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Historical Fiction January 2026 |
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With a Vengeance
by Riley Sager
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A haunted past. A train with no stops. Thirteen hours to reckon with the truth. In 1954, Anna Matheson boards a luxury overnight train bound for Chicago that she's commissioned, along with a list of names and a heart hardened by loss. Twelve years earlier, during the height of World War II, six people shattered her family's life. Now, under a false guise, Anna has orchestrated a chilling reunion--trapping each of them aboard. Her plan is precise: confront the ghosts of her past, unearth long-buried truths, and ensure justice is waiting at journey's end. But when one of the passengers is found murdered before dawn, it becomes clear that Anna isn't the only one harboring secrets--or seeking revenge. As the train hurtles into the icy night, Anna must navigate layers of deception, reckon with the cost of vengeance, and come to protect the very people she came to condemn. Because someone on board is determined that none of them--Anna included--reach the final stop alive.
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| Helm by Sarah HallThe Helm, a ferocious, mischievous wind in Northwest England, occasionally makes its way down the highest mountain in the Pennines. Narrated by a personified Helm, this intriguing, inventive novel covers the wind's beginnings when the world was new and on through time via the stories of various humans, including Neolithic tribe members, a medieval mathematician, early balloonists, a Victorian child, meteorologists, Royal Air Force pilots, and more. For fans of: Irene Solà's When I Sing, Mountains Dance.
*If you'd like to request this book, please visit your library and ask for assistance! |
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We Live Here Now
by Sarah Pinborough
Limited edition printing with stenciled edgesUSA TODAY BESTSELLER! Atmospheric, immersive, surprising and as dark as wet tires. --New York Times Book ReviewBrilliant. . . The twist completely blew my mind. I adored every page. --Lisa JewellAward-winning author of New York Times bestselling breakout novel (and hit Netflix show) Behind Her Eyes returns with a haunting Gothic novel about a house--and a marriage--gone terribly wrong. After an accident that nearly kills her, Emily and her husband, Freddie, move from London to a beautiful Dartmoor country house called Larkin Lodge. The house is gorgeous, striking--and to Emily, something about it feels deeply wrong. Old boards creak at night, fires go out, and books fall from the shelves, and all of it stems from the terrible presence she feels in the third-floor room. But these things happen only when Emily's alone, so are they happening at all? She's still medically fragile; her postsepsis condition can cause hallucinatory side effects, which means she can't fully trust her own senses. Freddie doesn't notice anything odd and is happy with their chance at a fresh start. Emily, however, starts to believe that the house is being haunted by someone who was murdered in it, though she can find no evidence of a wrongful death. As bizarre events pile up and her marriage starts to crumble, Emily becomes obsessed with discovering the truth about Larkin Lodge. But if the house has secrets, so do Emily and her husband. And they live here now. All marriages have secrets. All houses have a past. But not like this one. This is Sarah Pinborough at her mind-bending best.--Ruth Ware, bestselling author of One Perfect Couple
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Books You May Have Missed |
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The Forever Sea
by Joshua Phillip Johnson
The first book in a new environmental epic fantasy series set in a world where ships kept afloat by magical hearthfires sail an endless grass sea. On the never-ending, miles-high expanse of prairie grasses known as the Forever Sea, Kindred Greyreach, hearthfire keeper and sailor aboard harvesting vessel The Errant, is just beginning to fit in with the crew of her new ship when she receives devastating news. Her grandmother--The Marchess, legendary captain and hearthfire keeper--has stepped from her vessel and disappeared into the sea. But the note she leaves Kindred suggests this was not an act of suicide. Something waits in the depths, and the Marchess has set out to find it. To follow in her grandmother's footsteps, Kindred must embroil herself in conflicts bigger than she could imagine: a water war simmering below the surface of two cultures; the politics of a mythic pirate city floating beyond the edges of safe seas; battles against beasts of the deep, driven to the brink of madness; and the elusive promise of a world below the waves. Kindred finds that she will sacrifice almost everything--ship, crew, and a life sailing in the sun--to discover the truth of the darkness that waits below the Forever Sea.
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| Strangers in Time by David BaldacciNavigating life in London as World War II rages, Ignatius Oliver (a widowed bookseller with secrets), Charlie Matters (an orphaned 14-year-old who steals for food), and Molly Wakefield (a well-to-do 15-year-old whose parents are missing), create a safe haven with each other even as bombs fall. Read-alike: The Lilac People by Milo Todd; The Keeper of Lost Art by Laura Morelli. |
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| Junie by Erin Crosby EckstineEnslaved 16-year-old Junie loves poetry and her family. As maid to Violet, the only child of Alabama plantation owners, Junie knows that if Violet marries the wealthy man her father has brought home, they'll both end up in faraway New Orleans. Distraught, Junie asks her dead sister Minnie for help, unleashing her ghost. In this moving debut, the author "evokes the earthly and supernatural to equally powerful effect" (Publishers Weekly). For fans of: Jesmyn Ward's Let Us Descend. |
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| Red Clay by Charles B. FancherIn 1943 Alabama, an 80-something white woman visits a Black household who've just lost their grandfather, Felix Parker. Felix was once enslaved by the visiting woman's family, and surprising information surfaces due to her visit in this thought-provoking tale that flows back to the Civil War and Reconstruction. Based on the author's ancestors, this sweeping debut doesn't shy away from violence and complex topics. Try this next: The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers. |
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Go as a River
by Shelley Read
NATIONAL BESTSELLER and BOOK CLUB FAVORITE * Over 1 million copies sold worldwide!* 2024 High Plains Book Award Winner * 2023 Reading the West Book Award Winner * Finalist for Goodreads Choice Award * Colorado Public Radio 2023 Books We Love * 2025 Prix de l'Union Interalliée *Set amid Colorado's wild beauty, the heartbreaking coming-of-age story of a resilient young woman whose life is changed forever by one chance encounter. A tragic and uplifting novel of love and loss, family and survival--and hope--for readers of Great Circle, The Four Winds, and Where the Crawdads Sing.Beautiful . . . A striking first novel of love and strength and growth, set against the forests and rivers of Colorado's high country. Read is a gifted writer, and the book is a literary triumph.--Denver PostWith gorgeous descriptions of the great outdoors, an illicit love story, and an unforgettable protagonist, Go as a River offers something for everyone.--Real SimpleI couldn't stop thinking about it . . . it's stunning.--Jen HatmakerSeventeen-year-old Victoria Nash runs the household on her family's peach farm in the small ranch town of Iola, Colorado--the sole surviving female in a family of troubled men. Wilson Moon is a young drifter with a mysterious past, displaced from his tribal land and determined to live as he chooses.Victoria encounters Wil by chance on a street corner, a meeting that profoundly alters both of their young lives, igniting as much passion as danger. When tragedy strikes, Victoria leaves the only life she has ever known, fleeing into the surrounding mountains, where she struggles to survive in the wilderness with no clear notion of what her future will bring. As the seasons change, she also charts the changes in herself, finding in the beautiful but harsh landscape the meaning and strength to move forward and rebuild all that she has lost, even as the Gunnison River threatens to submerge her homeland--its ranches, farms, and the beloved peach orchard that has been in her family for generations.Inspired by true events surrounding the destruction of the town of Iola in the 1960s, Go as a River is a story of deeply held love in the face of hardship and loss, but also of finding courage, resilience, friendship, and, finally, home--where least expected. This stunning debut explores what it means to lead your life as if it were a river--gathering and flowing, finding a way forward even when a river is dammed.
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Scandal in Babylon
by Barbara Hambly
1924. After six months in Hollywood, Emma Blackstone has come to love her new employer, movie-star Kitty Flint. So when Kitty's accused of murder, Emma's certain she's been framed. But who by? And why? From spiteful rivals to jealous boyfriends, the suspects are numerous - and as Emma investigates, it's soon clear Kitty's hiding something .
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| Anima Rising by Christopher MooreIn 1911 Vienna, celebrated artist Gustav Klimt saves a woman from drowning in the Danube, but she has no memory of her past. That is, until Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung help out and the woman recalls, among other things, being in the Arctic over 100 years earlier with Victor Frankenstein. For fans of: offbeat novels that mix real characters and fictional ones into irreverent and compelling plots. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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