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Historical Fiction January 2018
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Needle Nuts Yarn Circle
Mondays, 10:30 a.m.
Reading Room
Bring a project to work on and join the Needle Nuts on Monday mornings at 10:30 a.m. Everyone Welcome.
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| Mrs. Osmond: A Novel by John BanvilleStarring: Isabel Archer, heroine of The Portrait of a Lady, in a sequel to Henry James' classic novel.
Book buzz: Critics are raving about this "superb Henry James pastiche" (The Guardian), an "epochal act of imitation, salutation, and imagination" (NPR) that evokes "James's limpid prose, deft plotting, and finely limned characterization" (Library Journal, starred review).
You might also like: Colm Tóibín's The Master, an introspective novel that examines Henry James' personal life. |
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| Enchantress of Numbers: A Novel of Ada Lovelace by Jennifer ChiaveriniIntroducing: Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace: the mathematician (and daughter of Romantic poet Lord Byron) who's widely considered to be the first computer programmer.
Why you might like it: This fictional memoir illuminates Ada's complicated personal life as well as her professional partnerships with Charles Babbage and Mary Somerville.
Try this next: Joan Spicci's Beyond the Limit, about Sofya Kovalevskaya, stars another unconventional 19th-century woman mathematician. |
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Madness is better than defeat
by Ned Beauman
"A wild, astonishing novel (by arguably England's most accomplished young writer) about Manhattan and Hollywood in the 1930s, Mayan gods, and a CIA operation gone terribly wrong--and the Booker short-listed Ned Beauman's magnum opus thus far. In 1938, two rival expeditions descend on an ancient temple recently discovered in the jungles of Honduras, one intending to shoot a screwball comedy on location there, the other to disassemble the temple and ship it back to New York. A seemingly endless stalemate ensues, and twenty years later a rogue CIA agent sets out to exploit it for his own ends, unaware that the temple is a locus of conspiracies grander than anyone could ever have guessed. Shot through with insanity, conspiracy, ingenuity, and adventure, showcasing Beauman's anarchic humor, spectacular imagination, and riveting prose, Madness Is Better Than Defeat teases, absorbs, entertains, and dazzles in equal measure"
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The girls of Ennismore
by Patricia Falvey
A peasant girl who is invited by Lord and Lady Ennis to join their desperately lonely daughter in her school lessons ultimately discovers their friendship has limits until the Great War and the Easter rebellion bring about a new era in Ireland. Original.
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The holding
by Merilyn Simonds
In a dual tale that follows the experiences of two women living a century apart on the same land, Alyson leaves the city for a simpler life on an abandoned farm with her potter lover and discovers the writings of a young woman, Margaret, who left her Scottish seaside home in the hopes of forging a life in the Canadian wilderness. A first novel. 10,000 first printing.
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Bring Up The Bodies: A Novel
by Hilary Mantel
This sequel to Hilary Mantel's Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall continues the story of ambitious courtier Thomas Cromwell's career. Having achieved the pinnacle of success as King Henry VIII's chief minister, Cromwell -- who used cunning and political gamesmanship to secure the annulment that dissolved the King's marriage to Catherine of Aragon and severed the bonds between the Anglican Church and Rome -- must once again appease his sovereign. This time, his task is to replace Anne Boleyn, who has failed to produce a male heir to the throne, with Henry's latest obsession, Jane Seymour. However, dispensing with yet another queen is a tricky business and one false step could cost Cromwell everything.
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| A Piece of the World: A Novel by Christina Baker KlineFeaturing: Christina Olson, a disabled woman who lives a solitary life on her family's farm in rural Maine before befriending artist Andrew Wyeth and becoming the subject of his iconic painting, "Christina's World."
For fans of: engaging and richly detailed historical novels that imagine the creation of famous artworks, such as Gloria Goldreich's The Bridal Chair or Maureen Gibbon's Paris Red. |
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The son of a certain woman
by Wayne Johnston
Percy Joyce, born in St. John's, Newfoundland, in the fifties is an outsider from childhood, set apart by a congenital disfigurement. Taunted and bullied, he is also isolated by his intelligence and wit, and his unique circumstances: an unbaptized boy raised by a single mother in a fiercely Catholic society. Soon on the cusp of teenagehood, Percy is filled with yearning, wild with hormones, and longing for what he can't have--wanting to be let in...and let out. At the top of his wish list is his disturbingly alluring mother, Penelope, whose sex appeal fairly leaps off the page. Every man in St. John's lusts after her, including her sister-in-law Medina, her paying border, Pops MacDougall, with whom she carries on an affair of convenience - and Percy.
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| The Light Between Oceans: A Novel by M.L. StedmanWhat it's about: An emotionally scarred World War I veteran becomes a lighthouse keeper on a small island off the coast of Australia. When a boat washes ashore carrying an infant girl, he and his wife decide to keep the baby -- a decision with far-reaching consequences.
You might also like: Karen Viggers' The Lightkeeper's Wife, another moving novel about a lighthouse keeper who starts an unconventional family on an isolated island off the coast of Australia. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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