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Historical Fiction October 2020
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Miss Benson's beetle
by Rachel Joyce
A teacher and her unlikely assistant leave post-World War II London to search for a rare insect that may not exist, discovering the transformative power of friendship along the way. By the author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.
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War lord : a novel
by Bernard Cornwell
A latest entry in the best-selling series behind Netflix's The Last Kingdom continues the history-based epic story of fan-favorite character Uhtred of Bebbanburg and his adventures in the turbulent early years of England.
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| Jack by Marilynne RobinsonSeries alert: Jack is the 4th novel starring the characters from the Gilead series, which began as a letter from dying Presbyterian minister John Ames Broughton to his son and spans events from the Civil War to the 1950s.
This time with more...moving, star-crossed romance (it's 1957 and the titular Jack's love interest is Della, a Black woman he met in St. Louis); well-crafted dialogue (much of the story unfolds in conversations between Jack and Della); and reflections on faith (in the divine and in each other). |
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| The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. SchwabWhat it's about: Village girl Addie is chafing at the restrictions of life as a woman in early 17th-century France, so she makes a deal with the devil for "a chance to live and be free."
The problem: The devil grants her wish...literally. So now Addie is immortal, and for 300 years everyone she meets forgets her. Everyone but the man who just caught her returning some books she previously "borrowed" from a New York bookshop.
For fans of: other time-focused tales of loss, love, and loneliness such as Kate Atkinson's Life After Life or Laura Barnett's The Versions of Us. |
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| Here We Are by Graham SwiftWhat it is: an engaging, character-driven story set in postwar Brighton, where a dying artform has one last great summer thanks to an equally doomed variety act.
The players: show emcee Jack Robinson, the "Compere Comedian"; Jack's army buddy Ronnie Deane, who performs sleight-of-hand as "The Great Pablo"; Evie White, newly hired as the proverbial magician's "lovely assistant" until she becomes much more than that to both men she shares the stage with. |
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An easy death
by Charlaine Harris
"In this alternate history where the US has collapsed during WWII and been split into five different countries, including the southwestern territory of Texoma, Gunnie Lizbeth Rose is hired by two Russian magicians to find Alex Karkarov, and his family, as they need to bring them back to the New Russia-held west coast states for the blood of the Karkarov line is healing to the ruling family. Little do the magicians know that Lizbeth is Karkarov's daughter, and that she killed him"
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Life after life : a novel
by Kate Atkinson
The award-winning author of Behind the Scenes at the Museum follows the experiences of a woman who after being born on a snowy night in 1910 repeated dies and reincarnates into the same life to correct missteps and ultimately save the world.
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The invisible library
by Genevieve Cogman
An undercover librarian who works for an occult organization that collects books from different realities must determine what happened to a particularly dangerous book that has been stolen and becomes mired in a mystery infused with peril and conflicting clues.
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| Hystopia by David MeansThe setting: A version of the late 1960s where John F. Kennedy survived not only the attempt on his life in Dallas but several subsequent assassination plots, and is now in his third term in office.
What goes wrong: the president's Vietnam strategy flounders, and the influx of returning vets leads him to create a new government agency called the Psych Corps, dedicated to erasing their wartime experiences from their memories. |
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Grant Comes East : A Novel of the Civil War
by Newt Gingrich
A sequel to Gettysburg, co-authored by a former Speaker of the House, recounts the dramatic events that followed the capture of Vicksburg by General Ulysses S. Grant, tracing the northern army's journey to Gettysburg and the confrontation that would prove pivotal to the war's outcome. Reprint.
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| The Underground Railroad by Colson WhiteheadThe setting: an antebellum South that looks quite like the one in our reality, only the Underground Railroad literally has train tracks, inspiring the slavecatchers to create increasingly bizarre, elaborate, and disturbing obstacles between escapees and their freedom.
Reviewers say: "Imagine a runaway slave novel written with Joseph Heller's deadpan voice leasing both Frederick Douglass' grim realities and H.P. Lovecraft's rococo fantasies" (Kirkus Reviews). |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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Grand Ledge Area District Library 131 E Jefferson St Grand Ledge, Michigan 48837 (517) 627-7014https://gladl.org |
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