Adult Historical Fiction

year of wonders

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

Based on the true story of Eyam, the "Plague Village. " In 1666, a tainted bolt of cloth from London carries bubonic infection to this isolated settlement. Anna Frith confronts the loss of her family, the disintegration of her community, and a dangerous and illicit love. As the death toll rises, people turn from prayers and herbal cures to sorcery and murderous witch-hunting. Anna emerges as an unlikely and courageous heroine in the village’s desperate fight to save itself.

FIC Brooks

mrs lincoln

Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker by Jennifer Chiaverini

In March 1861, Mrs. Lincoln chose Keckley to be her personal “modiste,” responsible not only for creating the First Lady’s gowns, but also for dressing Mrs. Lincoln. The relationship between the two women quickly evolved, as Keckley supported Mary Todd Lincoln in the loss of first her son, and then her husband to the assassination that stunned the nation and the world.

FIC Chiaverini

all the light we cannot see

All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

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. In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds.

FIC Doerr

winter garden

Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah

Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. But when their beloved father falls ill, they will find themselves together again, standing alongside their disapproving mother, Anya. On his deathbed, their father extracts a promise: Anya will tell her daughters a story - a captivating, mysterious love story that spans more than sixty years; from frozen, war-torn Leningrad to modern-day Alaska.

FIC Hannah

nightingale

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

Viann and Isabelle have always been close despite their differences. When World War II strikes their father sends Isabelle to help her older sister cope. With life as they know it changing in unbelievably horrific ways, Viann and Isabelle will find themselves facing frightening situations and responding in ways they never thought possible.

FIC Hannah

we were the lucky ones

We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter

It is the spring of 1939 and three generations of the Kurc family are doing their best to live normal lives. But soon the horrors overtaking Europe will become inescapable and the Kurcs will be flung to the far corners of the world. Driven by an unwavering will to survive and by the fear that they may never see one another again, the Kurcs must rely on hope, ingenuity, and inner strength to persevere.

FIC Hunter

orphans tale

The Orphan’s Tale by Pam Jenoff

Noa has been cast out in disgrace after becoming pregnant by a Nazi soldier and being forced to give up her baby. When Noa discovers a boxcar containing dozens of Jewish infants bound for a concentration camp. And in a moment that will change the course of her life, she snatches one of the babies and flees into the snowy night.

FIC Jenoff

lilac girls

Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly

On a September day in Manhattan in 1939, Caroline Ferriday is consumed by her efforts to secure the perfect boutonniere for an important French diplomat. Meanwhile across the Atlantic, Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish Catholic teenager, is nervously anticipating the changes that are sure to come since Germany has declared war on Poland. Through the two women’s lives will converge in unprecedented ways.

FIC Kelly

invention of wings

The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

Hetty “Handful” Grimke is an urban slave in the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimke’s daughter, Sarah is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women. On Sarah’s eleventh birthday she is given ownership of ten year old Handful. They form a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love.

FIC Kidd

leopard

Leopard at the Door by Jennifer McVeigh

After six years in England, Rachel has returned to Kenya and the farm where she spent her childhood. But, her father’s new companion has taken over the household. Looming over them all is the threat of the Mau Mau, a secret society intent on uniting the native Kenyans and overthrowing the whites.

FIC McVeigh

secrets

Secrets of a Charmed Life by Susan Meissner

Current day, Oxford, England. Young American scholar Kendra Van Zant interviews Isabel McFarland just when the elderly woman is ready to give up secrets about the war that she has kept for decades.
 1940s, England. Fifteen-year-old Emmy and her sister Julia find refuge in a charming Cotswold cottage. As the Luftwaffe rains down its terrible destruction, the sisters are cruelly separated, and their lives are transformed.

FIC Meissner

fall of marigolds

A Fall of Marigolds by Susan Meissner

September 1911. In New York Harbor, nurse Clara Wood cannot face returning to Manhattan, where the man she loved fell to his death in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. September 2011. On Manhattan’s Upper West Side, widow Taryn Michaels has convinced herself that she is living fully, working in a charming specialty fabric store and raising her daughter alone.


FIC Meissner

giver of stars

The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes

Alice Wright marries hoping to escape her stifling life in England. But, Kentucky quickly proves equally claustrophobic. So, Alice enthusiastically signs on to deliver books as part of the traveling library. The leader is Margery who’s never asked a man’s permission for anything. Though they face all kinds of dangers, they’re committed to their job sharing the gift of learning that will change their lives.

FIC Moyes

where the crawdads sing

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

In late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark. Abandoned at age ten, she has survived on her own in the marsh that she calls home. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life lessons from the land. But while she could have lived in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved.

FIC Owens

Alice Network

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

Two women--a female spy recruited to the real-life Alice Network in France during World War I and an unconventional American socialite searching for her cousin in 1947--are brought together in a story of courage and redemption.

FIC Quinn

shanghai girls

Shanghai Girls by Lisa See

In 1937, Shanghai is the Paris of Asia. Pearl Chin and her younger sister, May, are having the time of their lives . . . until the day their father tells them that he has gambled away their wealth and he must sell the girls as wives to suitors who have traveled from California to find Chinese brides.

FIC See

tea girl

The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See

Li-yan and her family align their lives around the seasons and the farming of tea. Then one day a jeep appears at the village gate--the first automobile any of them have seen--and a stranger arrives and finds the rare tea he has been seeking. When Li-yan has a baby outside of wedlock, rather than stand by tradition, she wraps her daughter in a blanket, with a tea cake hidden in her swaddling, and abandons her in the nearest city.  

FIC See

light between

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

Australia. After returning from the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock with his young wife, Isabel. 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.

FIC Stedman

beneath a scarlet

Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan

Pino Lella wants nothing to do with the war or the Nazis. He’s a normal Italian teenager, but his days of innocence are numbered. He joins an underground railroad helping Jews escape over the Alps, and falls for Anna, a beautiful widow six years his senior.Then Pino’s parents force him to enlist as a German soldier.

FIC Sullivan

gentleman of moscow

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

When, in 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, he’s sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors.

FIC Towles

we were yours

Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate

Memphis, Tennessee, 1936. The five Foss children find their lives changed forever when their parents leave them alone one stormy night. South Carolina, present day. Avery Stafford has lived a charmed life. But when Avery comes home to help her father weather a health crisis and a political attack, a chance encounter with a stranger leaves her deeply shaken.

FIC Wingate