|
Historical Fiction November 2018
|
|
|
|
| When the Men Were Gone by Marjorie Herrera LewisThe problem: In Brownwood, Texas, football is everything. But it's 1944 and most of the town's adult male population is serving overseas, leaving the high school team without a coach.
The solution: Assistant principal Tylene Wilson, a lifelong football fan, volunteers to coach the team -- despite the community's disapproval.
Inspired by: the real Tylene Wilson, who was the first woman to coach high school football in Texas. |
|
| House of Gold by Natasha SolomonsInspired by: the Rothschilds, the German Jewish family that established an international banking business in Europe.
Introducing: Rebellious Greta Goldbaum, who grudgingly agrees to an arranged marriage with her distant cousin Albert, whom she's never met. Their union, meant to strengthen the ties between the Austrian and English branches of the family, is put to the test by World War I.
Want a taste? "If Vienna was the aged aunt in her crinoline chaperoning the empire, then Paris was the cousin slipping a glass of champagne into her hand." |
|
|
The winter station : a novel
by Jody Shields
What it's about: An aristocratic Russian doctor stationed in a Manchurian outpost races to contain a deadly plague before it spreads to the rest of the world.
Author note: By the best-selling author of The Fig Eater.
|
|
|
As bright as heaven
by Susan Meissner
What it's about: A tale set in 1918 Philadelphia during the Spanish flu epidemic and traces the experiences of a family reeling from the losses of loved ones and changes in their adopted city, a situation that is further shaped by their decision to take in an orphaned infant.
Author note: The award-winning author of Secrets of a Charmed Life and A Bridge Across the Ocean
|
|
|
Beneath the darkest sky
by Jason Overstreet
What it's about: When ex-Bureau agent Prescott Sweet has the opportunity to live in Moscow and work at the U.S. Embassy, he and his family seize the chance to at last put down roots in what they believe is a fair society; but when they are reduced to bare survival in Stalin's Russia and Prescott's son becomes gravely ill, the former spy must draw on all his skills to free his family.
|
|
| Days Without End by Sebastian BarryStarring: 17-year-old immigrant Thomas McNulty, a survivor of Ireland's Great Famine, and John Cole, his friend and lover.
What happens: The couple's enlistment in the U.S. Army takes them from the Great Plains to the battlefields of the Civil War. Meanwhile, they try to build a life together in a society that doesn't understand or accept romantic relationships between men.
Book buzz: Originally published in the U.K., Days Without End won the 2016 Costa Book of the Year award. |
|
| The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street by Susan Jane GilmanWhat it is: an engaging rags-to-riches story that takes readers from the tenements of the Lower East Side to the gilded environs of Manhattan's wealthiest (with stops along the way at Studio 54 and the White House).
Starring: Lillian Dunkle (née Malka Treynovsky), the Russian Jewish immigrant child who, adopted by the Italian ice-peddling Dinello family, grows up to build an ice cream empire.
For fans of: New Yorkers with outsize personalities who narrate their eventful lives, such as the protagonists of Jami Attenberg's Saint Mazie or Kathleen Rooney's Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk. |
|
| Pachinko by Min Jin LeeWhat it is: a sweeping family saga spanning four generations and eight decades, which opens with Japan's annexation of Korea in 1910.
What happens: Pregnant 16-year-old Sunja, spurned by her married lover, reluctantly accepts a marriage proposal from the minister lodging at her family's boarding house. The newlyweds travel to Japan to begin their life together.
For fans of: Alan Brennert's Honolulu, about a Korean American family in Hawaii; Eugenia Kim's The Calligrapher's Daughter, whose protagonist, like Sunja, proves resourceful during troubled times. |
|
| The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermottWhat it is: award-winning author Alice McDermott's intimate depiction of an Irish American enclave in early 20th-century Brooklyn.
It starts when: an Irish immigrant's suicide results in his pregnant widow's job as laundress for the Little Nursing Sisters of the Sick Poor.
You might also like: Matthew Thomas' We Are Not Ourselves or Kathleen Donohoe's Ashes of Fiery Weather, both multigenerational sagas about Irish American families in New York City. |
|
| The Practice House by Laura McNealWhat it's about: After a fateful encounter with two Mormon missionaries, 19-year-old Aldine McKenna leaves Scotland and accepts a position as a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse in drought-stricken Kansas.
Is it for you? An illicit relationship adds drama to a bittersweet and quietly atmospheric tale of a struggling farming community during the Great Depression.
About the author: The Practice House marks the adult debut of author Laura McNeal, best known for her YA fiction. |
|
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
|
|
|
|