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Historical Fiction August 2018
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Chariot on the Mountain
by Jack Ford
Two decades before the Civil War, a middle-class farmer named Samuel Maddox lies on his deathbed. Elsewhere in his Virginia home, a young woman named Kitty knows her life is about to change. She is one of the Maddox family’s slaves—and Samuel’s biological daughter. When Samuel’s wife, Mary, inherits her husband’s property, she will own Kitty, too, along with Kitty’s three small children.
Already in her fifties and with no children of her own, Mary Maddox has struggled to accept her husband’s daughter, a strong-willed, confident, educated woman who works in the house and has been treated more like family than slave. After Samuel’s death, Mary decides to grant Kitty and her children their freedom, and travels with them to Pennsylvania, where she will file papers declaring Kitty’s emancipation. Helped on their perilous flight by Quaker families along the Underground Railroad, they finally reach the free state. But Kitty is not yet safe.
Dragged back to Virginia by a gang of slave catchers led by Samuel’s own nephew, who is determined to sell her and her children, Kitty takes a defiant step: charging the younger Maddox with kidnapping and assault. On the surface, the move is brave yet hopeless. But Kitty has allies—her former mistress, Mary, and Fanny Withers, a rich and influential socialite who is persuaded to adopt Kitty’s cause and uses her resources and charm to secure a lawyer. The sensational trial that follows will decide the fate of Kitty and her children—and bond three extraordinary yet very different women together in their quest for justice.
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The Secret of the Irish Castle
by Santa Montefiore
1939: Peace has flourished since the Great War ended, but much has changed for the Deverill family as now a new generation is waiting in the wings to make their mark.
When Martha Wallace leaves her home in America to search for her birth mother in Dublin, she never imagines that she will completely lose her heart to the impossibly charming JP Deverill. But more surprises are in store for her after she discovers that her mother comes from the same place as JP, sealing her fate.
Bridie Doyle, now Countess di Marcantonio and mistress of Castle Deverill, is determined to make the castle she used to work in her home. But just as she begins to feel things are finally going her way, her flamboyant husband Cesare has other ideas. As his eye strays away from his wife, those close to the couple wonder if he really is who he says he is.
Kitty Deverill has come to accept her life with her husband Robert, and their two children. But then Jack O'Leary, the love of her life, returns to Ballinakelly. And this time his heart belongs elsewhere. As long-held secrets come to light, the Deverills will have to heal old wounds and come to terms with the past if they hope to ensure their legacy for the future.
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Bellewether
by Susanna Kearsley
It's late summer, war is raging, and families are torn apart by divided loyalties and deadly secrets. In this complex and dangerous time, a young French Canadian lieutenant is captured and billeted with a Long Island family, an unwilling and unwelcome guest. As he begins to pitch in with the never-ending household tasks and farm chores, Jean-Philippe de Sabran finds himself drawn to the daughter of the house. Slowly, Lydia Wilde comes to lean on Jean-Philippe, true soldier and gentleman, until their lives become inextricably intertwined. Legend has it that the forbidden love between Jean-Philippe and Lydia ended tragically, but centuries later, the clues they left behind slowly unveil the true story.
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The Masterpiece
by Fiona Davis
In her latest captivating novel, nationally bestselling author Fiona Davis takes readers into the glamorous lost art school within Grand Central Terminal, where two very different women, fifty years apart, strive to make their mark on a world set against them.
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| Lucky Us by Amy BloomIris, who dreams of becoming a movie star, heads for Hollywood with half-sister Eva in tow. Together, they embark on a series of adventures that take them across the United States (and back again) during the Great Depression, World War II, and beyond.
In a starred review, Kirkus Reviews calls this a "hard-luck coming-of-age story with heart." |
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| Blood & Beauty: The Borgias by Sarah DunantWhen Spanish cardinal Rodrigo Borgia becomes Pope Alexander VI in 1492, he immediately puts into play his most promising pawns -- his illegitimate children, Cesare and Lucrezia.
Blood and Beauty (and its sequel, In the Name of the Family) traces the meteoric rise of a Renaissance-era dynasty. |
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| Homegoing by Yaa GyasiThis debut chronicles, in haunting vignettes, seven generations as Effia becomes the mistress of a British slave-trader and half-sister Esi survives the Middle Passage only to live out her days in bondage on an American plantation.
For fans of African-American family sagas such as Alex Haley's Roots or Lalita Tademy's Cane River. |
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| Bittersweet by Colleen McCulloughA sweeping family saga set in early-20th-century Australia, featuring the Latimer sisters, two sets of twins from Corunda, New South Wales. Edda and Grace, Heather and Katherine all enroll in a nurse training program, although their motives for doing so differ.
Try this next: Thomas Keneally's The Daughters of Mars, another richly detailed novel about Australian sisters whose decision to pursue nursing careers takes them far from their rural hometowns. |
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| Vanessa and Her Sister by Priya ParmarA character-driven novel about the loving but complicated relationship between sisters Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, told from Vanessa's point of view.
Read it for a vibrant and richly detailed depiction of the Bloomsbury group, their larger-than-life personalities and their interpersonal dramas. |
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Contact the Library for more great titles! |
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