Collection: Historical Fiction

Named a Best Book of Fall 2022 by Parade - BuzzFeed - New York Post - GMA.com - People

"Loigman's latest is a gem. A scrappy Jewish teenager newly arrived in 1920s New York struggles to follow her calling as a matchmaker--seventy years later, her cynical divorce-attorney granddaughter realizes she has very inconveniently inherited the family gift for matching soulmates. Both funny and moving, The Matchmaker's Gift made me smile from start to finish."
--Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Rose Code

Is finding true love a calling or a curse?

Even as a child in 1910, Sara Glikman knows her gift: she is a maker of matches and a seeker of soulmates. But among the pushcart-crowded streets of New York's Lower East Side, Sara's vocation is dominated by devout older men--men who see a talented female matchmaker as a dangerous threat to their traditions and livelihood. After making matches in secret for more than a decade, Sara must fight to take her rightful place among her peers, and to demand the recognition she deserves.

Two generations later, Sara's granddaughter, Abby, is a successful Manhattan divorce attorney, representing the city's wealthiest clients. When her beloved Grandma Sara dies, Abby inherits her collection of handwritten journals recording the details of Sara's matches. But among the faded volumes, Abby finds more questions than answers. Why did Abby's grandmother leave this library to her and what did she hope Abby would discover within its pages? Why does the work Abby once found so compelling suddenly feel inconsequential and flawed? Is Abby willing to sacrifice the career she's worked so hard for in order to keep her grandmother's mysterious promise to a stranger? And is there really such a thing as love at first sight?

Caught between two worlds--a poverty-stricken village and a fancy big-city school--a young Sri Lankan girl must decide who she really is and where she really belongs.

1998, Colombo. The Sri Lankan Civil War is raging, but everyday life must go on. At Kavi's school, her friends talk about the weekly Top 40, the Backstreet Boys, Shahrukh Khan, Leo & Kate... and who died--or didn't--in the latest bombing. But Kavi is afraid of something even scarier than war. She fears that if her friends discover her secret--that she is not who she is pretending to be--they'll stop talking to her.

I want to be friends with these / happy, / fearless, / girls / who look like they / belong.
So I could also be / happy, / fearless, / and maybe even / belong.

Kavi's scholarship to her elite new school was supposed to be everything she ever wanted, but as she tries to find some semblance of normalcy in a country on fire, nothing is going according to plan. In an effort to fit in with her wealthy, glittering, and self-assured new classmates, Kavi begins telling lies, trading her old life--where she's a poor girl whose mother has chosen a new husband over her daughter--for a new one, where she's rich, loved, and wanted. But how long can you pretend to be someone else?

This dazzling novel-in-verse comes from an astonishing new talent who lived through the civil war herself. Perfect for fans of Jamine Warga, Supriya Kelkar, and Rajani LaRocca, I Am Kavi centers a powerful South Asian voice, and stars an unforgettable heroine each and every one of us can relate to.

"KAVI'S COURAGE AND VOICE ARE NOT TO BE MISSED."--Reem Faruqi, award-winning author of Call Me Adnan, Unsettled, and Golden Girl

"I LOVED IT!"--Nizrana Farook, award-winning author of The Girl Who Stole an Elephant

"POWERFULLY WRITTEN."--Lyn Miller-Lachmann, author of Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner Torch

"LUSH AND EVOCATIVE... A STUNNING DEBUT."--Kate Albus, award-winning author of A Place to Hang the Moon

A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection
An Indies Introduce Selection

New parents Lady Kiera Darby and Sebastian Gage look forward to introducing Sebastian's father to his granddaughter, but instead find themselves investigating an attempt on his life...

Yorkshire, England. August 1832. Relations between Sebastian Gage and his father have never been easy, especially since the discovery that Lord Gage has been concealing the existence of an illegitimate son. But when Lord Gage is nearly fatally attacked on a journey to Scotland, Sebastian and Kiera race to his side. Given the tumult over the recent passage of the Reform Bill and the Anatomy Act, in which Lord Gage played a part, Sebastian wonders if the attack could be politically motivated.

But something suspicious is afoot in the sleepy village where Lord Gage is being cared for. The townspeople treat Sebastian and Kiera with hostility when it becomes clear they intend to investigate, and rumors of mysterious disappearances and highway robberies plague the area. Lord Gage's survival is far from assured, and Sebastian and Kiera must scramble to make the pieces fit before a second attempt at murder is more successful than the first.

From acclaimed author of The Third Daughter comes an epic historical novel of ingenuity and courage, of love and loss, spanning postwar France when Israeli agents roamed the countryside to rescue hidden Jewish orphans--to the 1969 daring escape of the Israeli boats of Cherbourg.

1942: As the Vichy government hunts for Jews across France, Claudette Pelletier, a young and talented seamstress and lover of romance novels, falls in love with a Jewish man who seeks shelter at the château where she works. Their whirlwind and desperate romance before he must flee leaves her pregnant and terrified.

When the Nazis invade the Free Zone shortly after the birth of her child, the disabled Claudette is forced to make a heartbreaking choice and escapes to Spain, leaving her baby in the care of his nursemaid. By the time Claudette is able to return years later, her son has disappeared. Unbeknown to his anguished mother, the boy has been rescued by a Youth Aliyah agent searching for Jewish orphans.

1968: When Israeli naval officer Daniel Yarden recruits Sharon Bloomenthal for a secret naval operation in Cherbourg, France, he can't imagine that he is the target of the agenda of the twenty-year-old grieving the recent loss of her fiancé in a drowned submarine. Sharon suspects that Danny's past in Youth Aliyah may reflect that of her mysterious late mother and she sets out to track her boss's extraordinary journey as an orphan in a quaint French village all the way to Israel.

As Danny focuses on the future of his people and on executing a daring, crucial operation under France's radar, he is unaware that the obsessed Sharon follows the breadcrumbs of clues across the country to find her answers. But she is wholly unprepared for the dilemma she must face upon solving the puzzle.

"A complex, absorbing portrait"--People

A tangled and vivid portrait of the women caught in Picasso's charismatic orbit through the affairs, the scandals, and the art--only this time, they hold the brush.

The women of Picasso's life are glamorous and elusive, existing in the shadow of his fame--until 1950s aspiring journalist Alana Olson determines to bring one into the light. Unsure of what to expect but bent on uncovering what really lies beneath the canvas, Alana steps into Sara Murphy's well-guarded home to discover a past complicated by secrets and intrigue.

Sara paints a luxurious picture of the French Riviera in 1923, but also a tragic one. The more Sara reveals, the more cracks emerge in Picasso's once-vibrant social circle--and the more Alana feels a disturbing convergence with her own life. Who are these other muses? What became of them? What will become of her?

Desperate to trace the threads, Alana dives into the glittering lives of the past. But to do so she must contend with her own reality, including a strained engagement, the male-dominated world of art journalism, and the rising threat to civil rights in America. With hard truths peeling apart around her, it turns out that the most extraordinary portrait Alana encounters is her own.

Over 10 million copies sold worldwide * Soon to be a Broadway Musical in 2024
#1 New York Times Bestseller * A Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, & USA Today Bestseller
A Major Motion Picture starring Reese Witherspoon, Robert Pattinson, and Christoph Waltz

"This colorful headlong tale of a Depression-era circus simply can't be beat." --Stephen King

Jacob Janowski's luck had run out--orphaned and penniless, he had no direction until he landed on a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. A veterinary student just shy of a degree, he was put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It was the Great Depression and for Jacob the circus was both his salvation and a living hell. There he met Marlena, the beautiful equestrian star married to August, the charismatic but brutal animal trainer. And he met Rosie, an untrainable elephant who was the great hope for this third-rate traveling show. The bond that grew among this group of misfits was one of love and trust, and ultimately, it was their only hope for survival.

A fascinating reimagining of the overlooked, complicated life of Thomas Mann's translator, Helen Lowe-Porter

The literary giant Thomas Mann balked at a female translator, but he might well owe his standing in the Western canon to a little-known American woman, Helen Lowe-Porter. Based closely on historical source material, Jo Salas's novel Mrs. Lowe-Porter sympathetically reveals a brilliant woman's struggle to be appreciated as a translator and find her voice in a male-dominated culture. Married to the charming classicist Elias Lowe, whom she met and fell in love with while in Munich, the story weaves one woman's journey as her husband Elias's career soars and her translation work earns Mann the Nobel Prize. The novel celebrates Helen Lowe-Porter as she learns to risk stepping out from the long shadow of the dominating men of her life to become a person of letters in her own right.

"Captivating...Mah channels Kennedy and brings postwar Paris to life with exquisite detail and insight." -- People

From the bestselling author of The Lost Vintage, a rare and dazzling portrait of Jacqueline Bouvier's college year abroad in postwar Paris, an intimate and electrifying story of love and betrayal, and the coming-of-age of an American icon - before the world knew her as Jackie.

In September 1949 Jacqueline Bouvier arrives in postwar Paris to begin her junior year abroad. She's twenty years old, socially poised but financially precarious, and all too aware of her mother's expectations that she make a brilliant match. Before relenting to family pressure, she has one year to herself far away from sleepy Vassar College and the rigid social circles of New York, a year to explore and absorb the luminous beauty of the City of Light. Jacqueline is immediately catapulted into an intoxicating new world of champagne and châteaux, art and avant-garde theater, cafés and jazz clubs. She strikes up a romance with a talented young writer who shares her love of literature and passion for culture - even though her mother would think him most unsuitable.

But beneath the glitter and rush, France is a fragile place still haunted by the Occupation. Jacqueline lives in a rambling apartment with a widowed countess and her daughters, all of whom suffered as part of the French Resistance just a few years before. In the aftermath of World War II, Paris has become a nest of spies, and suspicion, deception, and betrayal lurk around every corner. Jacqueline is stunned to watch the rise of communism - anathema in America, but an active movement in France - never guessing she is witnessing the beginning of the political environment that will shape the rest of her life--and that of her future husband.

Evocative, sensitive, and rich in historic detail, Jacqueline in Paris portrays the origin story of an American icon. Ann Mah brilliantly imagines the intellectual and aesthetic awakening of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, and illuminates how France would prove to be her one true love, and one of the greatest influences on her life.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - The fourth book in Diana Gabaldon's acclaimed Outlander saga, the basis for the Starz original series.

"Unforgettable characters . . . richly embroidered with historical detail."--The Cincinnati Post

What if you knew someone you loved was going to die? What if you thought you could save them? How much would you risk to try?

Claire Randall has gone to find Jamie Fraser, the man she loved more than life, and has left half her heart behind with their daughter, Brianna. Claire gave up Jamie to save Brianna, and now Bree has sent her mother back to the mysterious Scottish warrior who was willing to give his life to save them both. But a chilling discovery in the pages of history suggests that Jamie and Claire's story doesn't have a happy ending.

Brianna dares a terrifying leap into the unknown in search of her mother and the father she has never met, risking her own future to try to change history . . . and to save their lives. But as Brianna plunges into an uncharted wilderness, a heartbreaking encounter may strand her forever in the past . . . or root her in the place she should be, where her heart and soul belong.

Newbery Medal Winner! Step back to an English village in 1255, where life plays out in dramatic vignettes illuminating twenty-two unforgettable characters.

Maidens, monks, and millers' sons -- in these pages, readers will meet them all. There's Hugo, the lord's nephew, forced to prove his manhood by hunting a wild boar; sharp-tongued Nelly, who supports her family by selling live eels; and the peasant's daughter, Mogg, who gets a clever lesson in how to save a cow from a greedy landlord. There's also mud-slinging Barbary (and her noble victim); Jack, the compassionate half-wit; Alice, the singing shepherdess; and many more. With a deep appreciation for the period and a grand affection for both characters and audience, Laura Amy Schlitz creates twenty-two riveting portraits and linguistic gems equally suited to silent reading or performance. Illustrated with pen-and-ink drawings by Robert Byrd -- inspired by the Munich-Nuremberg manuscript, an illuminated poem from thirteenth-century Germany -- this witty, historically accurate, and utterly human collection forms an exquisite bridge to the people and places of medieval England.

The acclaimed author of The Secret Women and Things Past Telling returns with an engrossing historical novel about a little known aspect of World War II--the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only Black WACs to serve overseas during the conflict.

In the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Dorothy Thom, Spelman graduate, librarian and Francophile, joins the Women's Army Corps wanting to do her part for the war effort. Longing for adventure, she has one question for the recruiter: "Do you think I'll get to go abroad?"

As Dorothy and her sister WACs discover, life in the Army is an adventure filled with unexpected deprivations and culture shock. Women from all levels of society, secretaries, teachers, and sharecroppers, work together to navigate a military segregated by race and gender. At boot camp, the "colored girls" are separated for processing. At Ft. Riley, the women's barracks are rustic and heated by coal-burning pot-bellied stoves while German POWs spend their incarceration in buildings with central heat and hot water.

In early 1945, Dorothy and eight hundred African American WACs cross the turbulent North Atlantic to their post in England. Their orders are to process the mail sent to GIs from their loved ones back home, an estimated 17 million pieces. The women arrive to find mail stockpiled for over two years in warehouses and airplane hangars, many pieces in poor condition, the names illegible.

In England and France, the WACs traverse a landscape of unimagined possibilities. With their outlooks changed forever, they return to the United States as the catalysts for change in America and build lives that transcend anything their ancestors ever dreamed of.

No Better Time illuminates a love of country and duty that has been overlooked until now.

**A NATIONAL BESTSELLER**

"Readers will be on the edge of their seats.... A brilliant tale of resistance, courage and ultimately hope." -Kelly Rimmer, New York Times bestselling author of The Warsaw Orphan

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Bookshop in London comes a moving new novel inspired by the true history of America's library spies of World War II.

Ava thought her job as a librarian at the Library of Congress would mean a quiet, routine existence. But an unexpected offer from the US military has brought her to Lisbon with a new mission: posing as a librarian while working undercover as a spy gathering intelligence.

Meanwhile, in occupied France, Elaine has begun an apprenticeship at a printing press run by members of the Resistance. It's a job usually reserved for men, but in the war, those rules have been forgotten. Yet she knows that the Nazis are searching for the press and its printer in order to silence them.

As the battle in Europe rages, Ava and Elaine find themselves connecting through coded messages and discovering hope in the face of war.

"Uplifting, inspiring and suspenseful, this is one to savor!" -Natasha Lester, New York Times bestselling author of The Riviera House

"Madeline Martin is a fantastic author. The Librarian Spy is a stunning tour de force of historical fiction." -Karen Robards, author of The Black Swan of Paris

Don't miss Madeline Martin's newest historical novel, The Keeper of Hidden Books!

Also by Madeline Martin:

• The Last Bookshop in London
• The Keeper of Hidden Books

WINNER OF THE NEW AMERICAN VOICES AWARD

LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE AND THE JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY TIME, TOWN & COUNTRY, KIRKUS, ELECTRIC LITERATURE AND BOOKPAGE!

"Stunning...epic...impressive...It is a pleasure to simply live alongside these characters."--The New York Times

"A deep and powerful love story."--NBC The Today Show

"A beautifully written novel. I loved so much in this book: the richly imagined setting, the complicated love story, and the heartbreaking way history can tear apart a family." --Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful

Set against a changing Singapore, a sweeping novel about one boy's unique gifts and the childhood love that will complicate the fate of his community and country

Ah Boon is born into a fishing village amid the heat and beauty of twentieth-century coastal Singapore in the waning years of British rule. He is a gentle boy who is not much interested in fishing, preferring to spend his days playing with the neighbor girl, Siok Mei. But when he discovers he has the unique ability to locate bountiful, movable islands that no one else can find, he feels a new sense of obligation and possibility--something to offer the community and impress the spirited girl he has come to love.

By the time they are teens, Ah Boon and Siok Mei are caught in the tragic sweep of history: the Japanese army invades, the resistance rises, grief intrudes, and the future of the fishing village is in jeopardy. As the nation hurtles toward rebirth, the two friends, newly empowered, must decide who they want to be, and what they are willing to give up.

An aching love story and powerful coming-of-age that reckons with the legacy of British colonialism, the World War II Japanese occupation, and the pursuit of modernity, The Great Reclamation confronts the wounds of progress, the sacrifices of love, and the difficulty of defining home when nature and nation collide, literally shifting the land beneath people's feet.

Introduced by Hemingway's grandson Seán Hemingway, this newly annotated edition and literary masterpiece about an American in the Spanish Civil War features early drafts and supplementary material--including three previously uncollected short stories on war by one the greatest writers on the subject in history.In 1937 Ernest Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover the civil war for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Three years later he completed the greatest novel to emerge from "the good fight," and one of the foremost classics of war literature in history. Published in 1940, For Whom the Bell Tolls tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal. Robert Jordan is a young American in the International Brigades attached to an antifascist guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain. In his portrayal of Jordan's love for the beautiful Maria and his superb account of El Sordo's last stand, Hemingway creates a work at once rare and beautiful, strong and brutal, compassionate, moving, and wise. "If the function of a writer is to reveal reality," Maxwell Perkins wrote Hemingway after reading the manuscript, "no one ever so completely performed it." Greater in power, broader in scope, and more intensely emotional than any of the author's previous works, it stands as one of the best war novels of all time. Featuring early drafts and manuscript notes, some of Hemingway's writings during the Spanish Civil War, and three previously collected stories of his on the subject of war, as well as a personal foreword by the author's son Patrick Hemingway, and a new introduction by the author's grandson Seán Hemingway, this edition of For Whom the Bell Tolls brings new life to a literary master's epic like never before.

An exclusive authorized edition of a classic Agatha Christie thriller revolving around a devastating family mystery, described by the Queen of Mystery herself as one of her favorites of her published works -- now a feature film from Sony Pictures starring Christina Hendricks, Gillian Anderson, and Glenn Close.

The Leonides are one big happy family living in a sprawling, ramshackle mansion. That is until the head of the household, Aristide, is murdered with a fatal barbiturate injection.

Suspicion naturally falls on the old man's young widow, fifty years his junior. But the murderer has reckoned without the tenacity of Charles Hayward, fiancé of the late millionaire's granddaughter.

"Writing Crooked House was pure pleasure and I feel justified in my belief that it is one of my best." --Agatha Christie

From New York Times bestselling author Jennifer A. Nielsen comes a thrilling World War II story of espionage and intrigue, as one girl races to save her father and aid the French resistance.

Six hundred and fifty-seven days ago, Meg Kenyon's father left their home in France to fight for the Allies in World War II, and that was the last time Meg saw him. Recently, she heard he was being held prisoner by the Nazis, a terrible sentence from which Meg fears he'll never return. All she has left of him are the codes he placed in a jar for her to decipher, an affectionate game the two of them shared. But the codes are running low, and soon there'll be nothing left of Papa for Meg to hold on to at all.

Suddenly, an impossible chance to save her father falls into Meg's lap. After following a trail of blood in the snow, Meggie finds an injured British spy hiding in her grandmother's barn. Captain Stewart tells her that a family of German refugees must be guided across Nazi-occupied France to neutral Spain, whereupon one of them has promised to free Meg's father. Captain Stewart was meant to take that family on their journey, but too injured to complete the task himself, he offers it to Meg, along with a final code from Papa to help complete the mission -- perhaps the most important, and most difficult, riddle she's received yet.

As the Nazis flood Meg's village in fierce pursuit, she accepts the duty and begins the trek across France. Leading strangers through treacherous territory, Meg faces danger and uncertainty at every turn, all the while struggling to crack her father's code. The message, as she unravels it, reveals secrets costly enough to risk the mission and even her own life. Can Meg solve the puzzle, rescue the family, and save her father?