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Historical Fiction November 2021
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| The Manningtree Witches by A.K. BlakemoreThe setting: 1643, in the small Essex town of Manningtree, which is populated mostly by women and children while the men are away fighting in the English Civil War.
A stranger comes to town...calling himself the "Witchfinder General" and promising to "save" the women of the town from the temptations of witchcraft, which he is determined to root out at any cost.
Why you might like it: The women of Manningtree are complex, well-realized characters whose stories touch on compelling topics like suspicion, forgiveness, repression, and bodily autonomy. |
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| Emily's House by Amy Belding BrownWhat it is: The moving and lyrical story of Margaret Maher, a lively Irish immigrant whose life changes forever after she takes a "temporary" job with the Dickinson family of Amherst, Massachusetts, and forms a deep bond with their daughter Emily.
Why you should read it: The engaging and richly detailed portrait of Margaret and Emily's relationship; Margaret's role in preserving Emily's poetic legacy by disobeying the order to dispose of her body of work. |
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| Late City by Robert Olen ButlerWhat it's about: The final reflections of 115-year-old retired newsman Sam Cunningham (allegedly "the last living veteran of World War I"), from his Louisiana childhood and wartime service as a sniper to his dismay at the 2016 presidential election.
Read it for: Sam's moving observations about living through a century as wondrous as it was horrifying.
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| A Play for the End of the World by Jai ChakrabartiStarring: Warsaw Ghetto survivors Jaryk and Misha, who met and became friends in an orphanage in 1942.
Thirty years later: In 1972, Jaryk leaves New York for a small village in India to collect Misha's remains, along the way reflecting on his survivor's guilt and the mysterious circumstances of his friend's death. |
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| The Perfume Thief by Timothy SchaffertWhat it's about: The disappearance of a famous French perfumer, Monsieur Pascal, from Nazi-occupied Paris and the risky endeavor to recover his book of recipes from a Francophile German bureaucrat.
Starring: Clementine, a 70-something American expat, who dusts off her skills as a former con artist to get close to the Nazi culture vulture who acquired Pascal's recipes and has taken up residence in Pascal's home. |
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| Olga by Bernhard SchlinkWhat it is: An engaging and romantic epistolary novel about a young German woman coming of age in late 19th-century Prussia under the eye of disapproving adults and her decades-spanning story of survival and love.
Read it for: The sweeping scope, which takes readers from backwater European villages to West Africa to the Arctic; the unlikely but sweet friendship main character Olga develops with a local teen after moving to West Germany. |
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| When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky by Margaret VerbleWhat it's about: Narrated from multiple perspectives, this character-driven and intricately plotted story centers on people from the margins of society who dare to carve out places for themselves in 1920s Tennessee.
Featuring: The titular Two Feathers, a Cherokee novelty performer who accidentally discovers a desecrated Native burial ground under the zoo that employs her; Hank Crawford, a Black horse handler at the zoo wrestling with his complex family history; and Clive Lovett, the white zoo manager and World War I vet haunted by wartime trauma. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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