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Historical Fiction October 2020
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| Jack by Marilynne RobinsonSeries alert: Jack is the 4th novel starring the characters from the Gilead series, which began as a letter from dying Presbyterian minister John Ames Broughton to his son and spans events from the Civil War to the 1950s.
This time with more...moving, star-crossed romance (it's 1957 and the titular Jack's love interest is Della, a Black woman he met in St. Louis); well-crafted dialogue (much of the story unfolds in conversations between Jack and Della); and reflections on faith (in the divine and in each other). |
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| The City of Brass by S.A. ChakrabortyThe setting: Eighteenth-century Cairo, where a young woman who survives as a con artist accidentally summons a djinn, who takes her back to the parallel world of the djinn to face her destiny.
Reviewers say: "This lyrical historical fantasy debut brings to vivid life the ancient mythological traditions of an Islamic world unfamiliar to most American readers" (Library Journal). |
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| Hystopia by David MeansThe setting: A version of the late 1960s where John F. Kennedy survived not only the attempt on his life in Dallas but several subsequent assassination plots, and is now in his third term in office.
What goes wrong: the president's Vietnam strategy flounders, and the influx of returning vets leads him to create a new government agency called the Psych Corps, dedicated to erasing their wartime experiences from their memories. |
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| First Cosmic Velocity by Zach PowersThe setting: It's 1964 and the USSR is completely trouncing the West in the space race. Or at least that's what the determined, inscrutable chief of the Soviet space program wants the world to believe.
The plan: to use pairs of twins (one sent on the mission and one left behind) to hide the fact that no one makes it safely back to Earth, and never tell anyone -- not even Khrushchev himself, who so believes in the program that he volunteers his own pet dog for an upcoming spaceflight. |
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| The Underground Railroad by Colson WhiteheadThe setting: an antebellum South that looks quite like the one in our reality, only the Underground Railroad literally has train tracks, inspiring the slavecatchers to create increasingly bizarre, elaborate, and disturbing obstacles between escapees and their freedom.
Reviewers say: "Imagine a runaway slave novel written with Joseph Heller's deadpan voice leasing both Frederick Douglass' grim realities and H.P. Lovecraft's rococo fantasies" (Kirkus Reviews). |
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The man in the high castle
by Philip K Dick
What it's about: In a hardcover reissue of a classic work of alternate history, the United States is divided up and ruled by the Axis powers after the defeat of the Allies during World War II.
Why you might like it: National best-selling 1963 winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel and recently a 4-season TV drama by the same name.
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Crooked
by Austin Grossman
What it's about: In a novel of alternative history, Richard Nixon exposes the truth behind Watergate and the Cold War, which were both due to a horrifying occult secret he accidentally discovered as a young man.
Author note: By the author of You and Soon I Will Be Invincible.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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Central Mississippi Regional Library System
100 Tamberline Street
Brandon, Mississippi 39042
601-825-0100
http://www.cmrls.lib.ms.us
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