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Historical Fiction July 2024
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The Goddess of Warsaw : a Novel
by Lisa Barr
A legendary Hollywood screen goddess, Lena Browning uses her power and fame to get revenge on the Nazis who escaped justice after the war, hoping to right the past's wrongs, but when an old enemy resurfaces, she must use her skills to protect herself and those she loves, then and now.
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| Rednecks by Taylor BrownSet in 1920-1921 against the backdrop of the West Virginia Mine Wars, Rednecks follows a group of coal miners donning red bandanas and fighting back against unfair labor practices. The compelling story focuses on a variety of characters, including a Black World War I veteran, a Lebanese American doctor, and Ireland-born labor organizer Mother Jones. Read-alikes: Émile Zola's classic novel Germinal; Wiley Cash's The Last Ballad. |
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Can't We Be Friends : a Novel
by Denny S. Bryce
In Hollywood of the 1950s, two icons, Marilyn Monroe and Ella Fitzgerald, defy expectations and find solace in an unlikely friendship forged on their shared strength and vulnerability transcending both race and fame.
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The Glassmaker
by Tracy Chevalier
From the height of Renaissance-era Italy to the present day, this spellbinding novel follows Orsola Rosso and her family of glassblowers as they live through creative triumph and heartbreaking loss, and how through every era, the Rosso women ensure their work, and their bonds, endure.
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| Daughters of Shandong by Eve J. ChungUsing her family history, debut novelist Eve J. Chung depicts an aristocratic mother and three daughters in 1948 China after the men of the family flee the communists, leaving them behind. But the quartet fight for survival, traveling from the country to British Hong Kong and finally Taiwan, as the middle daughter dreams of more. Read-alikes: Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah; The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave. |
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| 1795: The Order of the Furies by Niklas Natt och DagIn a Sweden roiled by revolution, amputee war veteran Mikel Cardell and investigator Cecil Winge search for a depraved killer and try to find their missing friend Anna. The final book in the Bellman Noir trilogy, this is "a brutal, satisfying end to a superior series" (Publishers Weekly). To best appreciate the history of the books, newcomers should start with the 1st entry, 1793: The Wolf and the Watchman. Read-alikes: The Alienist by Caleb Carr; the Sebastian St. Cyr mysteries by C.S. Harris. |
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The Bright Sword : a Novel of King Arthur
by Lev Grossman
Arriving at Camelot to compete for a spot on the Round Table, a gifted young knight Collum instead finds only a handful of knights left after the Battle of Camlann, and together, joined by Merlin's apprentice Nimue, set out to rebuild Camelot in a world that has lost its balance.
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Our Narrow Hiding Places : a Novel
by Kristopher Jansma
An elderly woman recounts her Dutch family's survival during the final years of Nazi occupation, shedding new light on old secrets that rippled through subsequent generations.
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| Spitting Gold by Carmella LowkisTwenty-something Baroness Sylvie Devereux agrees to help her estranged younger sister with one last spiritualist con in 1866 Paris. They target the de Jacquinots, who believe they are being haunted by an ancestor...and they just might be right. Read-alikes: The London Séance Society by Sarah Penner; The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas. |
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The Coast Road : a Novel
by Alan Murrin
In 1994 Ireland, when poet Colette Crowley returns home to pick up the pieces of her life, but is denied access to her children, she turns to her neighbor, Izzy, who acts as a go-between, but soon, this friendship leads to tragedy for one and freedom for the other.
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| The Library Thief by Kuchenga ShenjéIn Victorian England, white-passing Florence Granger, who her father brought home from Jamaica as a baby, is kicked out after a scandal. Having learned bookbinding from him, she cleverly acquires a position restoring rare books in the forbidding Rose Hall. But events lead her to believe that Lord Belfield's late wife was murdered. For fans of: The Fraud by Zadie Smith; The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. |
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The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club
by Helen Simonson
In the summer of 1919, Constance, sent as a lady's companion to Hazelbourne-on-Sea, is welcomed by Poppy Wirrall, a baronet's daughter who runs a ladies' motorcycle club, but as the country prepares to celebrate its hard-won peace, the club realizes the freedoms they gained during the war are being revoked.
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| The Medicine Woman of Galveston by Amanda SkenandoreDr. Tucia Hatherley, who gave up medicine after a fatal mistake, works in a factory and raises her disabled son in 1900. Desperate for more money, she joins a traveling medicine show, taking her across Texas where she forms something of a family with the performers. But there are still dangers to face in this compelling, well-researched novel peopled with complex, believable characters. |
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Husbands & Lovers : a Novel
by Beatriz Williams
Two women, separated by decades and continents, but sharing an exotic family heirloom, search for their lost loves and reclaim secrets, in the new novel from the New York Times best-selling author of The Summer Wives.
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| The Safekeep by Yael van der WoudenIn this "brilliant debut" (Kirkus Review), 30-year-old Isabel lives by routine and discipline in the Dutch countryside in 1961, carefully minding the home she grew up in. Then her older brother brings his graceless new girlfriend Eva to stay with her while he travels. |
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| Familiaris by David WroblewskiIn this sweeping saga, the prequel to the bestseller The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, John Sawtelle and his new wife Mary travel with their friends and dogs to rural Wisconsin in 1919 to make new lives. John and Mary raise two boys (and a lot of dogs) as the novel follows the family over the next three decades in this 2024 Oprah Book Club pick. Read-alikes: North Woods by Daniel Mason; French Braid by Anne Tyler; Lies and Sorcery by Elsa Morante. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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Centerville Library 111 W. Spring Valley Rd Centerville, OH 45458 (937) 433-8091
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Woodbourne Library 6060 Far Hills Ave Centerville, OH 45459 (937) 435-3700
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Creativity Commons 895 Miamisburg Centerville Rd
Centerville, OH 45459 (937) 610-4425
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