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Historical Fiction December 2020
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Welcome to the December Historical Fiction Newsletter! This month’s selections include family sagas set in Texas, Ohio, New York, and London. We have stories from WWII, a murder mystery beginning in 1700s London, a story set in colonial India in 1936, a book featuring Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and a historical fantasy. The next “Brown Bag with Books Book Club” (January 6th) features Julie Yip-William’s The unwinding of the miracle. Scroll down past the new titles for this month’s “Books in a Series” stories. |
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The daughters of Erietown : a novel
by Connie Schultz
"In the 1950s, Ellie and Brick are teenagers in love. A basketball star, Brick could escape his abusive father and be the first person in his working-class family to go to college. But when Ellie becomes pregnant, they marry, she gives up her dream of nursing school, and Brick gets a union card instead. This riveting novel tells the story of three generations in a working-class family; especially Brick and Ellie's daughter Samantha. Illuminating issues facing working-class, Rust Belt people, Erietown also chronicles the evolution of women's lives, and how much people know about each other and pretend not to, the grinding factory work of a smart man in a blue-collar job, and the secrets that explode lives"
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A saint from Texas : a novel by Edmund White"From Edmund White, a bold and sweeping new novel that traces the extraordinary fates of twin sisters, one destined for Parisian nobility and the other for Catholic sainthood. Yvette and Yvonne Crawford are twin sisters, born on a humble patch of East Texas prairie but bound for far grander fates. Just as an untold fortune of oil lies beneath their daddy's land, both girls harbor their own secrets and dreams-ones that will carry them far from Texas and from each other.
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The lost jewels : a novel by Kirsty ManningAn American jewelry historian discovers her unexpected ties to a fortune in jewels discovered under the floor of a London tenement house where an impoverished Irish immigrant once attempted to change her family's fortunes.
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The lions of Fifth Avenue : a novel by Fiona DavisA New York Public Library superintendent’s wife reevaluates her priorities upon joining a woman’s suffrage group in 1913, decades before her granddaughter’s efforts to save an exhibit expose tragic family secrets. By the best-selling author of The Chelsea Girls.
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The book of lost names by Kristin HarmelThe best-selling author of The Winemaker’s Wife draws on true events in the story of a Polish graduate student in World War II who uses her forgery talents to help hundreds of Jewish children flee the Nazis.
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The last train to London : a novel by Meg Waite ClaytonA tale inspired by the Kindertransports of World War II finds a Jewish teen’s life shattered by the Nazi takeover before he joins a member of the Dutch resistance in a life-risking effort to escape Germany.
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The cabinets of Barnaby Mayne by Elsa HartVisiting a formidable science-book collector’s home in the hopes of identifying plant specimens, 18th-century herbalist Cecily Kay finds herself investigating her host’s untimely murder when she observes unsettling inconsistencies.
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Glorious boy : a novel by Aimee Liu"It's 1942. The Japanese have invaded Burma and are closing in on India. After five years in the remote Andaman Islands, aspiring anthropologist Claire Durant and her husband Shep, a civil surgeon, must evacuate with their beloved but mysteriously mute four-year-old, Ty. They cannot, however, take Naila, the local girl whose ability to communicate with Ty has made them dangerously dependent on her. The morning of the evacuation, both children disappear.
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The day Lincoln lost : a novel by Charles B. Rosenberg"An inventive historical thriller that re-imagines the tumultuous presidential election of 1860, capturing the people desperately trying to hold the nation together and those trying to crack it apart"
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| Actress by Anne EnrightWhat it is: a character-driven account of the larger-than-life personality and career of Irish acting legend Katherine O'Dell, as told by her novelist daughter Norah.
Read it for: the engaging portrait of well-meaning but complex Katherine, who struggles to navigate fame and single motherhood in an era without models for either.
About the author: Irish writer Anne Enright's previous novels include The Green Road and Man Booker Prize-winning The Gathering. |
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The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
by V.E. Schwab
What it's about: Village girl Addie is chafing at the restrictions of life as a woman in early 17th-century France, so she makes a deal with the devil for "a chance to live and be free."
The problem: The devil grants her wish...literally. So now Addie is immortal, and for 300 years everyone she meets forgets her. Everyone but the man who just caught her returning some books she previously "borrowed" from a New York bookshop.
For fans of: other time-focused tales of loss, love, and loneliness such as Kate Atkinson's Life After Life or Laura Barnett's The Versions of Us.
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Manners & mutiny by Gail CarrigerA conclusion to the steampunk adventure series finds Sophronia rendered the lone defender of London against a dastardly Pickleman plot that tests her Finishing School spy training. Manners & Mutiny is the fourth book in this series. Etiquette & Espionage is the first book in the Finishing School series.
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The King of Crows by Libba BrayIn a conclusion to the best-selling series, the Diviners pursue Isaiah’s vision of a mysterious girl who could shift the balance in their struggle for peace, while an escaped Jericho reveals a harrowing plot by the malevolent King of Crows. The King of Crows is the fourth book in the Diviners series. The Diviners is book 1.
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Death in the east : a novel by Abir MukherjeeCalcutta police detective Captain Sam Wyndham and his quick-witted Indian Sergeant, Surrender-Not Banerjee, are back for another exotic adventure set in 1920s India Death in the East is the fourth book in the Wyndham & Banerjee Mysteries. The first book in the series is A rising man.
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Death of an American beauty by Mariah FredericksIn 1913, while on a break from her duties as a lady’s maid in Gilded Age New York, Jane Prescott is drawn into a murder investigation after a woman’s body is found outside of a refuge for women run by her uncle. Death of an American Beauty is really the third book in the series. The fourth book: Death of a Showman in due out in April of 2021.
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