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Historical Fiction July 2020
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The Foundling
by
Stacey Halls
London, 1754. Six years after leaving her illegitimate daughter Clara at London's Foundling Hospital, Bess Bright returns to reclaim the child she has never known. Dreading the worst, that Clara has died in care, the last thing she expects to hear is that her daughter has already been reclaimed by her. Her life is turned upside down as she tries to find out who has taken her little girl and why. Less than a mile from Bess' lodgings in the city, in a quiet, gloomy townhouse on the edge of London, a young widow has not left the house in a decade. When her close friend an ambitious young doctor at the Foundling Hospital persuades her to hire a nursemaid for her daughter, she is hesitant to welcome someone new into her home and her life. But her past is threatening to catch up with her and tear her carefully constructed world apart.
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Truths I Never Told You by Kelly Rimmer The premise: Beth Walsh is dealing with postpartum depression when she stumbles upon a copy of her deceased mother Grace's journals, which detail her own struggle with the disease in the 1950s.
The problem: Instead of the solace and validation she expected to find reading her mother's story, Beth uncovers a disturbing family secret that can only be explained by her father, who would have been uncooperative even before he developed advanced dementia. | |
Gulliver's wife
by
Lauren Chater
London, 1702. When her husband is lost at sea, Mary Burton Gulliver, midwife and herbalist, is forced to rebuild her life without him. But three years later when Lemuel Gulliver is brought home, fevered and communicating only in riddles, her ordered world is turned upside down. In a climate of desperate poverty and violence, Mary is caught in a crossfire of superstition and fear driven by her husband's outlandish claims of the wonders he has seen, and it is up to her to navigate a passage to safety for herself and her daughter, and the vulnerable women in her care.
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Code name Hélène
by
Ariel Lawhon
In 1936 Nancy Wake is living in Paris after bluffing her way into a job as a foreign correspondent and witnessing firsthand the terror of Hitler's rise in Europe, firing her resolve to do anything she could to fight the Nazis. When Nancy falls unexpectedly in love with handsome French industrialist and playboy Henri Fiocca in Marseilles, no sooner has she agreed to become Mrs Fiocca than the Germans invade France and Nancy takes yet another name, a code name - the first of many. A novel based on the life of spy, Nancy Wake, follows a woman who kills a Nazi and becomes one of the most decorated women in World War II.
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The Mercies
by
Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Norway, 1617: Forty fishermen drown at sea -- the entire male population of the isolated Arctic town of Vardo.
The new man in town: As the town's women try to rebuild their lives, a Scottish witch hunter arrives with his Norwegian wife, threatening the independence that they've just started to carve out for themselves.
For fans of: the Netflix series Godless, also about a town that loses all of its men in an accident.
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The Illness Lesson
by
Clare Beams
Starring: failed utopian Samuel Hood; his educated but bored daughter Caroline; his disciple David, who has come to help them open a progressive school for girls in late 19th century Massachusetts.
What happens: The students are suddenly plagued by mysterious sickness, and desperate for the school not to fail, Samuel and David send for a doctor in the burgeoning field of psychology. Caroline has a terrible feeling about the doctor, and his twisted, invasive ideas about "treatment" for the girls soon make everything much, much worse.
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Here we are
by
Graham Swift
It's the summer of 1959, and something magical can be witnessed at the end of the pier in beach town Brighton, England. Jack Robbins, Ronnie Deane, and Evie White are performing in a seaside variety show, starring as Jack Robinson the compere comedian, and The Great Pablo and Eve: a magic act. By the end of the summer, Evie's glinting engagement ring will be flung to the bottom of the ocean and one of the trifecta will vanish forever.
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Above the Bay of Angels by Rhys Bowen The setup: A tragic accident presents an unexpected opportunity for Bella Waverly to pursue her seemingly impossible dream of becoming a chef, but only if she's willing to lie about who she is.
What goes wrong: Now known as Helen, Bella is able to get a job working in Queen Victoria's kitchens, where she begins to make a name for herself. But when a duke dies by poison, Bella is a suspect and must find a way to save herself without revealing that she entered the Queen's service under false pretenses. | | His Bloody Project: Documents Relating to the Case of Roderick Macrae by Graeme Macrae Burnet What it's about: Everyone agrees that the young crofter Roderick Macrae is obviously guilty of the 1869 brutal triple murder that occurred in his remote Scottish village, but no one -- not the investigators, not his neighbors, not the courts -- can agree on why.
Why you might like it: The story is told from multiple perspectives and is framed as a journey through the documents generated over the course of the investigation, including newspapers, the testimony of Roderick's community, extracts from the book of an "expert" in the emerging field of forensics, and trial transcripts. | | Chariot on the Mountain by Jack Ford What it is: Based on a real trial, this compelling and suspenseful novel tells the story of Kitty Payne, a freed slave who successfully brought a court case against a white man in antebellum Virginia who kidnapped and attempted to make her a slave again.
About the author: Emmy and Peabody Award-winning journalist Jack Ford is also the author of The Walls of Jericho, a murder mystery set in Mississippi during the Civil Rights era. | | The Unquiet Grave by Sharyn McCrumb What it is: an atmospheric and richly detailed look at the 1897 "Greenbrier Ghost" murder case, in which a West Virginia mother convinced the authorities to reopen the investigation of her daughter's death after testifying that the young woman's ghost paid her a visit.
Why you might like it: The story of the trial is told through the eyes of James Gardner, a black attorney who was part of the defense team during the Greenbrier trial and who readers first meet in 1930, after he has been committed to an insane asylum. | |
Contact your librarian for more great books!
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