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Category Archives: Historical Fiction

The Light Between Oceans

Read in: January 2017Genre: Historical Fiction, Upcoming
By M.L. Stedman

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After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

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Once We Were Brothers

Read in: October 2016Genre: Historical Fiction
By Ronald H. Balson

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The gripping tale about two boys, once as close as brothers, who find themselves on opposite sides of the Holocaust.

Once We Were Brothers is Ronald H. Balson’s compelling tale of two boys and a family who struggle to survive in war-torn Poland, and a young love that struggles to endure the unspeakable cruelty of the Holocaust. Two lives, two worlds, and sixty years converge in an explosive race to redemption that makes for a moving and powerful tale of love, survival, and ultimately the triumph of the human spirit.

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Circling the Sun

Read in: April 2016Genre: Historical Fiction
By Paula McLain

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Paula McLain, author of the phenomenal bestseller The Paris Wife, now returns with her keenly anticipated new novel, transporting readers to colonial Kenya in the 1920s. Circling the Sun brings to life a fearless and captivating woman—Beryl Markham, a record-setting aviator caught up in a passionate love triangle with safari hunter Denys Finch Hatton and Karen Blixen, author of the classic memoir Out of Africa.

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The Nightingale

Read in: February 2016Genre: Historical Fiction
By Kristin Hannah

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FRANCE, 1939
In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France…but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When a German captain requisitions Vianne’s home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive.

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The Japanese Lover

Read in: November 2015Genre: Historical Fiction
By Isabel Allende

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In 1939, as Poland falls under the shadow of the Nazis, young Alma Belasco’s parents send her away to live in safety with an aunt and uncle in their opulent mansion in San Francisco. There, as the rest of the world goes to war, she encounters Ichimei Fukuda, the quiet and gentle son of the family’s Japanese gardener. Unnoticed by those around them, a tender love affair begins to blossom. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the two are cruelly pulled apart as Ichimei and his family—like thousands of other Japanese Americans—are declared enemies and forcibly relocated to internment camps run by the United States government. Throughout their lifetimes, Alma and Ichimei reunite again and again, but theirs is a love that they are forever forced to hide from the world.

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Euphoria

Read in: September 2015Genre: Historical Fiction
By Lily King

From New England Book Award winner Lily King comes a breathtaking novel about three young anthropologists of the ’30s caught in a passionate love triangle that threatens their bonds, their careers, and, ultimately, their lives.

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All the Light We Cannot See

Read in: February 2015Genre: Historical Fiction
By Antony Doerr

Not rated yet

Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks. When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris in June of 1940, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure’s agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall.

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Orphan Train

Read in: June 2014Genre: Historical Fiction
By Christina Baker Kline

Between 1854 and 1929, so-called orphan trains ran regularly from the cities of the East Coast to the farmlands of the Midwest, carrying thousands of abandoned children whose fates would be determined by luck or chance. Would they be adopted by a kind and loving family, or would they face a childhood and adolescence of hard labor and servitude?

As a young Irish immigrant, Vivian Daly was one such child, sent by rail from New York City to an uncertain future a world away. Returning east later in life, Vivian leads a quiet, peaceful existence on the coast of Maine, the memories of her upbringing rendered a hazy blur. But in her attic, hidden in trunks, are vestiges of a turbulent past.

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The 19th Wife

Read in: March 2011Genre: Historical Fiction
By David Ebershoff

Faith, I tell them, is a mystery, elusive to many, and never easy to explain.

Sweeping and lyrical, spellbinding and unforgettable, David Ebershoff’s The 19th Wife combines epic historical fiction with a modern murder mystery to create a brilliant novel of literary suspense.

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The Painter From Shanghai

Read in: February 2011Genre: Historical Fiction
By Jennifer Cody Epstein

A work of fiction — but based on the life and work of a real artist — The Painter from Shanghai transports readers to early-20th-century China, a culture marked by oppression. Epstein has proven herself a shining talent in this first novel, tackling such weighty questions as: How does a talented artist blossom, even under repressive conditions? What is art, and what is love? What makes a life well lived? The answers form a mesmerizing portrait of one young woman’s journey to find herself and to nourish her creative talents despite appreciable odds.

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Pope Joan

Read in: January 2011Genre: Historical Fiction
By Donna Woolfolk Cross

Pope Joan is a sweeping historical drama set against the turbulent events of the 9th century — the Saracen sack of St. Peter’s, the famous fire in the Borgo that destroyed over three-quarters of the Vatican, the Battle of Fontenoy, arguably the bloodiest and most terrible of medieval conflicts. This masterwork of suspense and passion brings the Dark Ages to life in all their brutal splendor and shares the dramatic story of an unforgettable woman who struggles against restrictions her soul cannot accept.

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Cutting for Stone

Read in: December 2010Genre: Historical Fiction
By Abraham Verghese

The story is a riveting saga of twin brothers, Marion and Shiva Stone, born of a tragic union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, and bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution.

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Looking for a book to read?

Fool Me Once
Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride and Prejudice
Once We Were Brothers
The Girl on the Train
The Battle for Room 314
Circling the Sun
The God’s Eye View
The Nightingale
A Man Called Ove
The Japanese Lover
Black Flags: The rise of ISIS
The Martian
Euphoria
Amy Falls Down
Sweetness #9
The Boys in the Boat
All the Light We Cannot See
A Wall of White: The True Story of Heroism and Survival in the Face of a Deadly Avalanche
The Art of Hearing Heartbeats-bc
Brain On Fire
The Circle
This Is Where I Leave You
A Bolt from the Blue: The Epic True Story of Danger, Daring, and Heroism at 13,000 Feet
Orphan Train
The Goldfinch
A Tale for the Time Being
the things that keep us here
The Orphan Master’s Son
Sycamore Road
The Gift of Rain
Midwives
Beautiful Ruins
behind the beautiful forevers
Where’d You Go, Bernadette
Afterwards
The Age of Miracles
Escape from Camp 14
WE THE ANIMALS
The Belvedere Club
The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World
Thirteen Reason Why
The Fault in Our Stars
Gone Girl
Steve Jobs
Unbroken
Fifty Shades of Grey
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
When the Killing’s Done
The House of Mondavi

All Books

  • Big Little Lies
  • Fool Me Once
  • Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride and Prejudice
  • Once We Were Brothers
  • The Girl on the Train
  • The Battle for Room 314
  • Circling the Sun
  • The God’s Eye View
  • The Nightingale
  • A Man Called Ove
  • The Japanese Lover
  • Black Flags: The rise of ISIS
  • The Martian
  • Euphoria
  • Amy Falls Down
  • Sweetness #9
  • The Boys in the Boat
  • All the Light We Cannot See
  • A Wall of White: The True Story of Heroism and Survival in the Face of a Deadly Avalanche
  • The Art of Hearing Heartbeats
  • Brain On Fire
  • The Circle
  • This Is Where I Leave You
  • A Bolt from the Blue: The Epic True Story of Danger, Daring, and Heroism at 13,000 Feet
  • Orphan Train
  • The Goldfinch
  • A Tale for the Time Being
  • the things that keep us here
  • The Orphan Master’s Son
  • Sycamore Road
  • The Gift of Rain
  • Midwives
  • Beautiful Ruins
  • behind the beautiful forevers
  • Where’d You Go, Bernadette
  • Afterwards
  • The Age of Miracles
  • Escape from Camp 14
  • WE THE ANIMALS
  • The Belvedere Club
  • The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World
  • Thirteen Reason Why
  • The Fault in Our Stars
  • Gone Girl
  • Steve Jobs
  • Unbroken
  • Fifty Shades of Grey
  • Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
  • The Perks of Being a Wallflower
  • When the Killing’s Done
  • Reading
  • Previous Reads
  • Upcoming
  • About us
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