| The Atomic City Girls by Janet BeardWhat it's about: Although the young women employed in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, are told that their work will help the U.S. win World War II, they have no idea that they're involved in building an atomic bomb.
You might also like: Denise Kiernan's The Girls of Atomic City, a nonfiction account of the military installation at Oak Ridge and it's predominantly female workforce; TaraShea Nesbit's The Wives of Los Alamos, a novel about the spouses of Manhattan Project scientists and the close-knit community they form. |
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| The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph CassaraStarring: members of the House of Xtravaganza, outcasts who form a family as they navigate New York City's underground ballroom scene.
Read it for: a heart-wrenching, character-driven story and a lyrical look at Latinx LGBTQ life in the 1980s and '90s.
For fans of: Jennie Livingston's 1990 documentary Paris is Burning. |
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| Song of a Captive Bird by Jasmin DarznikIntroducing: Forugh Farrokzhad, 20th-century Iranian feminist poet and filmmaker.
Why you might like it: This lyrical and thought-provoking biographical novel follows Farrokzhad's brief but eventful life from rebellious schoolgirl to teenage bride to iconoclastic artist-turned-activist.
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| Only Killers and Thieves by Paul HowarthWhat it's about: The pursuit of vengeance makes for strange bedfellows, as teenage siblings Billy and Tommy McBride discover when they seek assistance in tracking down their parents' killers.
Is it for you? Set in 1885 Queensland, this gritty, blood-drenched Western tells a dramatic coming-of-age story while grappling with Australia's complex legacy of colonialism and genocide.
You might also like: Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang a suspenseful historical novel about the hardscrabble lives of impoverished young people in rural Australia. |
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The Dovekeepers: A Novel
by Alice Hoffman
This heartbreaking novel focuses on four women whose lives intersect in 70 CE during the siege of Masada, the mountain fortress to which 900 Jewish refugees fled after the Romans sacked Jerusalem. There's assassin's daughter Yael, pregnant by her married lover; widowed grandmother Revka, now the guardian of her grandsons following the deaths of her husband and daughter; and Alexandrian priestess and mystic Shirah and her equally unconventional daughter Aziza, a warrior. Readers interested in Jewish history, war stories, or women's lives in antiquity should check out The Dovekeepers, which "makes ancient history live and breathe" (Booklist).
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The Lost History of Stars
by Dave Boling
The Venter family are Afrikaners, white settlers of Dutch ancestry living in South Africa's Transvaal. In 1900, British soldiers destroy their farm and send them to a concentration camp. Narrated by 13-year-old Lettie Venter, this moving novel describes the family's struggle to survive imprisonment during the Second Anglo-Boer War. For more character-driven fiction that examines this conflict try Wilbur Smith's The Sound of Thunder.
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| Winter Sisters by Robin OliveiraWhat it's about: When two young girls disappear during a blizzard, physician Mary Stipp continues to search for them long after everyone else gives up.
Read it for: an intriguing mystery, stirring courtroom drama, and a well-researched and richly detailed depiction of 1870s Albany, New York.
Crossover alert: Though not, strictly speaking, a sequel to My Name is Mary Sutter, this novel reunites readers with some familiar characters. |
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No man's land : a novel
by Simon Tolkien
A tale inspired by the true experiences of the author's grandfather, J. R. R. Tolkien, during World War I traces how an impoverished youth endures the loss of his mother and brutality in a Scarsdale mining community before falling in love, winning a scholarship to Oxford and seeing everything he longs for threatened by World War I.
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| Half-Blood Blues by Esi EdugyanWhat it's about: In 1940, biracial trumpet player Hieronymus Falk is taken by the Gestapo, leaving the remaining members of the Hot-Time Swingers jazz ensemble to wonder about his fate. Decades later, they discover the truth.
Try this next: Nicole Mones' Night in Shanghai, a dramatic novel about an African-American jazz musician who flees racial discrimination at home only to confront the looming threat of WWII. |
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| The Girl from the Savoy by Hazel GaynorWhat it's about: A chance meeting with an actress and her songwriter brother draws Dolly Lane, a hotel chambermaid with dreams of becoming a chorus girl, into a world of glitz and glamour.
Why you might like it: Beneath the glittering facade of this novel's Jazz Age London setting is a poignant, character-driven story of people attempting to reinvent themselves in the wake of tragedy.
You might also like: D.J. Taylor's Ask Alice, about a London socialite with big ambitions and a scandalous past. |
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Rags to Riches
by Nancy Carson
Whisked from the industrial Black Country to the dazzling clubs of New York City…1936 will be Maxine Kite’s year! Plucked from obscurity, young cellist Maxine Kite is thankful for the chance given to her by Birmingham’s esteemed orchestra, but a part of her is still unfulfilled. Music has always been her passion but she has dreams far too big for a girl from a simple family. When the jazz clubs of New York beckon, along with the sultry world of wayward musician Brent Shackleton, Maxine leaves safety and propriety behind. But a girl’s good name can be all she has in the world… and once lost, is almost impossible, to reclaim...
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| The Wicked City by Beatriz WilliamsWhat it's about: Flapper girl Geneva "Gin" Kelly teams up with Prohibition agent Oliver Anson to track down her abusive stepfather, a notoriously ruthless bootlegger.
About the author: Beatriz Williams is known for her use of parallel, past-and-present narratives that unravel historical and romantic intrigue.
For fans of: Kate Morton's atmospheric and intricately plotted novels in which modern-day protagonists delve into long-buried family secrets. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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