult, all the while fighting to to be taken seriously as a rare woman in a profession dominated by men. Tom, an architect, has been employed to oversee the building of Japanese lighthouses. He also has a commission from a wealthy collector to bring back embroideries and woodwork. As he travels Japan in search of these enchanting objects, he begins to question the value of the life he left in England. As Ally becomes increasingly absorbed in the moral importance of her work, and Tom pursues his intellectual interests on the other side of the world, they will return to each other as different people.
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| Careers for Women: A Novel by Joanna ScottCareer girl Maggie Gleason envisions a bright future for herself; single mother Pauline Moreau is fleeing a troubled past. Both believe they've found what they seek when they're hired as "clerical girls" by the formidable Lee K. Jaffe ("Mrs. J"), who presides over the New York Port Authority's public relations department. But have they? This novel's richly detailed 1950s Manhattan setting and its authentic depiction of female friendships should charm readers who enjoyed Michael Callahan's Searching for Grace Kelly. |
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Beneath a Scarlet Sky : A Novel
by Mark T Sullivan
Pino Lella wants nothing to do with the war or the Nazis. He’s a normal Italian teenager—obsessed with music, food, and girls—but his days of innocence are numbered. When his family home in Milan is destroyed by Allied bombs, Pino joins an underground railroad helping Jews escape over the Alps, and falls for Anna, a beautiful widow six years his senior. In an attempt to protect him, Pino’s parents force him to enlist as a German soldier—a move they think will keep him out of combat. But after Pino is injured, he is recruited at the tender age of eighteen to become the personal driver for Adolf Hitler’s left hand in Italy, General Hans Leyers, one of the Third Reich’s most mysterious and powerful commanders. Now, with the opportunity to spy for the Allies inside the German High Command, Pino endures the horrors of the war and the Nazi occupation by fighting in secret, his courage bolstered by his love for Anna and for the life he dreams they will one day share.
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| The Diplomat's Daughter: A Novel by Karin TanabeA sweeping and romantic World War II saga in the vein of Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See or Julie Orringer's The Invisible Bridge, this novel unfolds from the perspectives of three well-drawn characters: Emi Kato, a Japanese diplomat's daughter; Emi's first love, Austrian-Jewish Leo Hartmann; and German-American Christian Lange, who meets Emi when they're sent to the same internment camp. For another moving tale of first loves lost due to wartime politics and anti-immigrant prejudice, try Jamie Ford's Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, which is set in the Pacific Northwest. |
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