| The secret guests by Benjamin BlackWho: the young English princesses Margaret and Elizabeth.
Where: Clonmillis Hall, an estate in the Irish countryside where the princesses have been sent to protect them from the Blitz, complete with assumed names and an MI5 agent posing as their governess.
Why you might like it: While in real life the royal family stayed in England during the entirety of the war, this reimagined story puts the princesses in the neutral Republic of Ireland, where their safety from the war is replaced with the fear of what Irish nationalists might do if their true identities are revealed. |
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| The girls with no names by Serena BurdickWhat it is: an intricately plotted story of sisterly love, teenage rebellion, and the limited options available to young women in Gilded Age America, inspired by Ireland's notorious Magdalene Laundries.
Read it for: The moving bond between courageous sisters Effie and Luella, who will do anything they can to find each other again after a family secret drives them apart.
Reviewers say: "exquisitely wrought and meticulously researched" (Publishers Weekly). |
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Caligula
by Simon Turney
Rome 37AD. The emperor is dying. No-one knows how long he has left. The power struggle has begun. When the ailing Tiberius thrusts Caligula's family into the imperial succession in a bid to restore order, he will change the fate of the empire and create one of history's most infamous tyrants, Caligula. But was he really a monster? Forget everything you think you know. Let Livilla, Caligula's youngest sister and confidante, tell you what really happened. How her quiet, caring brother became the most powerful man on earth. And how, with lies, murder and betrayal, Rome was changed for ever.
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Chimes of a lost cathedral
by Janet Fitch
After the loves and betrayals of The Revolution of Marina M., young poet Marina Makarova finds herself alone amid the devastation of the Russian Civil War; pregnant and adrift, forced to rely on her own resourcefulness to find a place to wait out the birth of her child and eventually make her way back to her native city, Petrograd. After two years of revolution, the city that was once St. Petersburg is almost unrecognizable, the haunted, half-emptied, starving Capital of Once Had Been, its streets teeming with homeless children. Moved by their plight, though hardly better off herself, she takes on the challenge of caring for these orphans, until they become the tool of tragedy from an unexpected direction. Shaped by her country's ordeals and her own trials; betrayal and privation and inconceivable loss, Marina evolves as a poet and a woman of sensibility and substance hardly imaginable at the beginning of her transformative odyssey.
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The last train to London
by Meg Waite Clayton
In 1936, the Nazis are little more than loud, brutish bores to fifteen-year old Stephan Neuman, the son of a wealthy and influential Jewish family and budding playwright whose playground extends from Vienna's streets to its intricate underground tunnels. Stephan's best friend and companion is the brilliant Žofie-Helene, a Christian girl whose mother edits a progressive, anti-Nazi newspaper. But the two adolescents' carefree innocence is shattered when the Nazis' take control. There is hope in the darkness, though. Truus Wijsmuller, a member of the Dutch resistance, risks her life smuggling Jewish children out of Nazi Germany to the nations that will take them. It is a mission that becomes even more dangerous after the Anschluss Hitler's annexation of Austria as, across Europe, countries close their borders to the growing number of refugees desperate to escape. Tante Truus, as she is known, is determined to save as many children as she can. After Britain passes a measure to take in at-risk child refugees from the German Reich, she dares to approach Adolf Eichmann, the man who would later help devise the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question," in a race against time to bring children like Stephan, his young brother Walter, and Žofie-Helene on a perilous journey to an uncertain future abroad.
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| The glittering hour by Iona GreyWhere it's set: The stately English manor house Blackwood Park, where nine-year-old Alice Carew is sent to stay with her grandparents during her parents' extended stay in Burma in 1936.
What happens: Alice begins a "treasure hunt", eventually discovering details about her mother's wild, romantic past as one of London's "Bright Young People," the nature of her parents' marriage, and an earth-shattering secret about herself.
Read it for: the intensifying narrative buildup and the lush, glamourous world of 1920s London, which is explored in flashbacks. |
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Delayed rays of a star
by Amanda Lee Koe
What it's about: In 1928, the lives of Hollywood icon Marlene Dietrich, Chinese American actress Anna May Wong, and German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl briefly intersect when Alfred Eisenstaedt photographs them together at a party.
Why you might like it: This debut traces the ripple effects of this chance encounter over a span of decades, following these ambitious women as well as several well-drawn supporting characters.
You might also like: Francine Prose's Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932, another character-driven historical novel inspired by a vintage photograph.
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| The poppy wife by Caroline ScottWhat it's about: In 1921, a cryptic message leads World War I widow Edie to team up with her late husband Francis' brother Harry, travelling to postwar France to discover the truth about what happened to Francis in the trenches.
Why you might like it: the well-researched and richly detailed depiction of a devastated France slowly recovering from the war; the well-developed characters, whose stories of love and loss are poignant and moving. |
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| The water dancer by Ta-Nehisi CoatesWhat it is: the haunting, lyrical story of Hiram Walker, who uses the remarkable abilities inherited from his mother (the titular water dancer) to assist with the Underground Railroad after escaping the plantation owned by his white father.
Author alert: MacArthur fellow Ta-Nehisi Coates has written for numerous publications including The Atlantic, where he also served as an editor. The Water Dancer is his first novel, but his other books include Between the World and Me and We Were Eight Years in Power.
Reviewers say: "bold, dazzling, and not to be missed" (Publishers Weekly). |
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| The world that we knew by Alice HoffmanWhat it's about: The journeys (both literal and figurative) of Jewish girls Ettie, Lea, and Ava who flee 1940s Berlin for occupied France, where their paths diverge and reconnect in dramatic, heartwrenching ways.
Odd girl out: Posing as Lea's cousin, Ava is actually a golem Ettie built back in Berlin to protect Lea from harm -- a duty she performs with equal parts warmth and ruthlessness.
What sets it apart: author Alice Hoffman's ability to thread moments of compelling sweetness into the lives of her characters as they try to survive the horrors of Nazism. |
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| She would be king by Wayétu MooreWhat it is: a haunting and thought-provoking story of the founding of Liberia, driven by a group of complex, flawed characters from different parts of the African diaspora, all of whom have unusual abilities that set them on the path toward each other.
Starring: Gbessa, a young girl who is shunned from her village as a witch for her powers of resurrection; June Dey, an American former slave who has superhuman strength; and Jamaican-born Norman Aragon, a mixed-race man who inherited his mother's power of invisibility. |
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| The old drift by Namwali SerpellWhat it is: a sweeping family saga that interweaves the history of colonial Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) with the complex web of connections between generations of three different families -- one English, one Italian, and one African.
For fans of: Isabel Allende's classic debut novel The House of the Spirits, which similarly blends post-colonial history with magical realism as it follows the generations of interconnected families.
Reviewers say: The Old Drift is a novel with a "generous spirit, sensory richness, and visionary heft" that set it apart from other family epics (Publishers Weekly). |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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