Historical Fiction
June 2024

Recent Releases
Rough Trade
by Katrina Carrasco

This descriptive and stylistically complex follow-up to The Best Bad Things returns readers to the Washington Territory in the late 1880s, where they first met ex-Pinkerton agent Alma Rosales. This time, Alma (living undercover as a man named Jack) must solve a string of murders which are drawing attention to the opium smuggling operation she runs with high-society lover Delphine. 
The Girls We Sent Away
by Meagan Church

Seventeen-year-old Lorraine wants to be the first female valedictorian at her high school and the first woman in space, unusual dreams for a girl in 1960s North Carolina. Her dreams only become more distant when she's sent to a "maternity home" after discovering she's pregnant, but the ambitious and driven Lorraine is determined to make the best of a seemingly dwindling list of possibilities for her future.
All the World Beside
by Garrard Conley

Set in a small Massachusetts village during the First Great Awakening, this well-researched, heartwrenching tale of faith and forbidden love centers on the very passionate (and equally dangerous) romantic connection that develops between devout preacher Nathaniel Whitfield and the town doctor Arthur Lyman. For fans of The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr. and The Disenchantment by Celia Bell.   
The Sweet Blue Distance
by Sara Donati

Resourceful nurse and midwife Carrie Ballentyne (granddaughter of Elizabeth Middleton, who readers first met in Into the Wilderness) leaves her position at a New York charity hospital in 1857 for a job in the New Mexico Territory. Challenges abound as she embarks on a journey as rife with danger and distress as it is rich with possibility and opportunities to save lives.
The Book of Thorns
by Hester Fox

This atmospheric and magical realism-tinged tale set during the Napoleonic Wars is narrated from the alternating perspectives of two women who don't know they're sisters -- the English Cornelia, who escapes the possibility of an arranged marriage by traveling with the French Army as a botanical healer, and Belgian servant Lijsbeth, who makes the most of her own connection with flowers on the other side of the conflict.  
In the Shadow of the Greenbrier
by Emily Matchar

Beginning in the early 1900s, this richly detailed and sweeping saga follows the ups and downs of a single Jewish family and their complex (and sometimes mysterious) ties to the iconic luxury resort of the title, located in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.  
Double Lives
by Mary Monroe

In this atmospheric and compelling 4th entry in Mary Monroe's series of novels set in the status-obsessed, Jim Crow era Black community of Lexington, Alabama, identical twin sisters Fiona and Leona take their childhood trick of occasionally switching places into much more fraught territory as adults, with much higher stakes to match. 
I Am Rome
by Santiago Posteguillo

Dramatic and well-researched, this series opener by Spanish crime and historical fiction author Santiago Posteguillo delves into the early life and career of Roman statesman Gaius Julius Caesar. The action is framed around his first big political move -- serving as prosecutor in the corruption trial of Dollabella, a senator and former governor of Macedonia.
Wolf at the Table
by Adam Rapp

In this creepy and atmospheric family saga, award-winning playwright Adam Rapp meditates on violence, mental illness, and the nature of evil. Rapp begins with 13-year-old Myra Lee Larkin's brief run-in with a strange man who would later murder an entire family in her neighborhood in 1951, and following her uncanny connections to real-life killers like Richard Speck and John Wayne Gacy.
A Sweet Sting of Salt
by Rose Sutherland

This queer retelling of classic Celtic folktale The Selkie Wife takes place in 1830s Nova Scotia, where midwife Jean Langille assists Muirin, a woman going into labor on a nearby beach. The two form a strong bond despite a language barrier, which only grows deeper when Jean mistakes Muirin's behavior for postpartum depression.
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