Southborough Staff Picks- Historical Fiction | Williamsburg - Meekins Public Library

1) The Alice network: a novel

Author

Notes

Why Amy likes this book: I love all the strong females in this novel and that it is based on a real-life woman spy. I enjoyed Charlie’s journey as she learns that life’s answers are not found in the black and white, but rather the messy gray. Eve and Charlie are two very different women which makes the story even more memorable because of their ability to unite in search of the truth. Quinn does an excellent job of moving between two different lives and time periods in alternating chapters and accounts. I found this suspenseful thriller hard to stop reading because it felt so real.

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, Large Print

Description

"It's 1947 and American college girl Charlie St. Clair is pregnant, unmarried, and on the verge of being thrown out of her very proper family. She's also nursing a fervent belief that her beloved French cousin Rose, who disappeared in Nazi-occupied France during the war, might still be alive somewhere. So when Charlie's family banishes her to Europe to have her "little problem" take care of, Charlie breaks free and heads to London determined to find...

2) American wife: a novel

Author

Sittenfeld, Curtis

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, eBook, Kindle, Large Print

Description

On what might become one of the most significant days in her husband's presidency, Alice Blackwell considers the strange and unlikely path that has led her to the White House--and the repercussions of a life lived, as she puts it, "almost in opposition to itself." How can she both love and fundamentally disagree with her husband? How complicit has she been in the trajectory of her own life? What should she do when her private beliefs run against her...

3) Before we were yours: a novel

Author

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, Large Print

Description

"Two families, generations apart, are forever changed by a heartbreaking injustice in this poignant novel, inspired by a true story, for readers of Orphan Train and The Nightingale. Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family's Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge--until strangers arrive...

4) The book woman of Troublesome Creek: a novel

Author

Richardson, Kim Michele

Series

Book woman of Trouble Creek volume 1

Notes

Why Leah likes this book: This novel is inspired by real events in Kentucky history that I found fascinating. The Pack Horse Library Project was established in 1935 and employed mostly women. The bravery and resilience demonstrated by these librarians while traversing the rugged Kentucky landscape on horseback is amazing. Their commitment to share their love of literature with the poverty stricken people in the rural mountains is heartwarming and moving.

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, Audiobook MP3-CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, Large Print, Playaway

Description

"Cussy Mary Carter is the last of her kind, her skin the color of a blue damselfly in these dusty hills. But that doesn't mean she's got nothing to offer. As a member of the Pack Horse Library Project, Cussy delivers books to the hill folk of Troublesome, hoping to spread learning in these desperate times. But not everyone is so keen on Cussy's family or the Library Project, and the hardscrabble Kentuckians are quick to blame a Blue for any trouble...

Author

Series

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, eAudiobook, Large Print, Playaway

Description

In Ireland in the early 1950s, Eilis Lacey is one of many who cannot find work at home. Thus when a job is offered in America, it is clear to everyone that she must go. Leaving behind her family and country, Eilis heads for unfamiliar Brooklyn, and to a crowded boarding house where the landlady's intense scrutiny and the small jealousies of her fellow residents only deepen her isolation. Slowly, the pain of parting is buried beneath the rhythms of...

6) Call your daughter home

Author

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, Large Print

Description

"It's 1924 South Carolina and the region is still recovering from the infamous boll weevil infestation that devastated the land and the economy. Gertrude, a mother of four, must make an unconscionable decision to save her daughters from starvation or die at the hands of an abusive husband. Retta is navigating a harsh world as a first-generation freed slave, still employed by the Coles, influential plantation proprietors who once owned her family....

7) The children's blizzard: a novel

Author

Benjamin, Melanie

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, eAudiobook, Large Print, Playaway

Description

"The morning of January 12, 1888, was unusually mild, following a punishing cold spell. It was warm enough for the homesteaders of the Dakota Territory to venture out again, and for their children to return to school without their heavy coats-- leaving them unprepared when disaster struck. At the hour when most prairie schools were letting out for the day, a terrifying, fast-moving blizzard blew in without warning. Schoolteachers as young as sixteen...

8) Cilka's journey

Author

Morris, Heather (Screenwriter)

Series

Tattooist of Auschwitz

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, Large Print, Playaway

Description

Her beauty saved her - and condemned her. Cilka is just 16-years-old when she is taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp in 1942, where the commandant immediately notices how beautiful she is. Forcibly separated from the other women prisoners, Cilka learns quickly that power, even unwillingly taken, equals survival. When the war is over and the camp is liberated, freedom is not granted to Cilka: She is charged as a collaborator for sleeping...

9) The color purple: a novel

Author

Series

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, Large Print, Playaway

Description

"The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance, and silence. Through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then from the sisters to each other, the novel draws readers into the experiences of Celie, Nettie, Shug Avery, and Sofia"-- Provided by publisher....

10) Daughter of Moloka'i

Author

Series

Moloka'I volume 2

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, Large Print

Description

"This companion tale tells the story of Ruth, the daughter that Rachel Kalama--quarantined for most of her life at the isolated leprosy settlement of Kalaupapa--was forced to give up at birth. The book follows young Ruth from her arrival at the Kapi'olani Home for Girls in Honolulu, to her adoption by a Japanese couple who raise her on a strawberry and grape farm in California, her marriage and unjust internment at Manzanar Relocation Camp during...

11) Death comes for the archbishop

Author

Series

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook, Large Print

Description

"Willa Cather's novel of one man's life as he encounters the harsh landscape of the New Mexico desert and the people who inhabit it, with an introduction by National Book Award finalist Kali Fajardo-Anstine"-- Provided by publisher.

12) The diamond eye: a novel

Author

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, Large Print, Playaway

Description

"The New York Times bestselling author of The Rose Code returns with an unforgettable World War II tale of a quiet bookworm who becomes history's deadliest female sniper. Based on a true story. In 1937 in the snowbound city of Kiev (now known as Kyiv), wry and bookish history student Mila Pavlichenko organizes her life around her library job and her young son--but Hitler's invasion of Ukraine and Russia sends her on a different path. Given a rifle...

13) The dressmaker: a novel

Author

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, Large Print

Description

A spirited woman survives the sinking of the Titanic only to find herself embroiled in the tumultuous aftermath of that great tragedy. Tess is one of the last people to escape into a lifeboat. When an enterprising reporter turns her employer, Lady Duff Gordon, into an object of scorn, Tess is torn between loyalty and the truth.

14) The exiles: a novel

Author

Kline, Christina Baker

Notes

Why Leah likes this book: This novel grabbed my attention from the start and I couldn’t put it down. The treatment of Hazel and Evangeline on the ship during the voyage to Australia’s penal colony is shockingly brutal. The characters ability to adapt to the grueling conditions continually amazed me. Despite all of the challenges and hardships, Evangeline and Hazel find friendship. As their friendship grows, their willingness to help and protect each other is inspiring. I was amazed by their courage and strength. Matthina’s story broke my heart because it is not fictional. She was the daughter of an Aborigines chieftain, and adopted by the Franklins around the age of six. The author does not shy away from the tragic outcome of tearing this young girl away from her tribe. Although I wish Matthina’s life would have been different, I am glad the author’s chose to accurately tell her story. I went on to read about the Mathinna’s life after I finished this novel.

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, Audiobook MP3-CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, Large Print, Playaway

Description

Seduced by her employer's son, Evangeline, a naïve young governess in early nineteenth-century London, is discharged when her pregnancy is discovered and sent to the notorious Newgate Prison. After months in the fetid, overcrowded jail, she learns she is sentenced to "the land beyond the seas," Van Diemen's Land, a penal colony in Australia. Though uncertain of what awaits, Evangeline knows one thing: the child she carries will be born on the months-long...

15) Fallen land

Author

Notes

Why Amy likes this book: This is a remarkable love story that manages to find hope during a war that stole so much from so many. The writing is very gritty and raw with death and violence always around the corner, but I loved being able to feel like I was traveling with them on the majestic horse, Reiver. I haven’t read a book in a while that so beautifully describes the physical landscape in such poetic detail. I have a hard time still thinking about how grown up these fictional young teenagers were forced to become knowing many actual children during the war had to navigate such a harsh world without much food, protection or mercy. This is an important story for readers to remember this piece of American history.

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, Large Print

Description

"Set in the final year of the Civil War, as a young couple on horseback flees a dangerous band of marauders who seek a bounty reward. Callum, a seasoned horse thief at fifteen years old, came to America from his native Ireland as an orphan. Ava, her father and brother lost to the war, hides in her crumbling home until Callum determines to rescue her from the bands of hungry soldiers pillaging the land, leaving destruction in their wake. Ava and Callum...

16) Fifty words for rain: a novel

Author

Notes

Why Carol likes this book: This epic story is about the unlikely love and devotion between Nori and Akira, heartbreak, and the ability to persevere through unimaginable hatred. Nori’s unconditional obedience evolves into her desire to fight for what she wants and deserves.

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook

Description

"From debut author Asha Lemmie, a sweeping, heartrending coming-of-age novel about a young woman's quest for acceptance-and the unexpected ally that will change everything-in post-World War II Japan. Kyoto, Japan, 1948. "If a woman knows nothing else, she should know how to be silent. . . . Do not question. Do not fight. Do not resist." Such is eight-year-old Noriko "Nori" Kamiza's first lesson. She will not question why her mother abandoned her with...

17) Florence Adler swims forever

Author

Beanland, Rachel

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, eBook, Kindle, Large Print

Description

"Atlantic City, 1934. Every summer, Esther and Joseph Adler rent their house out to vacationers escaping to "America's Playground" and move into the apartment above their bakery. The apartment is where they raised their two daughters, Fannie and Florence, and, despite the cramped quarters, it still feels like home. Now Florence has returned from college, determined to spend the summer training to swim the English Channel, and Fannie, pregnant again...

18) The forgotten garden

Author

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, Audiobook MP3-CD, eBook, Kindle, Large Print, Playaway

Description

"From the author of "The House at Riverton" comes a story of outer and inner journeys as "Nell," abandoned as a child, leaves her adoptive parents in Australia and travels to England to trace her story, to find her real identity--a quest that ultimately leads her to Blackhurst Manor on the Cornish coast and the secrets of the doomed Mountrachet family."

19) Fortune's rocks: a novel

Author

Series

Fortune's Rocks Quartet

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, eBook, Kindle, Large Print

Description

In 1890s Boston, a 15-year-old upper-class girl is banished to a convent following an affair with a married doctor which left her pregnant. The girl is forced to surrender the child for adoption, but she subsequently goes to court to recuperate it, and eventually marries the doctor. A study in the mores and manners of the day.

20) The frozen river: a novel

Author

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, Large Print, Playaway

Description

"A gripping historical mystery based on the real-life diary entries of Martha Ballard, an 18th-century midwife who defied the legal system and wrote herself into American history. Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of...