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Historical Fiction April 2021
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Recent Releases & Hidden Gems |
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The tea rose
by Jennifer Donnelly
Her family and dreams shattered by her father's untimely death at the hands of a ruthless tea baron, Fiona Finnegan flees East London and eventually establishes herself at the head of the tea trade in New York. 25,000 first printing.
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The seven or eight deaths of Stella Fortuna : a novel
by Juliet Grames
Believed cursed in her rugged Italian village, a tough, intelligent teen protects her younger sister during World War II, enduring challenges that transform her views about survival and independence. A first novel. 200,000 first printing.
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| A Thousand Ships by Natalie HaynesWhat it is: an atmospheric and witty retelling of the Trojan War, from the shifting perspectives of both familiar and unfamiliar female characters.
Starring: the goddess Calliope, who decides to make the most of her role as a Muse; Penelope, who starts losing patience after learning why it's taking so long for her husband Odysseus to return; Oenone, who was abandoned by her husband Paris for Helen of Sparta.
About the author: Classicist and comedian Natalie Haynes is a regular contributor to The Sunday Telegraph and The Independent. Her previous works include the novels The Furies and The Children of Jocasta, children's book The Great Escape, and the nonfiction book The Ancient Guide to Modern Life. |
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Birds without wings
by Louis De Bernières
In a small town in Anatolia in the finals days of the Ottoman Empire, the lives of its inhabitants--Armenians, Christians, and Muslims--peacefully intertwine, until Mustafa Kemal, a powerful military leader, conscripts the young men of the village to battle the invading Western European forces during the Great War, and religious fanaticism and nationalism destroy the peace.
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Forbidden places
by Penny Vincenzi
A latest title by the author of Into Temptation features a young woman who is widowed after only five years of marriage, a wife who rethinks her feelings after witnessing disturbing changes in her husband and a woman who wonders if the war will free her from a brutal marriage.
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| The Evening and the Morning by Ken FollettWhat it is: a sweeping and descriptive prequel to The Pillars of the Earth set during England's tumultuous 10th century.
Starring: down-on-his-luck boat builder Edgar; spirited young Norman noblewoman Ragna; scholarly and reform-minded cleric Brother Aldred.
Why you might like it: This intricately plotted tale of a land torn between its Saxon and Viking identities shows how a tiny riverside hamlet began its transformation into the town that series fans know as Kingsbridge. |
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| Fifty Words for Rain by Asha LemmieWhat it's about: Noriko Kamiza is the illegitimate child of an African American GI and a Japanese aristocrat born during World War II. Abandoned by her mother, she lives a confined, deprived existence with her status-conscious grandmother in Kyoto, Japan.
Read it for: the unanticipated strong bond Noriko forms with her half-brother Akira, the family's legitimate heir; the parallels drawn between social change and Noriko's burgeoning independence after she escapes to Swinging Sixties London.
Reviewers say: "A truly ambitious and remarkable debut" (Booklist). |
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| House of Gold by Natasha SolomonsThe premise: In 1911, strong-willed Austrian heiress Greta Goldbaum moved to England to marry a man she didn't know for the sake of her family's business interests. Though they get off to a rough start, Greta and her new husband build a life together, and soon they fall in love for real.
The problem: At the outbreak of World War I, Greta finds herself torn between her family of origin and the family she has created, both of which are threatened by the increasing antisemitism that's spreading across Europe.
For fans of: Barbara Taylor Bradford's Cavendon Hall, another family saga steeped in doomed Belle Époque glamour in the run-up to World War I. |
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The debt of Tamar
by Nicole Dweck
A rerelease of a previously self-published best-seller follows the intertwined lives of an Ottoman sultanate descendant and the daughter of a Holocaust survivor against a backdrop of their unknown shared ancestry in mid-16th-century Istanbul.
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The shadow of the wind
by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Representing the letter “Z” in a series of 26 collectible editions, a new design of a classic novel follows the son of an antiquarian book dealer who stumbles upon a dark secret while trying to discover why all copies of a mysterious author's books are being systematically destroyed.
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Contact your librarian for more great books?
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