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Historical Fiction August 2025 |
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| Typewriter Beach by Meg Waite ClaytonAmid McCarthyism in 1957, Isabella Giori dreams of being Alfred Hitchcock's favorite blonde actress. But while temporarily staying at a Carmel-by-the-Sea cottage, she becomes friends with blacklisted writer Leo, changing both of their lives. In 2018, Leo's granddaughter clears out his cottage after his death, meeting his neighbor Isabella and finding secrets in his safe. Read-alikes: Susan Meissner's A Map to Paradise; Sarah Jane Stratford's Red Letter Days. |
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| How to Dodge a Cannonball by Dennard DayleVolunteering for the Union Army to escape his abusive mother, wily 15-year-old flag bearer Anders changes sides when he's captured. But after surviving the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg, the white teen passes as biracial and joins an all-Black Union regiment. Satirical and offbeat, this debut novel is "an American Candide...[and] channels the absurdity of Catch-22" (Publishers Weekly). For fans of: The Good Lord Bird by James McBride. |
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| The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau by Kristin HarmelIn Nazi-occupied France, Colette Marceau's mother is executed while her four-year-old sister disappears and is later found dead. Trained by her mother, Colette becomes a jewel thief, targeting the bad to give to the good, and in 2018 Boston, she's still working when a special bracelet linked to her sister appears in a museum. Elderly Colette seeks answers, hoping to finally learn what happened decades ago in this sweeping dual-timeline tale. Read-alike: Pam Jenoff's Last Twilight in Paris. |
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| Days of Light by Megan HunterOn Easter Sunday, 1938, 19-year-old Ivy is questioning her path in life when her older brother goes missing while swimming at their English estate, reshaping her world. Taking place on this and five other significant days in Ivy's life, this thoughtful novel follows her as she grows close to her brother's fiancée, marries, has children, and makes changes in her later years. Read-alikes: Yael van der Wouden's The Safekeep; Virginia Woolf's novels. |
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The filling station : a novel
by Vanessa Miller
"From the author of The American Queen comes another important story about love, resilience, faith, and grit"
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A wallflower's guide to viscounts and vice
by Manda Collins
"Miss Lucy Penhallow has endured enough London seasons to know that she is never going to "take". But no amount of persuasion on her part will convince her mother to give up her quest to find Lucy a husband and allow her eldest daughter to do what she really wants--devote her time to running the Mischief and Mayhem Book Club, where members read the latest crime books. Under the weight of inheriting his father's title three years ago, Viscount Will Chandler has transformed from the fun loving man he was in his youth to the kind of curmudgeon he once would have ridiculed. With a troublesome mother to and a younger sister he needs to shepherd through the marriage mart, Will is in search of a wife who will take some of the burden of handling his female relatives off his shoulders. When Lucy and Will are accidentally locked in the library at the season's most well attended ball, they witness an attempted murder. In the aftermath, Lucy is forced into a hasty marriage with his disagreeable lordship and becomes the target of a ruthless killer. As she and Will learn how to navigate the treacherous waters of their new marriage, Lucy--with reluctant assistance from her new husband--uses the lessons she's picked up from reading detective novels to search for a killer. As they inch ever closer to learning the murderer's identity, Will and Lucy find themselves growing closer to something like love. Can they capture a killer without risking the fragile love they've only just found?"
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The Gatsby gambit
by Claire Anderson-Wheeler
Greta Gatsby, newly arrived at her brother Jay's West Egg mansion, finds her idyllic summer shattered by scandal, betrayal, and murder, forcing her to navigate the secrets of a glittering yet dangerous world of wealth and deception.
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Saint of the Narrows Street
by William Boyle
In Gravesend, Brooklyn, 1986, Risa Franzone lives with her bad-seed husband, Saverio, and their eight-month-old baby, Fabrizio, and when she hits and kills Sav after an accident occurs with Risa's younger sister, Giulia, the girls call Sav's friend Chooch to help them and hide their secret.
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Deep cuts : a novel
by Holly Brickley
In a Berkley, California bar in 2000, an opinionated New Yorker, Percy, meets songwriter Joe, sparking a creative partnership that propels him toward indie-rock stardom and challenges her to reconcile her own ambitions with their complex, all-consuming collaboration.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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