SJPL Picks: Historical FictionLike this list

50 items

• The Lotus Shoes

  a Novel

  Yang, Jane (Writer),

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  In 19th-century China, Little Flower, a maidservant with bound feet and a rare talent for embroidery, navigates life under the cruel daughter of the Fong family, but when scandal casts them both into the Celibate Sisterhood, her newfound status…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• To Save the Man

  a Novel

  Sayles, John, 1950-

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  One of America’s greatest storytellers sheds light on an American tragedy: the Wounded Knee Massacre, and the ‘cultural genocide’ experienced by the Native American children at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

• Munichs

  a Novel

  Peace, David,

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  In 1958, Manchester United was flying high: the best-known soccer team in the world and reigning English champions, the team was led by a bright young group of star players nicknamed the “Busby Babes” after their charismatic manager Matt Busby. But…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Restless Wave

  a Novel of the United Sates Navy

  Stavridis, James,

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  Scott Bradley James arrives in Annapolis, Maryland, as a plebe in the class of 1941 without a terribly good idea why he wants to be a naval officer, other than that his father was a sailor, and he wants to see the world, whatever that means. Scott…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Our Evenings

  a Novel

  Hollinghurst, Alan,

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  Peeks in on the orbit of Dave Win--the son of a British dressmaker and a Burmese man he's never met--after he receives a scholarship to a prestigious English boarding school and how the relationships he made affect his struggles with class and race,…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• A Golden Life

  a Novel

  Moyer, Ginny Kubitz,

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  It’s 1938, and twenty-five-year-old secretary Frances Healey is ready for a fresh start. Hoping to forget her painful past, she takes a job working for Hollywood producer Lawrence Merrill. She quickly becomes absorbed in VistaGlen Studios’ biggest…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Precipice

  a Novel

  Harris, Robert, 1957-

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  Summer 1914. A world on the brink of catastrophe. In London, twenty-six-year-old Venetia Stanley—aristocratic, clever, bored, reckless—is part of a fast group of upper-crust bohemians and socialites known as “The Coterie.” She’s also engaged in a…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Naturalist's Daughter

  Cooper, Tea,

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  1808 Agnes Banks, NSW Rose Winton wants nothing more than to work with her father, eminent naturalist Charles Winton, on his groundbreaking study of the platypus. Not only does she love him with all her heart, but the discoveries they have made…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• 54 Miles

  a Novel

  Pitts, Leonard, Jr.,

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  Two families in mid-1960s Harlem and Alabama grapple with the promise and brutality of the civil rights era while reckoning with family secrets, unresolved trauma and the question of what justice demands.

• The God of the Woods

  Moore, Liz, 1983-

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  Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Road to the Country

  a Novel

  Obioma, Chigozie, 1986-

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  Set in Nigeria in the late 1960s, The Road to the Country is the epic story of a shy, bookish student haunted by long-held guilt who must go to war to free himself. When his younger brother disappears as the country explodes in civil war, Kunle must…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Malas

  Fuentes, Marcela (Fiction writer),

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  When her beloved grandmother passes away, 14-year-old Lulu is drawn to the glamorous stranger who crashed the funeral and their unexpected kinship picks at the secrets of Lulu's family and a curse that reverberates across generation as one woman…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Safekeep

  a Novel

  Wouden, Yael van der,

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  It is 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is truly over. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel knows her life is as it should be—led by…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Sweet Blue Distance

  a Novel

  Donati, Sara, 1956-

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  In 1857, young midwife Carrie Ballentyne travels west to the New Mexico Territory for a nursing position, but while helping women give birth in Sante Fe, she discovers her employer is keeping secrets and must ferret out the truth to save his young…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Rainbow Black

  a Novel

  Thrash, Maggie,

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  Lacey Bond has grown up in her parents' hippie New Hampshire daycare, idolizing her blasphemous, ultra-fashionable sister, Éclair, chasing baby squirrels, and contemplating trees. Then the Satanic Panic hits. It's the summer of 1990 when Lacey's…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Glorious Exploits

  a Novel

  Lennon, Ferdia,

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  Lennon brings ancient Sicily to life with humor and pathos in his stunning debut. Thousands of Athenian soldiers are being held prisoner in Syracuse after a failed assault during the Peloponnesian War. Two unemployed potters, Lampo and Gelon, decide…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• James

  a Novel

  Everett, Percival,

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  When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Burma Sahib

  a Novel

  Theroux, Paul,

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  In 1921, Eric Blair, 19 and newly hatched from Eton, sets sail for Burma on a posting to the Indian Imperial Police. There he will oversee native policemen—Burmese and Indian. From the start, his peers see Blair as an outsider. He feels like one…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• My Beloved Life

  a Novel

  Kumar, Amitava, 1963-

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  Jadunath Kunwar's beginnings are humble, even inauspicious. His mother, while pregnant, nearly dies from a cobra bite. And this is only the first of many challenges in store for Jadu. As his life skates between the mythical and the mundane, Jadu…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Followed by the Lark

  Humphreys, Helen, 1961-

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  Henry David Thoreau's connection to nature was tied to his feelings of grief; before he was twenty-seven years old and went to live at Walden Pond, two of those closest to him had died―his older brother, John, and his friend Charles Wheeler. Nature…Read moreRead more of this annotation