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Historical Fiction June 2024
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| The Girls We Sent Away by Meagan ChurchSeventeen-year-old Lorraine wants to be first female valedictorian at her high school and the first woman in space, unusual dreams for a girl in 1960s North Carolina. Her dreams only become more distant when she's sent to a "maternity home" after discovering she's pregnant, but the ambitious and driven Lorraine is determined to make the best of a seemingly dwindling list of possibilities for her future. |
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| The Book of Thorns by Hester FoxThis atmospheric and magical realism-tinged tale set during the Napoleonic Wars is narrated from the alternating perspectives of two women who don't know they're sisters: the English Cornelia, who escapes the possibility of an arranged marriage by traveling with the French Army as a botanical healer, and Belgian servant Lijsbeth, who makes the most of her own connection with flowers on the other side of the conflict. |
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The Evolution of Annabel Craigby Lisa GrunwaldWhen John T. Scopes is arrested for teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution at the local high school in 1925, Annabel Hayes, with her marriage already strained, questions both her beliefs and her vows to her attorney husband when he joins the team defending Scopes.
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| In the Shadow of the Greenbrier by Emily MatcharBeginning in the early 1900s, this richly detailed and sweeping saga follows the ups and downs of a single Jewish family and their complex (and sometimes mysterious) ties to the iconic luxury resort of the title, located in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. |
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This Strange Eventful Historyby Claire MessudInspired in part by long-ago stories from her own family's history, this masterful story follows the Cassars over seven decades, starting with patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them, and ending with Chloe, who believes telling her family's buried stories will bring them all peace.
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Whale Fall by Elizabeth O'ConnorIn 1938, when a dead whale washes up on the shores of a remote Welsh island, Manon, seeing this as a sign of things to come, is drawn to two English ethnographers who are studying their cultures, reckoning with a sensual awakening inside herself, despite her misgivings that her community is being misconstrued. Whale Fall tells the story of what happens when one person's ambitions threaten the fabric of a community, and what can happen when they are realized.
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by Timothy Schaffert
Paris bookshop owner Yorick, joining a secret society of other Titanic ticket holders who didn't board the ship, forms a book club where they can grapple with their good fortune and anxieties through heated discussions of literature, but when one of them unexpectedly dies, he wonders what fate has in store.
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by Danielle Steel
During World War II, Sophia Alexander, after her mother dies and her father is sent to a concentration camp, becomes increasingly involved in the resistance. While working with the convent nuns, the Sisters of Mercy, she risks everything to help those in need, no matter the cost.
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| A Sweet Sting of Salt by Rose SutherlandThis queer retelling of classic Celtic folktale The Selkie Wife takes place in 1830s Nova Scotia, where midwife Jean Langille assists Muirin, a woman going into labor on a nearby beach. The two form a strong bond despite a language barrier, which only grows deeper when Jean mistakes Muirin's behavior for postpartum depression. |
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Your Presence is Mandatoryby Sasha VasilyukIn 2007 Ukraine, after Yefim Shulman, beloved husband, grandfather and World War II veteran, passes away, his widow Nina finds a letter to the KGB in his briefcase that reveals his lifelong secret, which forces them to reassess the man they thought they knew and the country he defended.
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Contact your library for more great books!
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