Shanghai Girls My Antonia By Lisa See By Willa Cather When WWII reaches Shanghai, two sisters See life from the perspective of an immigrant leave a life of privilege to enter arranged girl on the Nebraska plains in this novel. marriages in the US. One Thousand White Women The Pillars of Earth By Jim Fergus By Ken Follett The story of May Dodd and other pioneer Intrigue surrounds the construction of a women who intermarried among the Cheyenne cathedral in 12th century England. Indians.

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame The Alienist Historical Victor Hugo By Caleb Carr A gothic novel that inspired a flood of tourists This novel studies murder in 1896 New York to Paris’ most famous cathedral. City. Fiction Outlander The Good Earth By Diana Gabaldon By Pearl S. Buck . Read this novel series that highlights Scottish A book about the family life of a Chinese village clan life in the 18th century. before the 1949 Revolution. An essential element of historical fiction is that it is set in the past Twelve Rooms of the Nile The Thorn Birds By Enid Shomer By Colleen McCullough and pays attention to the A fictional friendship between Florence Follows the Cleary family in the Australian manners, social conditions and Nightingale and Gustave Flaubert, set in outback from 1915 to 1969. Egypt in 1850. other details of the period The Grapes of Wrath depicted. Authors also frequently Romola By John Steinbeck choose to explore notable By George Eliot The story of sharecroppers in the Great Eliot's study of life in Florence during the Depression. historical figures in these settings, 15th century Italian Renaissance. allowing readers to better The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Brooklyn Society understand how these individuals By Colm Toibin By Mary Ann Shaffer might have responded to their Set in Brooklyn and Ireland in the early 1950s, This novel is a celebration of the written word in when one young woman crosses the ocean to all its guises, and of finding connection in the environments. make a new life for herself. most surprising ways.

London I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your By Edward Rutherfurd Company The birth of the River Thames to present time. By Brian Hall Lewis and Clark expedition The Underground Railroad By Colson Whitehead The Sisters Brothers A kinetic adventure tale of one woman’s By Patrick DeWitt ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage Multiple award winner about two 19th century hired guns traveling from Oregon to California.

The Nightingale Death Comes for the Archbishop Caravans By Kristin Hannah By Willa Cather By James A. Michener Two sisters face horrific challenges in France Two priests travel 1851 New Mexico in the Story of an American diplomat in Afganistan during WWII. wake of the Mexican-American War. following WWII.

The Book Thief The Far Pavilions August 1914 By Marcus Zusak By M.M. Kaye By Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn an unforgettable story about the ability of books This romantic epic set in 19th century India An epic chronicle of events leading up to the to feed the soul. Winner of the 2007 Book- under British rule has been compared to Gone Russian Revolution. Browse Ruby Award. With the Wind. Three Day Road All the Light We Cannot See Oscar and Lucinda By Joseph Boyden By Anthony Doerr By Peter Carey Two young Cree men from Northern Ontario This heart wrenching tale of WWII won the Winner of the 1988 Booker Prize, about the become snipers for the Canadian army in WWI. Pulizer in 2015. misadventures of two gambling misfits in 19th century Australia. Midnight’s Children The Other Boleyn Girl By Salman Rushdie By Philippa Gregory March A Story of children born at or near the moment An entertaining if inaccurate portrayal of Anne By Geraldine Brooks of India’s independence from Britain. Boleyn’s sister, Mary. Retells Little Women from the perspective of the absent Mr. March. The Poisonwood Bible Wolf Hall By Barbara Kingsolver By Hilary Mantel The March The family of a Baptist missionary adjusts to Booker Prize winner documenting Thomas By E.L. Doctorow life in the Congolese jungle in the early 1960s. Cromwell’s rise to power in the court of King Sherman’s March to the Sea near the end of Henry VIII. the American Civil War, told through a large Memoirs of a Geisha and diverse cast of characters. By Arthur Golden Bring Up the Bodies The fictional memoir of a geisha, from age nine By Hilary Mantel The Long Song to adulthood, in pre– and post WWII Japan. Sequel to Wolf Hall, chronicling Cromwell’s By Andrea Levy machinations to rid Henry VIII of Anne Boleyn. A bawdy, farcical, yet unflinching portrait of a The Night Watch 19th century Jamaican slave girl on the brink By Sarah Waters The Help of emancipation. An evocative story of London during WWII, told By Kathryn Stockett in reverse chronological order. a timeless and universal story about the lines The Painted Girls we abide by, and the ones we don't. By Cathy Marie Buchanan The Historian The model for Edgar Degas’ Little Dancer Aged By Elizabeth Kostova The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet Fourteen is brought vividly to life. An interweaving of the stories of Vlad the Im- By David Mitchell paler, Count Dracula and a 1930s search for Love story between a clerk for the Dutch East The Luminaries Vlad’s tomb. India Company and a disfigured Japanese By Eleanor Catton midwife. Part love story, part mystery, set against the Arthur & George backdrop of New Zealand’s 19th century gold By Julian Barnes Titans rush. The story of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s efforts to By Leila Meacham exonerate George Edalji, a solicitor falsely ac- Texas in the early 1900s, a heartfelt, big- cused of a crime. canvas story full of surprising twists and deep emotional resonance.