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Historical Fiction June 2025 |
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In San Francisco in 1866, an Irish nun, abandoned following a torrid relationship with a Chilean aristocrat, gives birth to a daughter named Emilia del Valle. Raised by a loving stepfather, Emilia grows into an independent thinker and a self-sufficient young woman.
To pursue her passion for writing, she is willing to defy societal norms. At the age of seventeen, she begins to publish pulp fiction using a man’s pen name. When these fictional worlds can no longer satisfy her sense of adventure, she turns to journalism, convincing an editor at The Daily Examiner to hire her. There she is paired with another talented reporter, Eric Whelan.
As she proves herself, her restlessness returns, until an opportunity arises to cover a brewing civil war in Chile. She seizes it, as does Eric, and while there, she meets her estranged father and delves into the violent confrontation in the country where her roots lie. As she and Eric discover love, the war escalates and Emilia finds herself in extreme danger, fearing for her life and questioning her identity and her destiny.
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The Lost Masterpiece by B. A. ShapiroIn a gripping novel full of plot twists, B. A. Shapiro embeds us in a circle of famous painters in late-nineteenth-century Paris, centering on the anguished Impressionist artist Berthe Morisot—the one woman in their midst who never got her due—and the story of Morisot’s great-great-great-great granddaughter, Tamara Rubin, who has inherited Édouard Manet’s Party on the Seine, a painting that completely upends her life.
When Tamara inherits Party, she discovers a long-hidden family history replete with unanswered questions: How had it been stolen by the Nazis? How had the painting managed to survive three disasters that destroyed every other artwork around it? And most of all, why had she never known about her ancestor, Berthe Morisot? As the painting begins to metamorphose into darker and more terrifying versions of itself, Tamara’s ordinary life is thrown into turmoil. What wounds and resentments plagued Morisot, and to what lengths will her spirit go for revenge?The Lost Masterpiece is a story of love, adultery, betrayal, family secrets, and the grueling birth of Impressionism, taking the reader on a whirlwind adventure from the streets of Paris in the late 1800s and the studio Berthe Morisot shared with Manet, Degas, and Renoir to the present day. Shapiro brings Berthe’s world to life, tracing her work through generations of descendants and introducing us to a painter as brilliant and original as her male counterparts across 150 years of triumphs, struggles, passions, animosities, and malevolence.
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| By 1960s standards, Margaret Ryan is living the American woman's dream. She has a husband, three children, a station wagon, and a home in Concordia--one of Northern Virginia's most exclusive and picturesque suburbs. She has a standing invitation to the neighborhood coffee klatch, and now, thanks to her husband, a new subscription to A Woman's Place--a magazine that tells housewives like Margaret exactly who to be and what to buy. On paper, she has it all. So why doesn't that feel like enough? Margaret is thrown for a loop when she first meets Charlotte Gustafson, Concordia's newest and most intriguing resident. As an excuse to be in the mysterious Charlotte's orbit, Margaret concocts a book club get-together and invites two other neighborhood women--Bitsy and Viv--to the inaugural meeting. As the women share secrets, cocktails, and their honest reactions to the controversial bestseller The Feminine Mystique, they begin to discover that the American dream they'd been sold isn't all roses and sunshine--and that their secret longing for more is something they share. Nicknaming themselves the Bettys, after Betty Friedan, these four friends have no idea their impromptu club and the books they read together will become the glue that helps them hold fast through tears, triumphs, angst, and arguments--and what will prove to be the most consequential and freeing year of their lives. |
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Yours Cheerfully: A Novel by A. J. PearceLondon, November 1941. Following the departure of the formidable Henrietta Bird from Woman’s Friend magazine, things are looking up for Emmeline Lake as she takes on the new challenges as a wartime advice columnist. Her relationship with boyfriend Charles is blossoming, while Emmy’s best friend Bunty, still reeling from the very worst of the Blitz, is bravely looking to the future. Together, the friends are determined to Make a Go of It.
When the Ministry of Information calls on Britain’s women’s magazines to help recruit female workers to the war effort, Emmy is thrilled to step up and help. But when she and Bunty meet a young mother who shows them the very real challenges that women war workers face, Emmy must confront a dilemma between doing her duty and standing by her friends.
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| The Story She Left Behind by Patti Callahan HenryIn 1927, eight-year-old Clara Harrington’s magical childhood shatters when her mother, renowned author, Bronwyn Newcastle Fordham, vanishes off the coast of South Carolina. Bronwyn stunned the world with a book written in an invented language that became a national sensation when she was just twelve years old. Her disappearance leaves behind not only a devoted husband and heartbroken daughter, but also the hope of ever translating the sequel to her landmark work. As the headlines focus on the missing author, Clara yearns for something far deeper and more insatiable: her beloved mother.
By 1952, Clara is an illustrator raising her own daughter, Wynnie. When a stranger named Charlie Jameson contacts her from London claiming to have discovered a handwritten dictionary of her mother’s lost language. Clara is skeptical. Compelled by the tragedy of her mother’s disappearance, she crosses the Atlantic with Wynnie only to arrive during one of London’s most deadly natural disasters—the Great Smog. With asthmatic Wynnie in peril, they escape the city with Charlie and find refuge in the Jameson’s family retreat nestled in the Lake District. It is there that Clara must find the courage to uncover the truth about her mother and the story she left behind. |
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| Austen at Sea by Natalie JennerIn Boston, 1865, Charlotte and Henrietta Stevenson, daughters of a Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice, have accomplished as much as women are allowed in those days. Chafing against those restrictions and inspired by the works of Jane Austen, they start a secret correspondence with Sir Francis Austen, her last surviving brother, now in his nineties. He sends them an original letter from his sister and invites them to come visit him in England.
In Philadelphia, Nicholas & Haslett Nelson―bachelor brothers, veterans of the recent Civil War, and rare book dealers―are also in correspondence with Sir Francis Austen, who lures them, too, to England, with the promise of a never-before-seen, rare Austen artifact to be evaluated.
The Stevenson sisters sneak away without a chaperone to sail to England. On their ship are the Nelson brothers, writer Louisa May Alcott, Sara-Beth Gleason―wealthy daughter of a Pennsylvania state senator with her eye on the Nelsons―and, a would-be last-minute chaperone to the Stevenson sisters, Justice Thomas Nash.
It's a voyage and trip that will dramatically change each of their lives in ways that are unforeseen, with the transformative spirit of the love of literature and that of Jane Austen herself. |
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1957. Isabella Giori is ten months into a standard seven-year studio contract when she auditions with Hitchcock. Just weeks later, she is sequestered by the studio’s “fixer” in a tiny Carmel cottage, waiting and dreading. Meanwhile, next door, Léon Chazan is annoyed as hell when Iz interrupts his work on yet another screenplay he won’t be able to sell, because he’s been blacklisted. Soon, they’re together in his roadster, speeding down the fog-shrouded Big Sur coast. 2018. Twenty-six-year-old screenwriter Gemma Chazan, in Carmel to sell her grandfather’s cottage, finds a hidden safe full of secrets—raising questions about who the screenwriter known simply as Chazan really was, and whether she can live up to his name. In graceful prose and with an intimate understanding of human nature, Meg Waite Clayton captures the joys and frustrations of being a writer, being a woman, being a star, and being in love. Typewriter Beach is the story of two women separated by generations—a tale of ideas and ideals, passion and persistence, creativity, politics, and family. |
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| The Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club by Martha Hall Kelly2016: Thirty-four-year-old Mari Starwood is still grieving after her mother’s death as she travels to the storied island of Martha’s Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts. She’s come all the way from California with nothing but a name on a piece of paper: Elizabeth Devereaux, the famous but reclusive Vineyard painter. When Mari makes it to Mrs. Devereaux’s stunning waterfront farm under the guise of taking a painting class with her, Mrs. Devereaux begins to tell her the story of the Smith sisters, who once lived there. As the tale unfolds, Mari is shocked to learn that her relationship to this island runs deeper than she ever thought possible.
1942: The Smith girls—nineteen-year-old aspiring writer Cadence and sixteen-year-old war-obsessed Briar—are faced with the impossible task of holding their failing family farm together during World War II as the U.S. Army arrives on Martha’s Vineyard. When Briar spots German U-boats lurking off the island’s shores, and Cadence falls into an unlikely romance with a sworn enemy, their quiet lives are officially upended. In an attempt at normalcy, Cadence and her best friend, Bess, start a book club, which grows both in members and influence as they connect with a fabulous New York publisher who could make all of Cadence’s dreams come true. But all that is put at risk by a mysterious man who washes ashore—and whispers of a spy in their midst. Who in their tight-knit island community can they trust? Could this little book club change the course of the war . . . before it’s too late? |
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It’s 1941, and the Mitford household is splintered by the vicissitudes of war. To bring the clan together—maybe for one last time, Deborah invites them to Chatsworth for Christmas, along with a selection of society’s most impressive and glamorous guests, as well as old family friend Louisa Cannon, a private detective. One night, a psychic arrives, and to liven things up Deborah agrees she may host a séance. But entertainment turns to dark mystery as the psychic reveals that a maid was murdered in this very same house—and she can prove it. Louisa steps forward to try to solve the cold case. But with a house full of people who want nothing more than to bury their secrets, will she be able to unmask the murderer? And how deep does the truth lie? |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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