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Historical Fiction -- Mid to Late 20th Century
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Lucky Us
by Amy Bloom
Forging a life together after being abandoned by their parents, half sisters Eva and Iris share decades in and out of the spotlight in golden-era Hollywood and mid-20th-century Long Island. By the author of the National Book Award finalist, Come to Me.
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Tell the Wolves I'm Home
by Carol Rifka Brunt
Her world upended by the death of a beloved artist uncle who was the only person who understood her, 14-year-old June is mailed a teapot by her uncle's grieving friend, with whom June forges a poignant relationship. A first novel.
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The Girls
by Emma Cline
Mesmerized by a band of girls in the park she perceives as enjoying a life of free and careless abandon, 1960s teen Evie Boyd becomes obsessed with gaining acceptance into their circle, only to find herself drawn into a cult and seduced by its charismatic leader. A first novel.
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Africaville
by Jeffrey Colvin
Three generations of a family of former slaves, the founders of a small Nova Scotia community, navigate prejudice, harsh weather and estrangements against a backdrop of the historical events of the 20th century. A first novel.
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The Address
by Fiona Davis
Struggling to rebuild after rehab, an interior designer leaps at a chance to renovate her heiress cousin's lavish apartment and learns the scandalous history of a distant ancestor's connection to the murder of the building's architect a century earlier. By the author of The Dollhouse.
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The Night Watchman
by Louise Erdrich
A historical novel based on the life of the National Book Award-winning author’s grandfather traces the experiences of a Chippewa Council night watchman in mid-19th-century rural North Dakota who fights Congress to enforce Native American treaty rights.
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Nightwoods
by Charles Frazier
Named the guardian of her murdered sister's troubled twins, Luce of 1950s rural North Carolina struggles to build a family with the children and a new romantic prospect before being targeted by the twins' father--her sister's killer--who believes that the children are in possession of a stolen cache of money. By a National Book Award winner.
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Queen of the Underworld
by Gail Godwin
In 1959, as the first wave of Cuban exiles arrives in the United States, Emma Gant, finally free of her stifling family and bullying stepfather, embarks on a career as a reporter for The Miami Star and begins to thrive in the sultry world of Miami, confronting conflicting loyalties, shady dealings, and personal and professional setbacks as she pursues her goals.
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The Yid
by Paul Goldberg
A State Jewish Theater actor and war veteran's astonishing response to Moscow pogrom goons invading his home triggers a zany and deadly series of events as he assembles a ragtag team to help him assassinate Stalin. A first novel by the co-author of How We Do Harm.
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Arcadia
by Lauren Groff
In a lush, haunting story of the American dream, Bit, born in a back-to-nature commune in 1970s New York State, must come to grips with the outside world when the commune eventually fails. By the best-selling author of The Monsters of Templeton.
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In Sunlight and in Shadow
by Mark Helprin
Returning home after serving in World War II to run his family business in New York, paratrooper Harry Copeland falls in love with young singer and heiress Catherine Thomas Hale, who risks everything to break off her engagement to another man. By the author of Winter's Tale.
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And the Mountains Echoed
by Khaled Hosseini
Afghanistan, 1952. Abdullah and his sister Pari live with their father and step-mother in the small village of Shadbagh. Their father, Saboor, is constantly in search of work and they struggle together through poverty and brutal winters. To Adbullah, Pari, as beautiful and sweet-natured as the fairy for which she was named, is everything.
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Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War
by Karl Marlantes
In a story by a decorated Marine veteran who fought in the Vietnam War, Lieutenant Waino Mellas and his fellow Marines venture into the mountain jungle of Vietnam as boys and fight their way into manhood, meeting not only external obstacles but also those between each other, including racial tension, competing ambitions and underhanded officers. A first novel.
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Dollbaby
by Laura Lane McNeal
After her father's unexpected death in 1964, Ibby Bell finds herself living at a New Orleans Garden District estate with her eccentric grandmother and her house staff including a sassy black cook named Queenie, and her smart-mouthed daughter Dollbaby.
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The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat
by Edward Kelsey Moore
Forging a friendship at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Odette, Clarice and Barbara Jean meet regularly at the first diner owned by black proprietors in their Indiana city and are watched throughout the years by a big-hearted man who observes their struggles with school, marriage, parenthood and beyond.
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Everything I Never Told You
by Celeste Ng
A first novel by a Pushcart Prize-winning writer explores the fallout of a favorite daughter's shattering death on a Chinese-American family in 1970s Ohio. A profoundly moving story of family, history, and the meaning of home, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, exploring the divisions between cultures and the rifts within a family, and uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.
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The Sympathizer
by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Follows a Viet Cong agent as he spies on a South Vietnamese army general and his compatriots as they start a new life in 1975 Los Angeles.
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The Lotus Eaters
by Tatjana Soli
Helen Adams, an American combat photographer during the Vietnam War, captures the wrenching chaos of battle on film and finds herself torn between the love of two men, one an American war correspondent and the other his Vietnamese underling. A first novel.
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The Secret History
by Donna Tartt
Richard Papen, a relatively impoverished student at a New England college, falls in with an exclusive clique of rich, worldly Greek scholars and soon learns the dreadful secret that keeps them together. Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and forever, and they discover how hard it can be to truly live and how easy it is to kill.
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Pray for Us Sinners
by Patrick Taylor
Nearly losing his life in a car bombing incident, 1973 British Army bomb-disposal expert agrees to go undercover to identify the source of bombs being used by the Provisional IRA only to confront events that shatter his and his adversary's beliefs in ways that compel both men to leave their vocations honorably.
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Brooklyn
by Colm Tóibín
Leaving her home in post-World War II Ireland to work as a bookkeeper in Brooklyn, Eilis Lacey reluctantly parts with her sister and fragile mother and discovers a new romance in America with a charming blond Italian man before devastating news threatens her happiness.
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The Nickel Boys
by Colson Whitehead
A follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning, The Underground Railroad, follows the harrowing experiences of two African-American teens at an abusive reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida.
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