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Historical Fiction September 2016
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| The Bones of Paradise by Jonis AgeeA decade after the Wounded Knee Massacre, when the U.S. 7th Cavalry regiment gunned down over two hundred Lakota, white rancher J.B. Bennett and Sioux woman Star are found dead on Bennett's land. As Bennett's estranged wife, Dulcinea, returns to the ranch and gathers the remaining family members, Star's sister, Rose, vows to find Star's killer and avenge her death. Set in the Nebraska Sandhills at the dawn of the twentieth century, The Bones of Paradise is a haunting multi-generational family saga that explores a tragedy with deep historical roots through the eyes of flawed and fully fleshed-out characters. |
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| Bloodline by Conn IgguldenBy the winter of 1461, Richard Plantagent, Duke of York, and Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury, are dead, their heads mounted on iron spikes at the entrance to the city of York. However, the victor -- Lancastrian King Henry VI -- remains imprisoned. As his wife, Margaret of Anjou, orders her army south to London to liberate him, a new rival emerges: Edward, Earl of March, who asserts his claim to the English throne. Bloodline is the conclusion of the gritty, action-packed trilogy that began with Stormbird and Margaret of Anjou. For another, more romantic perspective on the Wars of the Roses try Philippa Gregory's Cousins' War Series. |
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| To The Bright Edge of the World: A Novel by Eowyn IveyLeaving his wife, Sophie, behind in the Vancouver barracks, U.S. Army Colonel Allen Forrester embarks on an expedition to map the interior of the newly acquired Alaska Territory. As Forrester and his crew venture into the wilderness, encountering danger, hardship, and astounding natural beauty, free-spirited Sophie chafes against the restrictions placed upon military spouses, recording her experiences in her diary. With its sympathetic characters and lyrical depictions of the nineteenth-century American frontier, this historical epistolary novel may appeal to fans of Diane Smith's Letters from Yellowstone and Pictures from an Expedition. |
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A Great Reckoning
by Louise Penny
In this lyrical twelfth title by the bestselling author of The Nature of the Beast, Armand Gamache comes out of retirement to clean up the corrupt Süreté Academy du Québec. When an old map is found hidden in the wall of a bistro in Three Pines, the remote village in which Gamache and his wife live, the locals treat it as only an interesting artifact. But Gamache uses the mystery of the map’s origin to engage the interest of four cadets at the academy who are in particular danger of going astray. When someone fatally shoots Serge Leduc, a sadistic, manipulative professor, a copy of the map is found in Leduc’s bedside table, and suspicion falls on the four cadets and Gamache himself. As the story unfolds, a web of connections, past and present, comes to light. This complex novel deals with universal themes of compassion, weakness in the face of temptation, forgiveness, and the danger of falling into despair and cynicism over apparently insurmountable evils. Author tour. Agent: Teresa Chris, Teresa Chris Literary Agency. (Aug.)
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| The Castle of Kings by Oliver PötzschWhen her trained falcon returns from hunting with an antique ring tied to its talons, Lady Agnes, daughter of the knight castellan of Trifels, is determined to solve the mystery. She confides in her friend (and would-be suitor) Mathis, son of the castle's blacksmith, inadvertently embroiling the pair in the political unrest sweeping the country. Mathis, who's been experimenting with gunpowder, is recruited by rebels in need of his expertise, while Agnes must protect herself and her father from the schemes of the villainous Count Friedrich von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck. Set in Palatinate Germany during the sixteenth-century Peasants' War, this sprawling and intricately plotted saga combines rich period detail with a dramatic tale of adventure. |
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Hillbilly Elegy : a memoir of a family and culture in crisis
by J. D. Vance
Shares the poignant story of his family and upbringing. The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.'s grandparents were "dirt poor and in love," and moved north from Kentucky's Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance's grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America.
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| I, Hogarth by Michael Dean"London is Sodom under good Queen Anne," explains William Hogarth as he narrates his life story in lively vignettes reminiscent of his celebrated sequential artworks (such as A Rake's Progress). After his father is sent to debtor's prison, young Billy becomes an engraver's apprentice before finding success as a painter and a calling as a political satirist. However, despite his respectable career and recognition by London's intelligentsia, Billy cannot forsake the more earthy pleasures of the city's brothels and bawdy houses. For other novels that explore human vice amid the sights, sounds, and smells of eighteenth-century London, try Emma Donoghue's Slammerkin or Katherine Grant's Sedition. |
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| The God of Spring by Arabella EdgeIt's 1818 and Paris society is obsessed with the shipwreck of the French frigate Medusa, a catastrophe that left ond hundred fifty survivors adrift on a crude raft -- until illness, starvation, murder, and cannibalism reduced their numbers to only fifteen. Celebrated young painter Théodore Géricault, seeking a subject for his next masterpiece, decides to recreate "The Raft of the Medusa" on canvas. Consumed by the project, Géricault commissions a life-sized replica of the raft, uses corpses as models, and finds muses in two survivors. Author Arabella Edge also penned The Company, a novel about the 1629 wreck of the merchant ship Batavia off the coast of Australia. |
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| The Bridal Chair: A Novel by Gloria GoldreichDocumenting the difficult relationship between modernist painter Marc Chagall and his daughter, Ida, this moving novel by author Gloria Goldreich depicts the story behind a masterpiece. After capturing Ida in countless portraits throughout her childhood and adolescence, the elder Chagall angrily paints a canvas depicting an empty wedding chair -- symbolizing his displeasure at her hasty marriage to a shopkeeper's son. But family drama is the least of Ida's problems. As a Russian-Jewish émigré whose "degenerate art" makes him a target of the Nazis, Chagall risks his life by refusing to leave Vichy France. Will reconciliation enable Ida to save her father from possible deportation and death? |
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| Georgia: A Novel of Georgia O'Keeffe by Dawn TrippAspiring artist Georgia O'Keeffe's life changes -- mostly for the better -- when she meets and falls in love with photographer Alfred Stieglitz. However, as the mistress and muse of the much-older, married Stieglitz, Georgia struggles to be recognized as an artist in her own right -- especially once Stieglitz revives his own flagging career by exhibiting nude portraits of her. Meanwhile, self-taught Georgia wrestles with mastering her chosen medium and suffers her own betrayals by Stieglitz, whose obsessive pursuit of younger women strains their relationship to the breaking point. With its emphasis on the inner life of Georgia O'Keeffe, this lyrical novel presents a nuanced portrait of one of America's most iconic artists. |
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| Lisette's List: A Novel by Susan VreelandIn 1937, Parisienne Lisette Roux and her husband, André, move to the village of Roussillon in Provence to care for Andre's ailing grandfather, Pascal. While Lisette misses the cultural life of the big city -- not to mention the art gallery apprenticeship she had to turn down -- she comes to appreciate country life, especially once Pascal shares his memories of seven paintings and the two artists who created them, Paul Cézanne and Camille Pissarro. However, the outbreak of World War II shatters the Roux' cozy domesticity and scatters the artworks; can Lisette locate the paintings and put her family back together? Both art aficionados and fans of romantic war stories will be delighted by author Susan Vreeland's most recent novel. |
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| Rodin's Lover: A Novel by Heather WebbDetermined to pursue a career as an artist despite her family's objections, sculptor Camille Claudel moves to Paris, where she becomes the apprentice, muse, and lover of Auguste Rodin. While fighting for acceptance within the art community, Claudel also struggles with mental illness. If you enjoy richly detailed, dramatic novels about the lives and loves of women artists in Belle Époque France, check out Robin Olivera's I Always Loved You, about Impressionist painters Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas, or Elizabeth Robards' With Violets, about Berthe Morisot and Edouard Manet. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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