Charlotte County Library: Historical Fiction: December 2025

Recent Acquisitions

A lesser light : a novel
by Peter Geye

Set on the shore of Lake Superior in 1910, A Lesser Light tells the story of a newly commissioned lighthouse station, its keeper, and an ill-suited arranged marriage. Theodulf Sauer and his new wife, Willa, couldn't be less similar, but they build a life together, and Willa finds solace in the cosmos and their neighbors across the cove. As Theodulf reckons with the past and Willa begins to forge her own path to happiness, tragedy comes to their remote beacon, and the future plunges into the dark unknown.

Circle of Days
by Ken Follett

A FLINT MINER WITH A GIFT: Seft, a talented flint miner, walks the Great Plain in the high summer heat, to witness the rituals that signal the start of a new year. He is there to trade his stone at the Midsummer Rite, and to find Neen, the girl he loves. Her family live in prosperity and offer Seft an escape from his brutish father and brothers, within their herder community. A PRIESTESS WHO BELIEVES THE IMPOSSIBLE: Joia, Neen's sister, is a priestess with a vision and an unmatched ability to lead. As a child, she watches the Midsummer ceremony, enthralled, and dreams of a miraculous new monument, raised from the biggest stones in the world. But trouble is brewing among the hills and woodlands of the Great Plain. A MONUMENT THAT WILL DEFINE A CIVILIZATION Joia's vision of a great stone circle, assembled by the divided tribes of the Plain, will inspire Seft and become their life's work. But as drought ravages the earth, mistrust grows between the herders, farmers and woodlanders - and an act of savage violence leads to open warfare..--

The Listeners
by Maggie Stiefvater

In January 1942, war comes to West Virginia when the United States government orders the luxury Avallon Hotel to house Axis Power diplomats. Balancing work, worry, and ethical questions, hotel manager June Porter Hudson also gets to know a handsome FBI agent. This atmospheric adult fiction debut by a bestselling YA fantasy novelist has hints of magic and is a "must-read for all historical fiction fans" (Library Journal). Read-alike: Melanie Benjamin's Mistress of the Ritz.

33 Place Brugmann
by Alice Austen

A love story, mystery, and philosophical puzzle, told in the singular voices of the residents of a Beaux Arts apartment house in Belgium during World War II. On the eve of the Nazi occupation, in the heart of Brussels, life for the residents of 33 Place Brugmann is about to change forever. A propulsive and exquisitely written tour de force, 33 Place Brugmann champions the restorative power of love, courage, and art in times of great threat.

Echo in the Darkness
by Francine Rivers

From Francine Rivers comes the compelling and emotionally charged sequel to the story of Hadassah, a courageous Christian slave girl with unrelenting faith, and Marcus, the Roman aristocrat who claims her heart. Believed dead, Hadassah finds employment helping a doctor in the poor section of first-century Rome and discovers an ability to heal others through the power of her faith. When Julia falls ill, Hadassah is forced to confront a difficult decision: should she return to the Valerian household, risking exposure and death, to help her former tormentor in the Christian tradition? Continuing to search for meaning and faith, Marcus turns away from the opulence of Rome, led by a whispering voice from the past into a journey that could set him free from the darkness of his soul.

Still life
by Sarah Winman

In 1944 Tuscany, as Allied troops advance, a young English soldier has a chance encounter with a middle-aged art historian with whom he finds a kindred spirit and who sets him off on a course of events that will shape his life for the next four decades.

A Month in the Country
by J. L. Carr

A sensitive portrayal of the healing process that took place in the aftermath of the First World War, A damaged survivor of the First World War, Tom Birkin finds refuge in the quiet village church of Oxgodby where he is to spend the summer uncovering a huge medieval wall-painting. Immersed in the peace and beauty of the countryside and the unchanging rhythms of village life he experiences a sense of renewal and belief in the future. Now an old man, Birkin looks back on the idyllic summer of 1920, remembering a vanished place of blissful calm, untouched by change, a precious moment he has carried with him through the disappointments of the years. A Month in the Country traces the slow revival of the primeval rhythms of life so cruelly disorientated by the Great War

Ragtime
by E. L. Doctorow

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time Published in 1975, Ragtime changed our very concept of what a novel could be. An extraordinary tapestry, Ragtime captures the spirit of America in the era between the turn of the century and the First World War. The story opens in 1906 in New Rochelle, New York, at the home of an affluent American family. One lazy Sunday afternoon, the famous escape artist Harry Houdini swerves his car into a telephone pole outside their house. And almost magically, the line between fantasy and historical fact, between real and imaginary characters, disappears. Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, J. P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Sigmund Freud, and Emiliano Zapata slip in and out of the tale, crossing paths with Doctorow's imagined family and other fictional characters, including an immigrant peddler and a ragtime musician from Harlem whose insistence on a point of justice drives him to revolutionary violence.

Someone Knows My Name
by Lawrence Hill

Kidnapped from Africa as a child, Aminata Diallo is enslaved in South Carolina but escapes during the chaos of the Revolutionary War. In Manhattan she becomes a scribe for the British, recording the names of blacks who have served the King and earned their freedom in Nova Scotia. But the hardship and prejudice of the new colony prompt her to follow her heart back to Africa, then on to London, where she bears witness to the injustices of slavery and its toll on her life and a whole people. It is a story that no listener, and no reader, will ever forget.Published in Canada as The Book of Negroes and the basis for the award-winning BET miniseries of the same name.

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