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Historical Fiction January 2026 |
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| Anima Rising by Christopher MooreVienna, 1911: Gustav Klimt, the most famous painter in the Austrian Empire, spots a woman’s nude body in the Danube canal. He knows he should summon a policeman, but he can’t resist stopping to make a sketch first. And as he draws, the woman coughs. She’s alive!
Back at his studio, Klimt and his model-turned-muse Wally tend to the erstwhile-drowned girl. She’s nearly feral and doesn’t remember who she is, or how she came to be floating in the canal. Klimt names her Judith, after one of his most famous paintings, and resolves to help her find her memory.
Memories: With a little help from Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, Judith recalls being stranded in the arctic one hundred years ago - locked in a crate by a man named Victor Frankenstein - and visiting the Underworld. So how did she get here? And why are so many people chasing her, including Geoff, the giant croissant-eating devil dog of the North? |
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The Einstein Conspiracy
by Steve Israel
New York Harbor, 1933: A passenger liner approaches Lower Manhattan and America awaits it with excitement. Renowned physicist Albert Einstein, has fled the Nazi regime to take refuge in the United States and teach America's best and brightest at Princeton, while continuing to voice his passionate resistance against Hitler.
FBI Agents: James Amos and Harry Weiss are assigned to pursue a bizarre lead that Hitler - who is convinced Einstein holds the key to developing an atomic superweapon - is sending a Nazi operative to abduct the scientist. Their search brings them to Nazi rallies in Madison Square Garden, pro-Hitler enclaves in Upper East Side neighborhoods, and quaint Long Island villages that are transformed into mini fascist utopias.
Based on actual events.
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| The Land in Winter by Andrew MillerEngland, 1962: It's one of the coldest winters in English history. Two young couples live next to each other, the first in a beautiful cottage - suitable for a newly appointed local doctor - the second in a rundown, perennially under-heated farm. Despite their apparent differences, the two women (both pregnant) strike an easy friendship - a connection that comes as a respite from the surprising tediousness of married life.
Snowed in: In their small village near Bristol, enveloped in a thick, soft, unmoving layer of snow, Eric and Irene and Bill and Rita find themselves cut off from the rest of the world. And without the small distractions of everyday existence, suddenly old tensions and shocking new discoveries threaten to change the course of their lives forever. |
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Sins of Survivors: A Carter Brothers Novel
by Joe McClean
Alabama, 1908: Circumstances arise that require brothers Benjamin and Jasper Carter to flee Alabama. They join the Great Migration to Black Bottom, Detroit's flourishing Black neighborhood. There, the brothers rise from the ashes to become kingpins of this new community, owning businesses, playing politics, and diving into Detroit's violent criminal underbelly. Through their wit and grit, Ben and Jasper establish the Carter dynasty, securing a prosperous future for their families.
Detroit, 1930s: Seeing their children come of age, young men and women fueled by ambitions of their own, the brothers clash over which direction to steer the Carter empire. With the scent of brotherly discontent, competing Detroit power players will use every advantage--and weakness--to bring the family to its knees.
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| Strangers in Time by David BaldacciEngland, WWII: 14-year-old Charlie Matters’ life has always been a fight for survival. Orphaned with no prospects, Charlie steals what he needs, living day-to-day until he can enlist in the battle against the Germans. Molly Wakefield was evacuated to the countryside via ‘Operation Pied Piper’ five years earlier. Now at 15 she dreams of a joyful homecoming, but when she finally returns to the city, Molly faces a London changed beyond recognition, and the devastating news that neither of her parents are there, only her old nanny, Mrs. Pride.
Ignatius makes three: Charlie and Molly’s paths converge when they both seek solace at ‘The Book Keep’, where they find an unexpected ally and protector in the bookshop’s owner, widower Ignatius Oliver. But the trio’s newfound peace is jeopardized as past secrets catch up with Charlie’s illicit activities have not gone unnoticed, an ominous shadow has trailed Molly since her return, and Ignatius is burdened by a secret that contributed to his wife’s death. |
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War Torn - Lasting Effects
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The Baker of Lost Memories
by Shirley Russak Wachtel
Brooklyn, New York, 1960s: Lena wants to be a baker just like her mother was back in Poland prior to World War II. But questions about those days, and about a sister Lena never even knew, are ignored with solemn silence. It's as if everything her parents left behind was a subject never to be broached. The one person in whom Lena can confide is her best friend, Pearl.
Pearl disappears: Lena forges ahead: college, love and marriage with a wonderful man, the dream of owning a bakery becoming a reality, and the hope that someday Pearl will return to share in Lena's happiness--and to be there for her during the unexpected losses to come. Only when Lena discovers the depth of her parents' anguish, and a startling truth about her own past, can they rebuild a family and overcome the heart-wrenching memories that have torn them apart.
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Buckeye
by Patrick Ryan
Bonhomie, Ohio, 1945: A stolen moment of passion, sparked in the exuberant aftermath of the Allied victory in Europe, binds Cal Jenkins, a man wounded not in war but by his inability to serve in it, to Margaret Salt, a woman trying to obscure her past. Cal’s wife, Becky, has a spiritual gift - she is a seer who can conjure the dead, helping families connect with those they’ve lost. Margaret’s husband, Felix, is serving on a Navy cargo ship, out of harm’s way—until a telegram suggests that the unthinkable might have happened.
Later: As the country reconstructs in the postwar boom, a secret grows in Bonhomie—but nothing stays buried forever in a small town. The families have been connected and their sons who have grown up together, take different paths in the Vietnam era.
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The Liberators: A Novel
by EJ Koh
Korea, 1945: At the height of the military dictatorship in South Korea, Insuk and Sungho are arranged to be married. The couple soon moves to San Jose, California, with an infant and Sungho’s overbearing mother-in-law. Adrift in a new country, Insuk grieves the loss of her past and her divided homeland, finding herself drawn into an illicit relationship that sets into motion a dramatic saga and echoes for generations to come.
Korean History: Portraits and testimony from guards, prisoners, perpetrators, and liberators show the Gwangju Massacre to the 1988 Olympics, flashbacks to Korean repatriation after Japanese surrender, the Sewol ferry accident, and more.
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The Quiet Librarian
by Allen Eskens
Bosnia, Thirty years ago: Nura Divjak was a teenager growing up in the mountains of war-torn Bosnia--until Serbian soldiers arrived to slaughter her entire family before her eyes. The events of that day thrust Nura into the war, leading her to join a band of militia fighters, where she became not only a fierce warrior but a legend--the deadly Night Mora. But a shattering final act forced Nura to flee to the United States with a bounty on her head.
Thirty years later: Now as Hana Babic, she is a quiet, middle-aged librarian in Minnesota who wants nothing more than to be left alone. A detective arrives with the news that Hana's best friend has been murdered, leaving her eight-year-old grandson in Hana's care. To protect the child without revealing her secret, Hana must again become the Night Mora--and hope she can find the killer before the past comes for them, too.
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The Remembered Soldier
by Anjet Daanje
Flanders 1922: After serving as a soldier in the Great War, Noon Merckem has lost his memory and lives in a psychiatric asylum. Countless women, responding to a newspaper ad, visit him there in the hope of finding their spouse who vanished in battle. One day a woman, Julienne, appears and recognizes Noon as her husband, the photographer Amand Coppens, and takes him home against medical advice.
Finding Noon: But their miraculous reunion doesn't turn out the way that Julienne wants her envious friends to believe. Only gradually do the two grow close, and Amand's biography is pieced together on the basis of Julienne's stories about him. But how can he be certain that she's telling the truth?
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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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