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Historical Fiction November 2025 |
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| Amity by Nathan HarrisNew Orleans, 1866: The Civil War might be over, but formerly enslaved Coleman and June have yet to find the freedom they’ve been promised. Two years ago, the siblings were separated when their old master, Mr. Harper, took June away to Mexico, where he hoped to escape the new reality of the post-war South. Coleman stayed behind in Louisiana to serve the Harper family, clinging to the hope that one day June would return.
Coleman travels to Mexico: When an unexpected letter from Mr. Harper arrives, summoning Coleman to Mexico, Coleman thinks that finally his prayers have been answered. When disaster strikes Coleman’s journey, he is forced on the run with Mr. Harper's daughter, Florence. Together, they venture into the Mexican desert to find June, all the while evading two crooked brothers who'll stop at nothing to capture Coleman and Florence and collect the money they're owed. |
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| Bad Bad Girl by Gish JenShanghai, 1925: Loo Shu-hsin is born to a wealthy Shanghai family where girls are expected to behave and be quiet. Every act of disobedience prompts the same “Bad bad girl! You don’t know how to talk!” Unusual for a girl, she is sent to Catholic school, where she is baptized, re-named for St. Agnes, and given an internationally minded education. Aggie finds solace in books, and decides to pursue a Ph.D. in America. It is 1947, and with the forces of Communist revolution on the horizon, she leaves—never to return.
Lonely and adrift in Manhattan: Aggie begins dating Chao-Pei, an engineering student also from Shanghai. While news of their country and their families grows increasingly dire, they set out to make a new life - marriage, a number one son, and a small house in the suburbs. By the time Gish is born, her parents’ marriage is unraveling, and her mother, struggling to understand her strong-willed American daughter, is repeating the refrain that punctuated her own “Bad bad girl! You don’t know how to talk!”
Based on the life of the author’s mother. |
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| Circle of Days by Ken FollettSalisbury Plain, England, 2500 BCE: Seft, a talented flint miner, walks the Great Plain in the high summer heat, to witness the rituals that signal the start of a new year. He is there to trade his stone at the Midsummer Fair, and to find Neen, the girl he loves. Her family lives in prosperity and offer Seft an escape from his brutish father and brothers within their herder community.
A great stone circle: Joia, Neen’s sister, is a priestess with a vision and an unmatched ability to lead. As a child, she watches the Midsummer ceremony, enthralled, and dreams of a miraculous new monument, raised from the biggest stones in the world and assembled by the divided tribes of the Plain. As drought ravages the earth, mistrust grows between the herders, farmers and woodlanders. |
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| I Am You by Victoria RedelAmsterdam, 1600s: At seven years old, Gerta’s hair is lopped off and she’s sent to work for the Oosterwijcks under the name Pieter because it’s a boy they need. As Pieter, she splits wood, minds the hens and rabbits, scrubs the wooden floors of the house, and tends the garden—all while the family’s teenage daughter, Maria, looks on, sketching Pieter’s every movement. A few years later at the dinner table Maria lays Gerta’s deception open alongside a demand that Gerta accompany her to Utrecht, where Maria will apprentice in the workshop of a famous painter.
In Utrecht: Maria learns to paint skilled still lives—though she is the only woman in her workshop and because of her sex will never be accepted into the painters’ guild. As Maria ascends to great heights of skill and fame, the relationship between maid and employer deepens and shifts, and it becomes clear that Gerta, too, possesses abilities far beyond what society expects. |
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The Lies They Told
by Ellen Marie Wiseman
Virginia, 1930s: On Ellis Island, Lena Conti—a young, unwed mother—sees immigrant families being forcibly separated. She vows not to let the officers take her two-year old daughter. But the inspection process is more rigorous than she imagined, and she is separated from her mother and teenage brother, who are labeled burdens to society, denied entry, and deported back to Germany. Now, alone but determined to give her daughter a better life after years of living in poverty and near starvation, she finds herself facing a future unlike anything she had envisioned.
Blue Ridge Mountains: Silas Wolfe, a widowed family relative, reluctantly brings Lena and her daughter to his weathered cabin in Virginia to care for his home and children. Though the hills around Wolfe Hollow remind Lena of her homeland, she struggles to adjust. Worse, she is stunned to learn the children in her care have been taught to hide when the sheriff comes around. The State of Virginia is scheming to paint them as ignorant, immoral, and backwards so they can evict them from their land, seize children from parents, and deal with those possessing “inferior genes.”
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| Venetian Vespers by John BanvilleEngland, 1899: As the new century approaches, struggling English writer Evelyn Dolman--a hack, by his own description -- marries Laura Rensselaer, daughter of an American oil tycoon. Evelyn anticipates that he and Laura will inherit a substantial fortune and lead a comfortable, settled life. But his hopes are dashed when a mysterious rift between Laura and her father, just before the patriarch’s death, leads to her disinheritance.
Venice: The unhappy newlyweds celebrate the New Year at the Palazzo Dioscuri, ancestral home of the charming but treacherous Count Barbarigo. From their first moments at the palazzo, a series of seemingly otherworldly occurrences begin to accumulate. Evelyn’s already frayed nerves disintegrate - could it be the mist blanketing the floating city, or is he losing his mind? |
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| Whatever Happened to Lori Lovely? by Sarah McCoyCalifornia, 1969: Twenty-three-year-old starlet Lori Lovely, the apple of Hollywood’s eye, shocks the world by ditching a promising film career to take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience as a Benedictine nun. Gossip columnists and scandal sheets can’t get enough of the story. Why would a successful starlet take the veil? Was she hiding from someone? Did it have anything to do with the tragic death of her costar, heartthrob singer Lucas Wesley?
1990: Lu Tibbott is under the gun to complete her senior thesis in modern American history. Instead of spending weeks in dusty archives, Lu decides to dig into a true twentieth-century mystery and write about her aunt Lori, now the Mother Abbess at a cloistered convent in rural New England. Lu arrives at the abbey with a tape recorder in hand and to her delight, Mother Lori announces she’s finally ready to talk...but only if Lu is truly ready to listen. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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Longwood Public Library800 Middle Country RoadMiddle Island, New York 11953
(631) 924-6400
longwoodlibrary.org |
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