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Historical Fiction May 2025 |
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The story she left behind : a novel by Patti Callahan HenryIn 1952, illustrator Clara Harrington travels to London with her daughter Wynnie to investigate a discovery linked to her vanished mother, a famed author, uncovering long-buried truths amid the chaos of the Great Smog and a remote Lake District retreat.
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Clear : a novel by Carys DaviesAn impoverished 1840s Scottish minister tasked with evicting a hermit from his island home ends up forming an unlikely connection with the man as the pair navigate language, loss and the legacy of forced displacement.
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Strangers in time by David Baldacci"Fourteen-year-old Charlie Matters is up to no good, but for a very good reason. Without parents, peerage, or merit, ducking school but barred from actual work, he steals what he needs, living day-to-day until he's old enough to enlist to fight the Germans. Fifteen-year-old Molly Wakefield has just returned to a nearly unrecognizable London. One of millions of people to have been evacuated to the countryside via "Operation Pied Piper," Molly has been away from her parents--from her home--for nearly five years. Her return, however, is not the homecoming she'd hoped for as she's confronted by a devastating reality: neither of her parents are there, only her old nanny, Mrs. Pride. Without guardians and stability, Charlie and Molly find an unexpected ally and protector in Ignatius Oliver, and solace at his book shop, The Book Keep, where A book a day keeps the bombs away. As bombs continue to bear down on the city, Charlie, Molly, and Ignatius learn that while the perils of war rage on, their coming together and trusting one another may be the only way for them to survive."
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The Paris Express : a novel by Emma DonoghueSet on a fateful 1895 train journey to Paris, a diverse group of passengers--including politicians, a medical student, an inventor, and an anarchist--navigate personal ambitions and hidden motives, culminating in a disaster that forever changes their lives.
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The second sun by P. T. DeutermannIn March 1945, Captain Wolfe Bowen investigates a captured German U-boat carrying Japanese civilians and mysterious cargo, triggering a race against time to determine Japan's potential atomic weaponry and report the findings to newly inaugurated President Truman.
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A fashionably French murder by Colleen Cambridge"If there's one art the French have mastered as well as fine cuisine, it's haute couture. Tabitha and Julia are already accustomed to sampling the delights of the former. The event goes well, but when Tabitha returns later that evening to search for a lost glove, she finds the lights still on--and the couturier dead, strangled by a length of lace. The shop manager suspects that a jealous rival--perhaps Dior himself--committed the crime. Tabitha dismisses that idea, but when another body is found, it's apparent that someone is targeting employees of Maison Lannet. And there are strange break-ins at a nearby shoe store--but are the crimes related? It's up to Tabitha to don her investigative hat and find answers before someone commits another fatal fashion faux pas"
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The lost Book of Bonn : a novel by Brianna LabuskesIn 1946 Germany, librarian Emmy Clarke, while cataloging literature plundered by the Nazis, finds a poetry collection which leads her to two sisters, a horrific betrayal and an extraordinary protest of hundreds of brave women who did what so few others dared to do under the Third Reich—they said no.
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| Broken Country by Clare Leslie HallIn 1955 Dorset, England, teenage Beth falls for wealthy Gabriel, who leaves town. In 1968, Beth, now married to sheep farmer Frank, is still mourning the death of her young son two years before when Gabriel reappears with his own son, setting in motion events that lead to a courtroom trial. |
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The lost house by Melissa LarsenAgnes returns to her ancestral home in Bifröst, Iceland, to investigate her grandfather's alleged involvement in a 40-year-old double murder while grappling with her own trauma and participating in a true crime podcast, only to find herself entangled in new mysteries when a local girl goes missing.
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Red clay by Charles B. FancherIn 1943, when a frail old white woman shows up in Red Clay, Alabama, at the home of a Black former slave--on the morning following his funeral--his family hardly knows what to expect after she utters the words "... a lifetime ago, my family owned yours." Adelaide Parker has a story to tell--one of ambition, betrayal, violence, and redemption--that shaped both the fate of her family and that of the late Felix H. Parker.
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Good dirt : a novel by Charmaine Wilkerson"The daughter of an affluent Black family pieces together the connection between a childhood tragedy and a beloved heirloom in this moving novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake. In this sweeping, evocative novel, Charmaine Wilkerson brings to life a multi-generational epic that examines how the past informs our present.
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The savage, noble death of Babs Dionne by Ron CurrieIn Waterville, Maine, crime matriarch Babs Dionne faces a drug kingpin's enforcer and her youngest daughter's mysterious death, unleashing her fierce determination to protect her family, her empire, and her town from the chaos threatening to consume them.
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