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Historical Fiction September 2026 |
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Crown City
by Naomi Hirahara
Pasadena, California, 1903: Eighteen-year-old Ryunosuke Ryui Wada staggers off the boat from Yokohama, Japan, ready to reinvent himself after the untimely deaths of his parents. Though battling loneliness and culture shock, Ryui does his best to settle into his work as an art dealer's apprentice while adjusting to his new home.
Mystery: Ryui becomes the victim of an anti-Japanese attack, and a painting is stolen from the studio of Toshio Aoki, Pasadena's most successful Japanese artist. Aoki enlists Ryui and his photographer roommate Jack, to investigate. It's not long before their sleuthing leads them into real danger.
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| Meet Me in the Garden by Nina LacourNew Orleans, 1944: Odette has always been one of the Honore sisters, glamorous and admired in their Creole community. But while Odette’s older sisters are content to be wives and mothers, Odette has always wanted something else. It is only with her beloved cousin, Delphine, that Odette can tell her secret: she is in love with a woman, and she longs to be an artist. Delphine has a secret lover, too, a white man.
Five years later: Odette's life is nothing like what she'd planned. She's a widowed mother, living in Los Angeles, and she and Delphine, who is passing as white, have spiraled away from each other. When Delphine reaches a breaking point, Odette must make a shattering choice to try to hold her family together.
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| The Parisian Heist by Jo PiazzaFrance, 1996: Emma, a struggling American artist in Paris, thought she had left her dreams behind when she took a job cleaning for the city’s wealthy elite. Then she meets Stella Swanson, the widow of one of the most notorious art dealers in the business. Drawn in by their dazzling wealth and the pull of a dangerously charming grandson, Emma becomes both a player and a pawn in a family battle to protect their empire and conceal its crimes.
What's the connection?: 1890s, the young widow Jo van Gogh inherits hundreds of paintings from her brother-in-law Vincent that the art world deems worthless. Determined to prove their genius, and to secure a future for herself and her young son, she becomes consumed by Vincent’s legacy. |
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Red Sheet
by James Ellroy
Los Angeles, 1962: The Cuban Missile Crisis has just concluded. The Russkies blinked and pulled their ICBMs out of Cuba. Attorney General Robert Kennedy fears reprisals from seething commies. He orders a red probe and puts the LAPD on the job. Freddy Otash is injudiciously named the lead investigating officer. He's a stone-cold criminal with police sanction and a harrowing dope habit. He homes in on a red-front trade union.
Murder on Halloween night: It may link to ex-VP and current gubernatorial candidate Richard Nixon and two commie snuffs from eight years back. Freddy's overworked and overamped. He's running the probe, and Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman--Tricky Dick Nixon's head goons--have hired him to keep Nixon away from the smear-minded press. L.A. is coming unglued. Ex-cop/lawyer Tom Bradley is running for a city council seat and pushing the Rumford Fair Housing Act. Playboy kingpin Hugh Hefner is along for the ride, out to exploit racial tension and peddle untold copies of his smut rag.
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The Sunflower Boys
by Sam Wachman
Ukraine, Present: In many ways, twelve-year-old Artem's life in Chernihiv, Ukraine, is normal. He spends his days helping on his grandfather's sunflower farm, drawing in his sketchbook--a treasured gift from his father, who works in America--and swimming in the river with his little brother, Yuri. In secret, Artem has begun wrestling with romantic feelings for his best friend, Viktor. In a country where love between two boys is unthinkable, Artem has begun to worry that his life will never be normal.
One February night: Artem and Yuri are woken by explosions--the beginning of a war that will tear their life in two. The invading Russians destroy their home, killing their mother and grandfather, and leaving young Artem and Yuri to fend for themselves. Fleeing in hopes of somehow reuniting with their father, the brothers traverse the country their ancestors once fought and died for, with nothing but their backpacks and each other. Surrounded by death and destruction, Artem is certain of one thing--that whatever may come, he must keep himself and his brother alive.
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The Traitor
by Kōbō Abe
Japan, Modern: A writer visits the country town of Akkeshi. There he learns from an innkeeper, Fukuchi, the 19th century story of three hundred convicts who escaped into Hokkaido after the end of the brief Boshin War -- a power struggle between the Meiji Emperor and the Tokugawa Shogunate. Enomoto Takeaki, a Tokugawan officer goes in search of the convicts.
Loyalty: A former member of imperial Japan’s military police, the innkeeper dwells on the question of loyalty even as he struggles with his responsibility for the arrest and murder of his brother-in-law during the war. Later, he sends the writer a mysterious manuscript purporting to be the account of a peddler turned samurai. Samurai Asai Jūsaburō is one of the shinsengumi, the Shogunate’s fanatical enforcers, and a man who accuses Enomoto of betraying the Shogunate cause.
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The Beheading Game
by Rebecca Lehmann
England, 1536: Anne Boleyn wakes up the day after her beheading to find herself unceremoniously in an arrow chest, her head wrapped in linen at her knees. She had been discarded by King Henry VIII for not being able to give him a male heir, was reviled by Cromwell for being too smart for her own good, and executed based on trumped-up charges.
Traveling in the guise of a commoner: Anne escapes the tower, sews her head back on, and sets out on a quest for vengeance. With the help of a prostitute, she navigates the London streets she never before walked, and soon realizes how little she knew about life in the real world.
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The Boleyn Secret
by Alison Weir
England, 1536: At twelve years old, Katherine Carey attends her aunt, Queen Anne Boleyn, to the scaffold. Horrified by what she witnesses, Katherine is convinced that King Henry VIII is a murderer and has sent an innocent woman to a terrible death. Although the once influential Boleyn family has now fallen from favor, Katherine manages to secure a coveted role as companion to the young Lady Elizabeth.
Bound by Boleyn blood: The two girls grow as close as sisters, though Katherine has trouble ignoring the sly looks thrown her way and continual whispers behind her back. Only when her mother lies dying does Katherine learn the life-shattering truth that the Boleyns have been hiding for years. It is a secret that follows Katherine throughout her life, as she flees religious persecution with her husband and lives abroad in fear, returning home only when Elizabeth becomes queen.
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The Lost Book of Elizabeth Barton
by Jennifer N. Brown
Historian Alison Sage has made a groundbreaking archival discovery--she found a manuscript containing the prophecies of a 16th century nun, Elizabeth Barton. Barton's prophecy condemning Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn led to her execution and the destruction of all copies of her prophecies--or so the world believed.
With Alison's discovery, she is catapulted to academic superstardom and scores an invitation to the exclusive Codex Consortium, a week of research among a select handful of fellow historians at a crumbling manor in England, located next to the ruins of the priory where Elizabeth herself once lived. What begins as a promising conference turns into a nightmare as the eerie house becomes the site of a murder. Suddenly, everyone is a suspect, and it seems that answers lie at the root of a local legend about centuries-old hidden treasure.
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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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