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Historical Fiction January 2023 |
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| That Summer in Berlin by Lecia CornwallStarring: Viviane Alden, a young British woman who travels to Berlin in 1936 under the guise of working as a photographer at the Olympics. Her true goal? To find evidence that Germany is rearming in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles.
What makes it unique: the high-stakes setting, which has extra layers of artifice for Viviane to parse since any country hosting the Olympics tries to put its best foot forward.
For fans of: the Miss Lily series by Jackie French; the Verity Kent series by Anna Lee Huber. |
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Defending Alice : A Novel of Love and Race in the Roaring Twenties
by Richard Stratton
Roaring Twenties New York society is set ablaze when a working-class black woman marries the son of a wealthy, prominent family and makes international headlines after he sues for annulment accusing her of hiding her Negro blood. 60,000 first printing.
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Act of Oblivion : a novel
by Robert Harris
Follows General Edward Whalley's and his son-in law Colonel William Goffe's flight to America in 1660 after their involvement in the beheading of King Charles I
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| In the Shadow of a Queen by Heather B. MooreWhat it's about: Princess Louise (one of Queen Victoria's younger daughters) is a strong-willed young woman with artistic and feminist inclinations who serves as her domineering mother's unofficial secretary until the possibility of marriage to a Scottish peer divides her family and forces her to decide what she really wants out of life.
For fans of: The People's Princess by Flora Harding; A Most English Princess by Clare McHugh.
Reviewers say: In the Shadow of a Queen is "a worthy portrait of a woman divided by duty and self-determination" (Publishers Weekly). |
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| Miss Del Río by Bárbara Louise MujicaWhat it is: the dramatic, rags to riches story of Hollywood icon Dolores del Río, beginning with her days as an orphan in northern Mexico before the 1910 Revolution.
Appearances by: Marlene Dietrich, Orson Welles, and Frida Kahlo.
You might also like: Find Me in Havana by Serena Burdick.and The Only Woman in the Room by Marie Benedict. |
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Acts of love and war
by Maggie Brookes
Lucy is equally fond of two neighbors who are brothers, and when both go to Spain to fight on opposite sides in the Civil War, she follows, hoping to persuade them to return to England, only to be so horrified by the carnage that she joins a Quaker groupworking with the civilian population
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| Before All the World by Moriel Rothman-ZecherWhat it's about: Leyb Mireles and Gitti Khayeles haven't seen each other since narrowly escaping the pogrom that destroyed their village, but fate is about to pull them back together in Depression-era Philadelphia through the combined forces of an underground gay bar, a Yiddish manuscript, and the work of it unlikely translator.
Read it for: the charming but not-quite-masterful translation of sections of Gitti's memoirs, written by Leyb's American friend Charles Patterson. In addition to exploring how Charles, a Black man, became fluent in Yiddish, the text is full of thought-provoking notes that explore Charles as a character in his own right.
Is it for you? Author Moriel Rothman-Zecher takes great care with prose but Before All the World is a stylistically complex work most likely to appeal to fans of high-concept novels like Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated or Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire. |
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The lost book of Eleanor Dare
by Kimberly Brock
"Based on real history and alternating between the story of war widow Alice searching for identity in the 1940s and excerpts from Eleanor Dare's Commonplace Book and the tale of her harrowing survival, The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare explores the meaning of female history and the sacrifices every mother makes for her daughter"
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| One Woman's War by Christine WellsWhat it's about: the wartime activities of Victoire Bennett, a British Naval Intelligence officer who some believe inspired James Bond mainstay Miss Moneypenny.
Read it for: the engagingly written characters including Victoire, a survival-driven Austrian double agent, and Ian Fleming himself.
For fans of: Kate Quinn's The Alice Network and Ariel Lawhon's Code Name Helene. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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