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Historical Fiction July 2018
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| The Summer I Met Jack by Michelle GableWhat it is: an inspired-by-real-life tale of love, politics, and glamour, starring a young Jack Kennedy -- an up-and-coming congressman from Hyannis Port, MA -- and Alicia Darr, the Polish immigrant with whom he fell in love.
For fans of: multi-generational family sagas -- or, of course, the Kennedy family.
Reviewers say: “An alternate Kennedy family history that will leave readers wondering whether America knew the real JFK at all” (Kirkus Reviews). |
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The Dying of the Light
by Robert Goolrick
Diana Cooke was "born with the century" and came of age just after World War I. The daughter of Virginia gentry, she knew early that her parents had only one asset, besides her famous beauty: their stately house, Saratoga, which has hosted the crème of society and Hollywood royalty. Though they are land-rich, the Cookes do not have the means to sustain the estate. Without a wealthy husband, Diana will lose the mansion that has been the heart and soul of her family for five generations.
The mysterious Captain Copperton is an outsider with no bloodline but plenty of cash. Seeing the ravishing nineteen-year-old Diana for the first time, he’s determined to have her. Diana knows that marrying him would make the Cookes solvent and ensure that Saratoga will always be theirs. Yet Copperton is cruel as well as vulgar; while she admires his money, she cannot abide him. Carrying the weight of Saratoga and generations of Cookes on her shoulders, she ultimately succumbs to duty, sacrificing everything, including love.
Luckily for Diana, fate intervenes. Her union with Copperton is brief and gives her a son she adores. But when her handsome, charming Ashton, now grown, returns to Saratoga with his college roommate, the real scandal and tragedy begins.
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| The Wanderers by Tim PearsWhat it’s about: In 1912 England, just after the events in The Horseman, 13-year-old horseman Leo Sercombe has been banished from home because of his love for the master’s daughter, Lottie. He is surviving alone -- but just barely. Will he and Lottie ever find each other again?
Try this next: If you like the quiet, lyrical writing style in this 2nd in the West Country trilogy, you might also like Rae Meadows’ I Will Draw Rain. |
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Eagle & Crane
by Suzanne Rindell
Louis Thorn and Haruto "Harry" Yamada -- Eagle and Crane -- are the star attractions of Earl Shaw's Flying Circus, a daredevil flying act that traverses Depression-era California. The young men have a complicated relationship, thanks to the Thorn family's belief that the Yamadas -- Japanese immigrants -- stole land that should have stayed in the Thorn family.
When Louis and Harry become aerial stuntmen, performing death-defying tricks high above audiences, they're both drawn to Shaw's smart and appealing stepdaughter, Ava Brooks. When the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor and one of Shaw's planes mysteriously crashes and two charred bodies are discovered in it, authorities conclude that the victims were Harry and his father, Kenichi, who had escaped from a Japanese internment camp they had been sent to by the federal government. To the local sheriff, the situation is open and shut. But to the lone FBI agent assigned to the case, the details don't add up. Thus begins an investigation into what really happened to cause the plane crash, who was in the plane when it fell from the sky, and why no one involved seems willing to tell the truth. By turns an absorbing mystery and a fascinating exploration of race, family and loyalty, Eagle and Crane is that rare novel that tells a gripping story as it explores a terrible era of American history.
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| The Kid by Ron HansenWhat it's about: In 1880s New Mexico Territory, young gunslinger Billy the Kid falls in with a gang of thieves and becomes enmeshed in the Lincoln County War, giving birth to the myth we all know today.
Reviewers say: Author Ron Hansen presents this "very good and tangled story in a spry and inventive way” (The New York Times).
Further reading: If you also enjoy nonfiction, you might want to seek out Michael Wallis’ biography Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride. |
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| World, Chase Me Down by Andrew HillemanWhat it’s about: In the first great crime of the 20th century, an out-of-work butcher, Pat Crowe, makes a name for himself when he kidnaps the teenage son of a meatpacking tycoon and ransoms him for $25,000 -- and that’s just the start of Crowe’s incredible story, which takes him around the globe as he evades capture.
Why you might like it: If you like raucous, bawdy antiheroes whom you can’t help but cheer for, World, Chase Me Down will hit the spot. |
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| The Outcasts by Kathleen KentStarring: epileptic prostitute Lucinda Carter, who plans to rendezvous with her lover and hunt for buried treasure in tiny Middle Bayou, Texas; and Oklahoma transplant and new police recruit Nate Cannon, who has been tasked with tracking down murderer William McGill.
Read it for: the surprising convergence of these parallel storylines, as the colorful characters at the heart of them pursue their separate goals. Also watch for the richly atmospheric and starkly beautiful landscape of post-Civil War Texas.
You might also like: the female outlaw in Courtney Collins' The Untold. |
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| Becoming Bonnie: The Crash of the Century: When Bonnie Met Clyde by Jenni L. WalshWhat it’s about: We’ve all heard of the notorious couple Bonnie and Clyde -- but what led Bonnelyn Parker down the primrose path to a life of crime? Follow her from her poverty-stricken Texas beginnings into a 1927 speakeasy, where she takes a second job to help support her family -- and meets one Clyde Barrow.
Further reading: Bonnie and Clyde by Bill Brooks.
Keep an eye out for: Side by Side, the sequel to Becoming Bonnie, which published in June. |
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