|
Historical Fiction May 2019
|
|
|
|
| The Parting Glass by Gina Marie GuadagninoA tangled web: Lady's maid Mary Ballard is in love with her mistress -- who's having an affair with stablehand Johnny Prior. Unbeknownst to their employers, Mary is an Irish immigrant named Maire O'Farren, and Johnny is her twin brother Seanin.
Why you might like it: The Parting Glass offers a suspenseful Upstairs, Downstairs plot and a vivid recreation of 1830s New York City.
For fans of: the atmospheric, LGBTQIA-themed historical fiction of Sarah Waters and Emma Donoghue. |
|
| The Quintland Sisters: A Novel by Shelley WoodWhat it's about: In 1934, quintuplets are born to a poor family in rural Ontario. Teenage midwife Emma Trimpany, who helps deliver all five girls, tells their story.
Inspired by: the real-life Dionne sisters of Canada, the first known quintuplets to survive infancy and reach adulthood.
You might also like: Ami McKay's The Birth House, another engaging, well-researched historical novel about rural Canadian midwives. |
|
| I Always Loved You: A Story of Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas by Robin OliveiraStarring: artists Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas.
What it's about: their complicated relationship, which begins when Edgar invites Mary -- rejected by the Paris Salon -- to exhibit her paintings with the Impressionists.
Try this next: Harriet Scott Chessman's Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper, about Cassatt's relationship with her sister; Cathy Marie Buchanan's The Painted Girls or Kathryn Wagner's Dancing for Degas, which focus on Degas and his dancer-models. |
|
| The Collector's Apprentice: A Novel by B.A. ShapiroStarring: 19-year-old Paulien Mertens, who becomes Vivienne Gregsby and finds a job with an American art collector who shares her passion for post-Impressionist art. Little does he know she's got an ulterior motive.
Why you might like it: Cameos by famous artists and evocative details of Paris in the 1920s add atmosphere to a slow-burning tale of passion, murder, and revenge.
Did you know? Although this novel's characters are fictitious, its featured works of art form the core of the collection at the real-life Barnes Foundation museum in Philadelphia. |
|
|
The God of Spring
by Arabella Edge
It's 1818 and Paris society is obsessed with the shipwreck of the French frigate Medusa, a catastrophe that left 150 survivors adrift on a crude raft -- until illness, starvation, murder, and cannibalism reduced their numbers to only 15. Celebrated young painter Théodore Géricault, seeking a subject for his next masterpiece, decides to recreate "The Raft of the Medusa" on canvas. Consumed by the project, Géricault commissions a life-sized replica of the raft, uses corpses as models, and finds muses in two survivors. Author Arabella Edge also penned The Company, a novel about the 1629 wreck of the merchant ship Batavia off the coast of Australia.
|
|
|
Luncheon of the boating party
by Susan Vreeland
Meeting his closest friends for a summer lunch on a café terrace along the Seine, master Impressionist painter Auguste Renoir undertakes the most challenging project of his career while struggling with the issues that are polarizing post-Franco-Paris War France. 100,000 first printing.
|
|
|
A Piece of the World: A Novel
by Christina Baker Kline
Featuring: Christina Olson, a disabled woman who lives a solitary life on her family's farm in rural Maine before befriending artist Andrew Wyeth and becoming the subject of his iconic painting, "Christina's World."
For fans of: engaging and richly detailed historical novels that imagine the creation of famous artworks, such as Gloria Goldreich's The Bridal Chair or Maureen Gibbon's Paris Red.
|
|
|
Lydia Cassatt reading the morning paper : a novel
by Harriet Scott Chessman
The life of Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt is skillfully fictionalized in this powerful novel about art and passion, narrated by the artist's sister, Lydia. Reader's Guide available. Reprint.
|
|
Contact your librarian for more great books!
|
|
|
Central Mississippi Regional Library System
100 Tamberline Street
Brandon, Mississippi 39042
601-825-0100
http://www.cmrls.lib.ms.us
|
|
|
|