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Historical Fiction June 2024
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| Rough Trade by Katrina CarrascoWhat it is: This descriptive and stylistically complex follow-up to The Best Bad Things returns readers to the Washington Territory in the late 1880s, where they first met ex-Pinkerton agent Alma Rosales.
We rejoin our hero: This time, Alma (living undercover as a man named Jack) must solve a string of murders which are drawing attention to the opium smuggling operation she runs with high-society lover Delphine. |
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| The Girls We Sent Away by Meagan ChurchMeet our hero: Seventeen-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.
And her problems: 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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| All the World Beside by Garrard ConleyWhat it is: Set in a small Massachusetts village during the First Great Awakening, this well-researched, heartwrenching tale of faith and forbidden love centers on the very passionate (and equally dangerous) romantic connection that develops between devout preacher Nathaniel Whitfield and the town doctor Arthur Lyman.
For fans of: The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr. and The Disenchantment by Celia Bell. |
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| The Sweet Blue Distance by Sara DonatiIntroducing: Resourceful nurse and midwife Carrie Ballentyne (granddaughter of Elizabeth Middleton, who readers first met in Into the Wilderness).
Who then: She leaves her position at a New York charity hospital in 1857 for a job in the New Mexico Territory, embarking on a journey as rife with danger and distress as it is rich with possibility and opportunities to save lives. |
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| The Book of Thorns by Hester FoxWhat it is: This 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.
Our heroes: 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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| In the Shadow of the Greenbrier by Emily MatcharWhat it is: Beginning 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.
Reviewers say: "Matchar deftly weaves the four time lines together to reach a satisfying, emotionally resonant conclusion." (Booklist) |
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| Double Lives by Mary MonroeWhat it is: In this atmospheric and compelling 4th entry in Mary Monroe's series of novels set in the status-obsessed, Jim Crow era Black community of Lexington, Alabama, identical twin sisters Fiona and Leona take their childhood trick of occasionally switching places into much more fraught territory as adults, with much higher stakes to match.
Series alert: This is the fourth entry in the author's Lexington, Alabama series, following Love, Honor, Betray. |
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| Wolf at the Table by Adam RappWhat it is: In this creepy and atmospheric family saga, award-winning playwright Adam Rapp meditates on violence, mental illness, and the nature of evil.
Meet our hero: 3-year-old Myra Lee Larkin has a brief run-in with a strange man who would later murder an entire family in her neighborhood in 1951, and uncanny connections to real-life killers like Richard Speck and John Wayne Gacy. |
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Contact your library for more great books!
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