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Historical FictionJanuary 2016
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"After breakfast, I read from the Song of Solomon for a while. It is my favorite book in the Bible. There are no murders in it. No beheadings. No godly fury. There is only a boy and a girl, and it reminds of the soap operas on the radio, and of other, sweeter days of my life." ~ from Chantel Acevedo's The Distant Marvels
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| Beatrice and Benedick by Marina FioratoSparring lovers Beatrice and Benedick take center stage in this lively prequel to Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. Revealing the origins of their "merry war," this witty, yet heartfelt, novel shifts back and forth between its protagonists' perspectives as the couple meets, flirts, fights, and -- after a dramatic separation -- reunites. Looking for more fiction inspired by Shakespeare? Check out Lois Leveen's Juliet's Nurse, a poignant retelling of Romeo and Juliet, or Kathryn Johnson's The Gentleman Poet, which pays clever homage to The Tempest. |
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| Médicis Daughter: A Novel of Marguerite de Valois by Sophie PerinotFor certain 16th-century French noblewomen, the personal is political. The daughter of Queen consort Catherine de Médicis, sensitive Princess Marguerite de Valois ("Margot") is quite unlike her manipulative mama (dubbed La Serpente). With France gripped by religious warfare, Margot's fate, like that of her homeland, depends on not one, but three, powerful men named Henri: her brother, the Duc of Anjou; her betrothed, Henri of Bourbon, Prince of Navarre; and her lover, the Duc of Guise, who's got his eye on the throne. Like author Sophie Perinot's debut, The Sister Queens, this dramatic novel blends family drama and dynastic politics for a riveting read. |
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| American Copper by Shann RaySet in 1920s Montana, this sweeping, atmospheric saga explores the intertwined lives of three fully realized characters: Evelynne Lowry, the privileged daughter of a ruthless copper baron; Zion, the sharecropper's son who becomes a rodeo star; and William Black Kettle, a Cheyenne team roper and the descendant of a peace chief who died in the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre. If you want more haunting, lyrical stories of the ever-changing landscape of the American West, check out Denis Johnson's Train Dreams, or Annie Proulx's Wyoming Stories, beginning with Close Range. |
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| White Collar Girl by Renée RosenIt's 1955 and journalist Jordan Walsh is struggling to make a name for herself in the male-dominated newsroom of The Chicago Tribune. Assigned to the society pages, Jordan yearns for the chance to engage in serious investigative reporting. But the price of Jordan's professional ambitions may be her personal safety when a source gives her an inside scoop that's sure to make headlines. For another historical novel about a Chicago-based female journalist who risks everything in pursuit of a story, try Jayne Anne Phillips' Quiet Dell. |
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Books You May Have Missed
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| The Distant Marvels by Chantel AcevedoAs Hurricane Flora makes landfall in 1963 Cuba, 82-year-old Maria Sirena is forcibly evacuated to the historic mansion of the island's first governor, now a museum. Once Maria was employed as a lettora, paid to read aloud to cigar factory workers (while frequently embellishing the texts with her own commentary). Now she uses her storytelling talents to entertain her fellow evacuees with an unofficial, deeply personal history of Cuba starting with her birth in 1881 aboard a Spanish ship and encompassing her time in a military reconcentrado during the Cuban War of Independence, the upheavals of the Spanish-American War, and the events leading up to Cuba's revolution and Castro's rise to power. |
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| A Memory of Violets: A Novel of London's Flower Sellers by Hazel GaynorFlorrie and Rosie Flynn's story is tragic, but hardly atypical in 1870s London. After losing their mother to cholera, the sisters become flower sellers on the streets of London. Florrie, disabled by polio, protects blind Rosie, until fate intervenes and separates them. In 1912, Tilly Harper becomes the assistant housemother at Shaw's Training Home for Watercress and Flower Girls (known to locals as "the Crippleage"), where she discovers Florrie's diary and sets out to discover what happened to the lost girls. |
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| The Prophets of Eternal Fjord by Kim Leine; translated by Martin AitkenAssailed by self-doubt yet brimming with evangelist zeal, Danish missionary Morten Falck journeys to 1878 Greenland to convert the Inuit to Christianity. Perplexed by the resistance of his unwilling congregants, he's also appalled by the behavior of his fellow priest, Oxbøl, who preys on the local women and populates the settlement with his unacknowledged offspring. Placing a complex, flawed protagonist in the midst of a forbidding and starkly beautiful landscape, this moody and richly detailed novel skillfully depicts a clash of cultures and its tragic outcome. |
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| The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen"I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces," declares the sardonic narrator of this novel, a Viet Cong agent known as "the Captain." The orphaned child of a French Catholic priest and his Vietnamese lover, the Captain has spent his young life moving seamlessly between different worlds. After traveling abroad for a university education funded by the CIA, he returned to his homeland to fight for the Communist cause. Now, in 1975, he poses as a refugee in Los Angeles to infiltrate the household of a former South Vietnamese army general. However, disillusionment and doubt has begun to creep into his thoughts. Framed as a confession, this moving, introspective novel depicts complex geopolitical conflicts while reflecting on the nature of identity. |
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| Backlands: A Novel by Victoria ShorrMeet the Brazilian Bonnie and Clyde: bandit Lampião and his paramour and partner-in-crime, Maria Bonita. The unwilling bride of an elderly shoemaker, Maria leaps at the chance to join the charismatic cangaceiro, who has been on the lam nearly as long as she's been alive. Set in northeastern Brazil in the 1920s and 30s, Backlands vividly evokes the semi-arid landscape of the Sertão and the hardscrabble lives of its inhabitants. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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