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Historical Fiction December 2019
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Red Oblivion
by Leslie Shimotakahara
A Chinese-Canadian architect and her sister discover that their gravely ill father is being blackmailed by an enemy from the past amid harrowing family secrets from the Cultural Revolution. By the award-winning author of The Reading List. Original.
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| Marley by Jon ClinchStarring: Jacob Marley, erstwhile friend and business partner of A Christmas Carol's Ebenezer Scrooge.
What happens: Friends become partners-in-crime become bitter rivals in this atmospheric novel, which traces the men's complicated relationship from their initial boyhood meeting to their dramatic falling out.
You might also like: Louis Bayard's Mr. Timothy, which imagines the post-Christmas Carol fate of Tiny Tim. |
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The almanack
by Martine Bailey
In 1752, Tabitha returns home to Netherlea after receiving a desperate summons from her mother, but comes back to find her mother drowned and a mysterious murderer only known as "D" terrorizing the village
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Lampedusa
by Steven Price
The award-winning author of By Gaslight reimagines the final years of Lampedusa’s last prince, Giuseppe Tomasi, who succumbs to a terminal illness while writing his only novel, The Leopard, amid the Italian aristocracy of the late 1950s.
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The Sweetest Fruits
by Monique Truong
What it's about: The peripatetic life of writer Lafcadio Hearn, the son of a Greek mother and an Irish father, who works as a journalist in the United States and Martinique before settling in Japan.
Why you might like it: Four women -- Hearn's mother, his wives, and his biographer -- reveal different aspects of a protean man as he reinvents himself.
For fans of: iconoclastic biographical novels with multiple narrators who describe their relationships with charismatic men, such as T.C. Boyle's The Women or Louisa Hall's Trinity.
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| A Country Road, A Tree by Jo BakerStarring: Irish playwright Samuel Beckett (although he remains nameless throughout this spare, evocative novel).
What happens: Soon after his 1939 arrival in Paris, World War II begins; for the next six years, he and his lover, Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil, hide from the Germans while aiding the French Resistance.
Is it for you? Written in second person and in present tense, A Country Road, A Tree marks a stylistic departure from the author's previous novel, Longbourn. |
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| Mistress of the Ritz by Melanie BenjaminIntroducing: Claude Auzello, director of the Hotel Ritz, and his wife, American expatriate Blanche, who risk everything to aid the Resistance after the Nazis take over the iconic Paris hotel in 1940.
Read it for: a dual narrative that slowly reveals the secrets and lies that form the foundation of the couple's tempestuous marriage, plus a detailed below-stairs look at life at the Ritz.
For fans of: WWII-set fiction by Martha Hall Kelly, Pam Jenoff, or Kate Quinn. |
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| Resistance Women by Jennifer ChiaveriniFeaturing: Mildred Fish Harnack, Greta Kuckoff, Sara Weitz, and Martha Dodd, four brave women who, along with their friends and partners, form a Berlin resistance cell known as the Rote Kapelle ("Red Orchestra").
Reviewers say: "A riveting, complex tale of the courage of ordinary people" (Kirkus Reviews).
About the author: When she's not busy with her popular Elm Creek Quilts series, Jennifer Chiaverini writes atmospheric and well-researched historical novels such as The Enchantress of Numbers. |
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| A Hero of France by Alan FurstIntroducing: a Frenchman known only as "Matthieu," who leads a resistance cell that rescues downed British pilots and returns them to England so that they can rejoin the fight.
What happens: So successful are Matthieu and his associates that they begin to attract unwanted attention from friend and foe alike.
What sets it apart: Unlike most previous books in the Night Soldiers series, which are set during the Interwar period, this suspenseful 13th installment takes place during WWII. |
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| Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark SullivanItaly, 1943: 17-year-old Pino Lella is already risking his life by helping Jewish refugees cross the border into Switzerland; the stakes get even higher after he's assigned to chauffeur a high-ranking officer in the Third Reich and takes advantage of his position to spy on the Germans.
Inspired by: the wartime exploits of a real-life resistance fighter of the same name, whom the author met and befriended.
Media buzz: a planned big screen adaptation is currently in the works, so keep an eye out. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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