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Historical Fiction March 2024
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The Divorcées
by Rowan Beaird
What it's about: Lois finds herself living at the Golden Yarrow with half a dozen other would-be divorcees, all in Reno for the six weeks' residency that is the state's only divorce requirement. They spend their days riding horses and their nights flirting with cowboys, and it's as wild and fun as Lake Forest, Illinois, is prim and stifling. But it isn't until Greer Lang arrives that Lois's world truly cracks open.
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Becoming Madam Secretary
by Stephanie Dray
What it's about: When Frances meets a young lawyer named Franklin Delano Roosevelt at a tea dance, sparks fly in all the wrong directions. She thinks he's a rich, arrogant dilettante who gets by on a handsome face and a famous name. He thinks she's a priggish bluestocking and insufferable do-gooder. Neither knows it yet, but over the next twenty years, they will form a historic partnership that will carry them both to the White House. - Publisher
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James
by Percival Everett
What it's about: When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. Thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.
Read it for: A retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn through the eyes of Jim, brimming with electrifying humor and lacerating observations.
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The Love Remedy
by Elizabeth Everett
What it's about: When Lucinda Peterson's recently perfected formula for a salve to treat croup goes missing, she's certain it's only the latest in a line of misfortunes at the hands of a rival apothecary. Outraged and fearing financial ruin, Lucy turns to private investigator Jonathan Thorne for help. As they work closely together to expose her scientific saboteur, the cure to their problems is clear: they must face the future together.
Series alert: This is the first novel in Everett's new Series The Damsels of Discovery.
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Weyward
by Emilia Hart
What it's about: Told over five centuries through three connected women, this riveting novel follows Kate, in 2019, as she seeks refuge in Weyward Cottage; Altha, in 1619, as she uses her powers to maintain her freedom; and Violet, in 1942, as she searches for the truth about her mother's death.
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The Great Divide
by Cristina Henríquez
What it's about: It is said that the Panama Canal will be the greatest feat of engineering in history. But first, it must be built. Searing and empathetic, The Great Divide explores the intersecting lives of activists, fishmongers, laborers, journalists, neighbors, doctors, and soothsayers—those rarely acknowledged by history even as they carved out its course.
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Wandering Stars
by Tommy Orange
What it's about: Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity. A generation later, Star's son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father's jailer. Under the harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines.
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The American Daughters
by Maurice Carlos Ruffin
What it's about: After her mother dies of a fever, Ady, a young enslaved woman in antebellum New Orleans, keeps the family dream of freedom alive despite her grief. Ady finds a mother figure in Lenore, a free woman of color, and through her is introduced to an underground network known only as "the Daughters," who work to undermine the nascent Confederacy from the inside.
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The Underground Library
by Jennifer Ryan
What it's about: When the Blitz destroys Bethnal Green Library in London, librarian Juliet Lansdown, along with two other women, relocates the stacks to the local Underground station where the city's residents shelter nightly. Juliet is determined to lend out stories that will keep spirits up, but soon tragedy after tragedy threatens to destroy what they've built.
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Ours
by Phillip B. Williams
What it's about: Sweeping through 1830s Arkansas to rescue enslaved people a fearsome conjuror creates a town magically concealed from outsiders. But as the town becomes vulnerable to intruders over time, some people wonder whether the community's safety might be yet another form of bondage.
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Lake Travis Community Library
1938 Lohmans Crossing Austin, TX 78734 (512) 263-2885
laketravislibrary.org |
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