 Supporting COMMUNITY. Inspiring DISCOVERY. Promoting LITERACY. |
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Historical Fiction June 2026 |
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| Love & Other Monsters by Emily FranklinIn 1816, 17-year-old Claire Clairmont lives in London with her stepsister Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary's fiancé, Percy Bysshe Shelley. Falling for their friend, charming libertine Lord Byron, Claire talks them into spending the summer next door to him on the shores of Lake Geneva, Switzerland. Mary writes Frankenstein during this time, but this lyrical novel focuses on oft-forgotten Claire, spotlighting her life and relationships. For fans of: Caroline Lea's Love, Sex, and Frankenstein. |
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| Honey in the Wound by Jiyoung HanGenerations of a Korean family have special abilities (a sister can take the form of a tiger; a mother can make people tell the truth), but that doesn't stop war and violence from invading their lives. Centering on Young-Ja, who can infuse food with her emotions, this powerful and sometimes disturbing debut follows Young-Ja during the turbulent 1930s and 1940s and in later years. For fans of: powerful, thought-provoking books; Yu Miri's The End of August. |
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| The Foursome by Christina Baker KlineUsing their tour earnings, famous cojoined twins Eng and Chang Bunker settle in 1839 North Carolina, buying land and enslaved people and making powerful local friends. Sarah and Adelaide Yates, sisters from a once-prominent family, become their wives and collectively they have 21 children. Told from Sarah's perspective over the course of several decades, this "remarkable" (Publishers Weekly) novel is based on the author's family history. Try this next: Elizabeth Weiss' The Sisters Sweet. |
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Last Night in Brooklyn
by Xochitl Gonzalez
At twenty-six, Alicia Canales Forten feels smothered by her future. She's in a long-distance relationship, living at home with her mother's beliefs, saving up for her wedding to a future doctor. But after Alicia ventures out one night in the neighborhood of Fort Greene, Brooklyn, she finds herself lured by the siren song of youth and possibility that the striving crowd of creatives holds, and moves in. No one embodies this milieu more than La Garza, a larger-than-life, up-and-coming fashion designer whose epic house parties fuel neighborhood lore. La Garza's life, observed by Alicia from her apartment across the street, seems to hold the allure and fearlessness Alicia has never dared to imagine for herself. But when Alicia's wealthy banker cousin moves to the neighborhood, she finds herself increasingly drawn into both his and La Garza's precarious lives. Against the backdrop of a potentially life-changing presidential election and a looming once-in-a-generation fiscal crisis, Last Night in Brooklyn explores the dark compromise of the American Dream for people of color living, unknowingly, in the twilight of a cultural moment. It is a story about everything money can buy--and the destruction of what it can't.
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Livonia Chow Mein
by Abigail Savitch-Lew
In the vein of Happiness Falls and Family Lore, a gripping story of family history and political upheaval centered around a Chinese family-owned restaurant in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and its impact on the neighborhood's Jewish and Black residents over the course of a century.
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Liberty Island
by Virginia Hume
From the bestselling author of Haven Point comes a sweeping historical novel about the generations of a family that spends summers in a seaside enclave on the rocky Maine coastline, for fans of Elin Hilderbrand, Beatriz Williams, and Sarah Blake.
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Where the Sea Lavender Grows
by Kitty Johnson
A woman restoring a historic cottage on the English coast uncovers a startling connection to the past in a haunting and bittersweet novel about art, loss, and love by the author of Closest Kept.Elise, an artist grieving the loss of her son and a fracturing marriage, is in North Norfolk to restore Marsh House to its former glory, its walls adorned with the fading murals and paintings of its long-ago owner, Lilias Carter-Brown. Elise makes an immediate connection to the house, to Sam--a carpenter and a comfort--and to history itself when an old photograph draws Elise into Lilias's heartbreaking past.In 1939, with war threatening, Lilias and her sister turn Marsh House into a sanctuary for London evacuees--a young boy and his mother. But it's the boy's father, Harry, an enlistee soon to report for duty, with whom Lilias forms an unexpected and intimate bond. When Harry suddenly vanishes without a trace, it changes the course of Lilias's life forever.Now, as Elise and Sam work to solve the mystery of the disappearance, the restoration of Marsh House is bringing Elise back to life as well--to love again, to put her and Lilias's pasts to rest, and to finally move on.
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| The Mountains We Call Home by Kim Michele RichardsonPack horse librarian Cussy marries for love, but she's a Blue (caused by methemoglobinemia) and her husband is white, so in 1953 both are thrown into Kentucky prisons for miscegenation. Cussy works her way to a prison librarian position, but incarceration holds many dangers. Newcomers can start here, but fans of The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, which begins Cussy's story, will best enjoy this atmospheric, well-researched novel. Try this next: Brianna Labuskes' The Boxcar Librarian. |
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The News from Dublin: Stories
by Colm Toibin
A brilliant collection of nine short stories, many never-before-published, set across Ireland, Spain, and America--about the complexities of family, longing, loss, and love.
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| A Perfect Hand by Ayelet WaldmanIn 1879 England, clever Alice Lockey has risen from tenant farmer's daughter to lady's maid for the eldest daughter at Alderwick Park. In a ploy to spend time with handsome valet Charlie, Alice tries to end her lady's infatuation with one (no-good) man and push her toward Charlie's employer. If they marry, then Alice and Charlie can work together as husband and wife. But soon the women's suffrage movement causes Alice to ponder what she really wants. For fans of: amusing, richly detailed stories of class, gender, and changing times. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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Mary Riley Styles Public Library
120 N. Virginia Ave, Falls Church, Virginia 22046 703-248-5030 (TTY 711) mrspl.org
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