Mary Riley Styles Public Library: Historical Fiction: May 2026

Supporting COMMUNITY. Inspiring DISCOVERY. Promoting LITERACY.

Recent Releases

The Forgotten Midwife
by Laura Anthony

Set in the dual timelines of present-day New Jersey and 1950s Ireland, and based on real historical events, comes a powerful, poignant novel of sisterhood, family secrets, and resilience from the author of the profound, moving, and memorable (Fresh Fiction) The Women on Platform Two. New Jersey, 2023. Riley Carmichael is getting married and finally joining a huge, loving family, but she can't help but feel the emptiness of her own side of the church. For most of Riley's life, it's been just her and her grandmother, Betty, but as late-stage dementia overtakes her grandmother's mind, Riley knows she's losing her, too. On one of Riley's visits to Betty's nursing home, she encounters her grandmother in one of her increasingly rare moments of lucidity, and Betty desperately shares with Riley a tatty birth certificate for an unknown baby born in Ireland in the 1950s. Full of questions about her heritage, Riley embarks on a trip to Ireland to find that elusive sense of home, identity, and belonging. Tipperary, Ireland, 1954. Margaret Lannigan's life is made up of weekly dances and time spent with the love of her life, Joseph. But when Margaret's older sister dies suddenly, it falls to Margaret to fulfill the family's commitment to the Catholic Church: the eldest daughter of the Lannigan family has joined a local convent for generations. Forced to part with Joseph and take the veil, Margaret is sent to Ballyvale Home for Fallen Girls to care for expectant mothers who fell pregnant outside of marriage. With no training or midwifery skills, she must fight to provide the compassionate care she feels these women deserve amid the cruelty they face. When Margaret meets a young and terrified Delia O'Rourke, the sister of her childhood best friend, she must find the strength she needs to protect this young woman and her baby in the face of a system built to ensure they disappear. Told with courage and heart, The Forgotten Midwife is a haunting, hopeful novel about the strength of women, the meaning of family, and the life-saving power of friendship.

The Foursome
by Christina Baker Kline

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Christina Baker Kline comes a boldly original reimagining of the astonishing true story of two sisters in nineteenth-century North Carolina -- Kline's own distant relatives -- who married world-famous conjoined twins from Siam. When Eng and Chang Bunker arrive in Wilkes County in 1839, they're not just a curiosity--they're a sensation. Everyone is eager to learn whether the salacious rumors about them are true. Within months, the twins have opened a general store, bought land, and begun building a plantation. Now, word has it, they're looking for wives--and in a place that thrives on gossip and legacy, their ambitions set the community on edge.Sarah and Adelaide Yates, daughters of a once-prominent local family brought low by scandal, are drawn into their orbit. Bold, beautiful Adelaide sees in the twins' fame a chance to reclaim her future. Sarah, quiet and observant, isn't so sure. When the twins' lives become entangled with theirs, they must navigate loyalty, longing, and identity in a world where everything--including race, class, and gender--is rigidly defined.Spanning five decades and unfolding against the backdrop of a fractured nation hurtling toward war, The Foursome is both intimate and epic: a story of love and constraint, identity and reinvention. With piercing insight and emotional precision, Kline brings to life a forgotten chapter of American history and the complex, boundary-defying marriages at its center.

A Bad, Bad Place
by Frances Crawford

In 1979 Glasgow, orphaned 12-year-old Janey Devine, who lives with her nana, is out walking her dog Sid Vicious when she finds the body of college-aged Samantha Watson, daughter of the local crime boss. Janey's traumatized and there's something she can't share with anyone, though the cops keep questioning her and Samantha's grieving dad also visits. This evocative, leisurely paced debut is gritty but has threads of humor throughout. Read-alikes: Marie Tierney's Deadly Animals; Jennie Godfrey's The List of Suspicious Things.

The Shock of the Light
by Lori Inglis Hall

World War II separates tight-knit twins Theo and Tessa when Theo joins the Royal Air Force and French-speaking Tessa trains as a Special Operations Executive (SOE) operative. Afterwards, a wounded Theo mourns war casualties, hides his homosexuality since it's still illegal, and wonders about his still-missing sister. Decades later, PhD candidate Edie researches women in the SOE, leading her and Theo to team up and investigate what happened to Tessa. Try this next: Lucy Caldwell's These Days.

I Hope You Find What You're Looking for
by Bsrat Mezghebe

Flashing back to pivotal 1970s events, this thoughtful novel explores the lives of Eritrean immigrants in 1991 Alexandria, Virginia. Widowed ex-rebel fighter Elsa and her 13-year-old daughter, Lydia, host a newly arrived teenaged cousin, and he pushes Lydia learn more about her dad, who died fighting for independence. Meanwhile, an older relative ponders her last chance at marriage. For fans of: moving immigrant stories; One Blood by Denene Millner.

Odessa
by Gabrielle Sher

In a powerfully imagined Russia at the height of the pogroms, a grief-stricken family turn to ancient magic to bring their daughter back from the grave. A triumph.Nat Cassidy, author of Mary and When the Wolf Comes Home Spellbinding. . . A tender and gutting showstopper.Publishers Weekly, Starred Review Yetta is a bright, quick teenage girl with a wild, searching spirit. Stifled by her mother's anxiety, her father's rules, and the path that's been laid out for her, she craves freedom, the edges of which she doesn't know. But her family has reason to be cautious and restrictive. Fear has wrapped itself around their shtetl. Jews are mysteriously disappearing, and there are whispers of an impending attack. When violence comes to their door, Yetta is killed. Her father, in his grief, fumbles through his nascent knowledge of ancient texts and old magic to bring her back. By some miracle, Yetta is returned--but although she looks the same, she is not the girl she once was. Yetta senses there is a secret her family is keeping from her. The answer resides, in part, in the creature lurking in the woods beyond the shtetlsomething that may be of her father's making, and a being that has plans of its own. Breathtaking. Monika Kim, author of The Eyes are the Best Part Wonderfully strange, marvelously frightening, and authentically moving. Laird Hunt, author of Zorrie

Evil Genius
by Claire Oshetsky

In 1970s San Francisco, 19-year-old Celia works at the telephone company, where an adulterous coworker has been murdered by her husband. Unhappily married to a controlling man 11 years her senior, Celia finds the sex and violence of the story tantalizing, and begins to dream of freedom and killing her spouse in this slightly surreal and darkly humorous novel. Try this next: Alex Kadis' Big Nobody.

Where the Girls Were
by Kate Schatz

In 1968 California, strait-laced Elizabeth Baker Phillips is a high school valedictorian who's headed to Stanford in the fall. But after falling for a guy at a party, she discovers she's pregnant. Forced by her mother to hide away at a San Francisco home for unwed mothers, she navigates her new reality. Read-alikes: Susan Wiggs' The Wayward Girls; Leila Mottley's The Girls Who Grew Big; Laura Anthony's The Women on Platform Two.

Mercy Hill
by Hannah Thurman

A debut family novel about four sisters growing up on the campus of the underfunded state mental hospital where their strong-willed mother serves as head of psychiatry. A richly moving story of sisterhood, loyalty, and mental health in America. Mercy Hill--both the place and the people who live there--will stay with you long after you put the book down. --Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls The Cross sisters have lived their entire lives on the sprawling grounds of Mercy Hill, the embattled Raleigh mental hospital run by their formidable mother. Since childhood, JJ, Caro, Mimi, and Denise have been inculcated with their mother's mission: they'll work alongside her to protect Mercy Hill from the fate of other state hospitals across the country, which are being gutted and closed, one by one. After an incident involving the highest-security ward, Mercy Hill faces greater scrutiny than ever, and Lisa Cross pushes each of her daughters even harder in the name of her mission. As the sisters cross into adulthood, the pressures of their isolated environment and mercurial mother set them on different--and perilous--paths. And as the battle wages on, youngest sister and narrator Denise grapples with the added responsibility that comes from being the last hope for their mother's dreams. Set in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with Mercy Hill's fate hanging in the balance, Denise recounts the transformations that shape and destroy her family, along with the landscape of mental healthcare in the United States. With sharp insight and real humor, debut novelist Hannah Thurman captures the turmoil of growing up, the true meaning of a calling, and the indelible bonds of family.

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