|
|
Historical Fiction August 2026* |
|
|
|
| The Top of the World by Ethan JoellaChip Bishop is 18 years old and dying of leukemia in the summer of 1974. Not telling his family his plans, he leaves home, finding work at a Poconos resort before returning to his family in the autumn for his final weeks of life. In 1975, his sister Maggie gets a job at the same resort, trying to understand why Chip left and what he did while he was gone. Alternating between the two summers, this is a heartfelt look at grief, friendship, family, and hope. |
|
| Summer of Love by Kerri MaherPoet Winnie Hartley and her musician boyfriend live together in the midst of 1967 San Francisco's counterculture, but their union is volatile. Further up the coast, Winnie's sister Miranda dedicates herself to the family vineyard and wine business. Forty years later, Miranda's newly sober daughter discovers children's books that perfectly describe her family vineyard and sets out to find the famously anonymous author. Read-alikes: Where the Girls Were by Kate Schatz; California Golden by Melanie Benjamin. |
|
| The Intrigue by Silvia Moreno-GarciaIn 1940s Mexico, handsome Ulises charms lonely women to get their money. His newest mark, middle-aged Perla, is the owner of a small-town boardinghouse in picturesque Veracruz. But things don't go as Ulises planned: Perla has a niece who wants in on his scheme. The two team up, but there's still trouble since Perla isn't the needy spinster Ulises thought she was. For fans of: atmospheric, pulp-inspired historical noirs. |
|
|
|
Sunrise by Téa ObrehtIn 2024, Nina's small-engine plane crashes into a lake in the Wyoming mountains. Her boyfriend Ben, who was flying it, is nowhere to be found. Lost and freezing on the shore, Nina is armed with only a few old protein bars, a phone with no service, and a vague hope of rescue. It is up to her to survive in the vast wilderness. But then she stumbles upon Sunrise--a town of the Old West that is strangely well maintained, but seemingly abandoned. A place that holds the missing link to a ghost story one hundred years in the making. In 2003, Sand Daw's golden boy Coll is putting the finishing touches on the town's annual historical reenactment. But when an upstart would-be author comes to him with questions about one of Sunrise's most beloved figures, it threatens to upend everything he thought he knew about the city--and himself. In 1902, town founder, gunslinger, and legendary pulp hero Anton Vargas returns to Sunrise and quickly takes charge of a group searching for a missing boy. But who really is Vargas? What does he know about the boy's disappearance? And why has he returned after such a long absence? These three strangers are separated by time and circumstance. But Sunrise's many secrets are like gunpowder: quiet, contained, until they encounter a spark. Magisterial and suspenseful, T a Obreht's novel challenges the myths we think we know: of heroes and villains, of the people and places to which we lay claim, and, most of all, of our own lives.
|
|
| The Queen's Coronation by Jennifer RyanIn 1953, Buckingham Palace staff prepare for Queen Elizabeth II's coronation while navigating their own lives: Caroline, assistant dresser to the queen, married for convenience and regrets it; beautiful wardrobe assistant Lucy dreams of singing stardom, capturing the attention of a deceitful man; and American Miranda, a temporary secretary, secretly writes about the coronation for her sexist boss in New York. But with new friends, the women might find new paths. Try this next: Christmas with the Queen by Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb. |
|
| Single Girls by John SearlesAfter the success of Sex and the Single Girl, Helen Gurley Brown is named editor of failing Cosmopolitan magazine in 1965. She assembles a team of smart, savvy women, and their lives become the stuff of magazine cover lines (Champagne hot tubs! Clashes with Joan Crawford!). Also covering Gurley's childhood and her later years, this fun read by former Cosmopolitan editor John Searles "sparkles" (Library Journal). Read-alike: Gill Paul's Scandalous Women. |
|
| What Came West by Josh WeilFrom his childhood, Silas Hall has been an outsider. Finding life in 1840s Pittsburgh unbearable, he heads west to California's Sierra Nevada mountains. He survives the dangerous journey and (mostly) gets along with the Indigenous people. But gold is discovered, people flow in, and Silas kills someone and runs. Told in third person and via Silas' letter to his son, this is a "lush masterpiece" (Publishers Weekly). For fans of: Cormac McCarthy; Paulette Jiles' Chenneville. |
|
|
|
Fishbone Cinderella by Elizabeth Lim1940s Hong Kong When Japanese soldiers invade her hometown, Ha Yut Ying makes an unlikely escape--by turning invisible. But her miraculous survival is only the beginning. After the war is over, she's sent to Hong Kong to live with her distant father and glamorous stepmother, who end her dreams of becoming a singer and turn her into the family's servant. As the years pass, Yut Ying learns the hard truths of betrayal and ambition, of forbidden love and devastating loss, and discovers that sometimes the only way to endure is to disappear. 1960s San FranciscoMarigold has always had a knack for uncovering secrets, but nothing prepares her for the day she accidentally witnesses her mother vanish before her eyes. The moment fractures their bond, leaving questions that shadow her entire childhood. But when her mother's condition suddenly deteriorates, Marigold is convinced she's the only person who can save her. To do so, she must journey into the secrets her mother never shared and uncover the tragic, fairytale-tinged history their family has fought to forget. A story of mothers and daughters, the scars they inherit and the magic that binds them, Fishbone Cinderella is a tender and enchanting exploration of what it means, at last, to be seen.
|
|
Contact your librarian for more great books!
|
|
|
|
|
|