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Historical Fiction -- The 19th Century
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Alias Grace
by Margaret Atwood
Takes readers into the life and mind of Grace Marks, one of the most notorious women of the 1840s, who is serving a life sentence for murders she claims she cannot remember.
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Days Without End
by Sebastian Barry
Entering the U.S. army after fleeing the Great Famine in Ireland, 17-year-old Thomas McNulty and his brother-in-arms, John Cole, experience the harrowing realities of the Indian wars and the American Civil War between the Wyoming plains and Tennessee. By the award-winning author of The Secret Scripture.
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The Dream Lover
by Elizabeth Berg
A tale based on the controversial life of mid-19th-century French novelist George Sand follows her separation from her husband and vibrant life in Paris, where she wore men's clothing and shared love affairs and friendships with famous intimates.
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Sunflowers
by Sheramy D. Bundrick
Nineteenth-century French prostitute Rachel Courteau becomes drawn to one of her newest clients, Vincent Van Gogh, and a true relationship blossoms until outside pressures threaten the safe haven they have created.
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City of Ash
by Megan Chance
Meeting at the eve of Seattle's 1889 Great Fire, stock company actress Beatrice Wilkes and aristocrat Geneva Langley find their initial ambitions to achieve happier lives through each other profoundly transformed by an alliance forged by a shared fight for survival.
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The Queen of the Night
by Alexander Chee
A legendary opera singer tries to discover who betrayed her secret past as a courtesan when she is offering her a chance at immortality through a libretto that tells her tale in the new novel from the author of Edinburgh.
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Remarkable Creatures
by Tracy Chevalier
On the windswept fossil-strewn beaches of the English coast Mary Anning learns that she has "the eye" - she finds what no one else can see. When Mary uncovers an unusual fossilized skeleton she sets the religious fathers on edge the townspeople to vicious gossip and the scientific world alight. But as a woman Mary is barred from the academic community. Luckily she finds a champion in prickly Elizabeth Philpot a recent exile from London.
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Frog Music
by Emma Donoghue
Burlesque dancer Blanche Beunon tries to discover who murdered her friend Jenny, who was shot through a window in a railroad saloon in 1876 San Francisco, amidst a record-breaking heat wave and smallpox epidemic.
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Belgravia
by Julian Fellowes
Two families must guard a secret that originates at a legendary ball on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo In this sweeping and rich historical novel from the creator and writer of Downton Abbey.
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The Janissary Tree
by Jason Goodwin
When the Ottoman Empire of 1836 is shattered by a wave of political murders that threatens to upset the balance of power, eunuch intelligence agent Yashim Togalu conducts an investigation into clues within the empire's once-elite military forces, which had been crushed by the Sultan when they became too powerful. By the author of Lords of the Horizons.
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Bird of Another Heaven
by James D. Houston
In a novel that moves back and forth between modern-day San Francisco and nineteenth-century Hawaii, Sheridan Brody, host of a Bay Area radio show, sets out to rediscover a previously unknown side of his family through the journals of his great-grandmother, Nani Keala, a half-Indian, half-Hawaiian woman who became a consort and confidante to the last king of Hawaii.
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Only Killers and Thieves
by Paul Howarth
Two adolescent brothers are exposed to the brutal realities of life and the seductive cruelty of power after a tragedy shatters their family on the untamed frontier of 1880s Australia. A first novel.
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I, Ripper
by Stephen Hunter
A vivid reimagining of Jack the Ripper's personal story intertwines his 1888 murders of five prostitutes with the investigation of an Irish journalist who is caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse against a backdrop of London's seamy Whitechapel District.
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The Long Song
by Andrea Levy
A tale inspired by the years on either side of 19th-century Jamaica's emancipation finds the willful slave Miss July moving into her mistress's great house, where she becomes a valuable confidante, learns to read and witnesses the Baptist War. By the Whitbread Book of the Year-winning author of Small Island.
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The Piano Tuner
by Daniel Mason
In 1886, piano tuner Edgar Drake leaves his quiet life in London for the jungles of Burma, where he has been asked to repair a rare Erard grand piano belonging to a British army surgeon-major who uses the piano and music to help keep the peace among warring local Burmese princes. A first novel.
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The Unseeing
by Anna Mazzola
In 1837, Sarah Gale, a seamstress and fallen woman, is sentenced to hang for her alleged role in the dismemberment of a woman, and her lawyer, Edmund Fleetwood, although she professes her innocence, finds the line between confessor and penitent starts to blur and cannot be sure if she is a victim or a murderer.
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The Ballad of Tom Dooley
by Sharyn McCrumb
A story inspired by a true crime made famous by the Kingston Trio's folk song recording reimagines the events surrounding the murder of North Carolina mountain girl Laura Foster and the hanging of her lover, Tom Dula, in an account that reveals additional information that may prove Dula's innocence.
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The North Water
by Ian McGuire
A 19th-century whaling ship sets sail for the Arctic with a killer aboard, in a dark, historical thriller.
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The Second Empress: A Novel of Napoleon's Court
by Michelle Moran
The author of the best-selling Nefertiti draws on primary sources to recreate the wildly promiscuous court of Napoleon Bonaparte through the experiences of his stepdaughter Hortense, his infamous sister Pauline and his freedom-seeking Austrian wife Marie-Louise.
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The Quick
by Lauren Owen
When a shy aspiring poet disappears from late-19th-century London after falling in love, his sister's ensuing confrontation with an institution of powerful men is aided by three underworld helpers. A first novel.
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Sisi : Empress on her Own
by Allison Pataki
A tale inspired by the life of Empress Sisi in 19th-century Vienna places such events as the opening of the Suez Canal, Vienna's World Exhibition and the outbreak of World War I against a backdrop of imperial court temptations, rivalries and cutthroat intrigues. By a New York Times best-selling author.
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Under a Pole Star
by Stef Penney
A whaler's daughter, Flora Mackie first crossed the Arctic Circle at the age of 12 and fell in love with the unforgiving terrain, and, in 1889, despite those who believe that a woman has no place in this harsh world, she heads back to Greenland at the head of a British expedition. By the best-selling author of The Tenderness of Wolves.
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The Essex Serpent
by Sarah Perry
An American debut of an award-winning book from England is set in the late-19th century and follows the experiences of an intellectually minded young widow and a pious vicar who investigate rumors about a mythical sea creature that has been blamed for a death in coastal Essex.
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