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Historical Fiction October 2026 |
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| The Barman of the Ritz by Philippe CollinIn 1940 Paris, while other businesses close, the legendary Ritz Hotel hosts locals, celebrities, and Nazis. Frank Meier, the hotel’s acclaimed barman who’s secretly Jewish, adapts to his new clientele while doing what he can to help other Jewish people, including his young mentee and the hotel manager’s wife. Based on a true story and translated from French, this is an absorbing, thought-provoking novel. |
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Now I Surrender by Álvaro EnrigueA visionary novelist imagines the fiercely fought end of an epoch of almost unimaginable freedom and radically recasts the story of how the West was won. In the contested borderlands between Mexico and the United States, a woman flees into the desert after a devastating raid on her dead husband's ranch. A lieutenant colonel in service to the fledgling Republica, sent in pursuit of cattle rustlers, discovers he's on the trail of a more dramatic abduction. Decades later, with political ambitions on the line, the American and Mexican militaries try to maneuver Geronimo, the most legendary of Apache warriors, into surrender. In our own day, a family travels through the region in search of a truer version of the past.
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| The Witches of Cambridge by Alice HoffmanNew to Radcliffe College in 1950 Cambridge, Massachusetts, Ava and Lauren become friends and join the Lilith Society, a secret group of witches. Beautiful Ava from small-town Maine falls for a Harvard student descended from a 17th-century witch hunter, but wealthy, orphaned Lauren disapproves of the match. Meanwhile, McCarthyism ripples through the country and several girls go missing. This Read with Jenna pick mixes magical realism with dark academia to create a compelling, atmospheric read. Try this next: Silvia Moreno-Garcia's The Bewitching. |
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The Psoad is an Ancient Greek epic in free verse that follows a goatherd’s son, Psoas of Midea, who leaves his wife and family to fight with the Greeks at Troy. This commoner’s story was lost to time―until Harlow Donne, a Canadian academic who has left his own wife and daughter behind to study at Oxford, discovers its relics nearly thirty centuries later. As sole translator and interpreter of The Psoad, Harlow dedicates the poem and its footnotes to his daughter, Helen. Under his gaze, a personal message to his beloved child appears in the ancient text, like a palimpsest. Despite the thousands of years and hundreds of miles that separate Psoas and Harlow, a thread hasn’t frayed: the universal song of homesickness and regret, of love, ambition, and grief. Son of Nobody takes readers from the plains of Troy to the halls of Oxford, from the classical to the contemporary, from ancient verses to modern footnotes. It is a dazzling, masterful feat of myth, history, and domesticity that explores how stories become facts, the price we pay to share them, and how we live―then, now, always.
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| The Pirate Queen by Ariel LawhonIn 16th-century Ireland, Grace O'Malley dreams of a life at sea, but her chieftain father insists she marry to forge an alliance. She obeys and has children, but after her husband’s death, she becomes the leader of her clan’s ships, fights battles, and finds real love. This well-researched, adventure-filled saga moves back and forth across time, with alternating chapters depicting the three eras of Grace’s life (Maiden, Mother, and Matriarch). For fans of: intriguing biographical novels with strong heroines, like Molly Aitken's Bright I Burn and Vanessa Riley's Fire Sword & Sea.
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| Fallen for France by Elizabeth LettsApprenticed to a saddle maker in Morocco, young Beddou connects with a magnificent Arabian filly. When a soldier steals the horse, taking her to France as World War I looms, Beddou is determined to follow. In France, Estelle cares for her younger brother and finds the distressed mare in a field, while burnt-out English veterinarian Thomas also encounters the horse. Memorable characters, poetic writing, and fascinating history make this a moving read. Try these next: Ann Hood's The Stolen Child; Leila Slimani's Watch Us Dance. |
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The Last of Earth by Deepa AnapparaEuropeans aren't allowed in 1869 Tibet, so the British secretly hire Indians to conduct surveying expeditions. Looking for a missing friend who'd gone on such a trip, Balram agrees to guide an English captain in disguise. Meanwhile, 50-year-old Anglo-Indian Katherine hopes to be the first Western woman to reach Lhasa. In this atmospheric character-driven novel, the groups face storms, soldiers, doubt, and more.
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| Sunlight Finds You by Laura MoriartyIn 1949 St. Petersburg, Florida, 17-year-old Nora falls for Leonard, the shy, brilliant son of wealthy transplanted New Yorkers. Though the young couple's love grows, his parents interfere. Rebelling, Leonard skips college to enlist and ends up in the Korean War. Meanwhile, Nora discovers she's pregnant and is sent to a mother-and-baby home where her only choice is to give up her child for adoption. Told from Nora's point of view a few years later, this novel follows what happens to these complex characters. Try this next: Laney Katz Becker's In the Family Way. |
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Sunrise by Téa ObrehtIn 2024, Nina's small-engine plane crashes into a lake in the Wyoming mountains. Her boyfriend Ben, who was flying it, is nowhere to be found. Lost and freezing on the shore, Nina is armed with only a few old protein bars, a phone with no service, and a vague hope of rescue. It is up to her to survive in the vast wilderness. But then she stumbles upon Sunrise--a town of the Old West that is strangely well maintained, but seemingly abandoned. A place that holds the missing link to a ghost story one hundred years in the making. In 2003, local golden boy Coll is putting the finishing touches on the town's annual historical reenactment. But when an upstart would-be author comes to him with questions about one of Sunrise's most beloved figures, it threatens to upend everything he thought he knew about the city--and himself. In 1902, town founder, gunslinger, and legendary pulp hero Anton Vargas returns to Sunrise and quickly takes charge of a group searching for a missing boy. But who really is Vargas? What does he know about the boy's disappearance? And why has he returned after such a long absence? These three strangers are separated by time and circumstance. But Sunrise's many secrets are like gunpowder: quiet, contained, until they encounter a spark.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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The Public Library
501 Copper NW
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87102
505-768-5141abqlibrary.org |
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