Historical Fiction American Literature

On the eve of China’s Cultural Revolution and her sixteenth birthday, Mei dreams of becoming a model revolutionary. When the Communist Party recruits girls for a mysterious duty in the capital, she seizes the opportunity to escape her impoverished village. It is only when Mei arrives at the Chairman’s opulent residence—a forbidden city unto itself—that she learns that the girls’ job is to dance with the Party elites. Ambitious and whip-smart, Mei beelines toward the Chairman.

As a child in Spain, Puri always knew her passion for chocolate was inherited from her father. But it’s not until his death that she learns of something else she’s inherited - a cocoa estate in Vinces, Ecuador, a town nicknamed “París Chiquito”. Eager to claim her birthright and filled with hope for a new life after the devastation of World War I, she and her husband Cristóbal set out across the Atlantic Ocean. But it soon becomes clear someone is angered by Puri’s claim to the estate…

While attending the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, Winnifred Wylde believes she witnessed a woman being kidnapped. She tries to convince her father, an inspector with the Chicago police, to look into reports of mysterious disappearances around the White City. Inspector Wylde tries to dismiss her claims as exaggeration of an overactive imagination, but he eventually concedes to letting her go undercover as secretary to the man in question - if she takes her pistol for protection and Jude Thorpe, a policeman, for bodyguard.

Her name is Omakayas, or Little Frog, because her first step was a hop, and she lives on an island in Lake Superior. It is 1850 and the lives of the Ojibwe have returned to a familiar rhythm: they build their birchbark houses in the summer, go to the ricing camps in the fall to harvest and feast, and move to their cozy cedar log cabins near the town of LaPointe before the first snows.

Ha Jin displays his impressive storytelling gifts in this richly textured examination of contemporary China in 1989. Professor Yang, a respected literature scholar, suffers a stroke and is confined to a hospital bed. Now Jian Wan, Yang’s brightest student and future son-in-law, must suspend his rigorous studies to care for his mentor. Jian dutifully keeps watch as Yang begins raving madly, often pleading with unseen tormentors. Has Yang lost his grip on sanity, or is he no longer capable of hiding deeply buried, painful secrets?

This dramatic sequel to Jeff Shaara's best selling Rise to Rebellion continues his chronicle of the key characters of the American Revolution and animates some of the most compelling scenes in America's history: Washington's harrowing winter at Valley Forge, Benedict Arnold's tragic downfall, and the fiercely-fought battles at Trenton, Brandywine Creek, and Yorktown.

A bustling port city, Charleston, South Carolina, is the crossroads of the American Revolution, where supplies and weapons for the rebel army must be unloaded and smuggled north. From the window of the dressmaker's shop where she works, lovely Celia Garth, recently engaged to the heir to a magnificent plantation, watches all of this thrilling activity. When the unthinkable occurs and the British capture and occupy Charleston, bringing fiery retribution to the surrounding countryside, Celia sees her world destroyed.

Two young women go missing decades apart. Both are fearless, both are lost. And both will have their revenge. Build Your House Around My Body takes us from colonial mansions to ramshackle zoos, from sweaty nightclubs to the jostling seats of motorbikes, from ex-pat flats to sizzling back-alley street carts. Spanning more than fifty years of Vietnamese history and barreling toward an unforgettable conclusion, this is a time-traveling, heart-pounding, border-crossing fever dream of a novel that will haunt you long after the last minute.

Joe McCabe returns the mountains, and the solitary life he prefers. It is alone by a campfire at night, or riding along the ridges by day, that he can let the pain from his past fully die. But when a figure he hasn't seen in years steps back into his life, bringing a whole new load of trouble, will it be more than he can handle?

In the years before the Mexican Revolution, Mexico is ruled by a tiny elite that apes European culture, grows rich from foreign investment, and prizes racial purity. The vast majority of Mexicans, who are native or of mixed native and Spanish blood, are politically powerless and slowly starving to death. Presiding over this corrupt system is Don Porfirio Díaz, the ruthless and inscrutable president of the Republic. Against this backdrop, The City of Palaces opens in a Mexico City jail with the meeting of Miguel Sarmiento and Alicia Gavilán.

When Miss Beatrix Waterbury's Chicago-bound train ride is interrupted by a heist, Mr. Norman Nesbit, a man of science who believes his research was the target of the heist, comes to her aid. Despite the fact that they immediately butt heads, they join forces to make a quick escape. Upon her arrival in Chicago, Beatrix is surprised to discover her supposedly querulous Aunt Gladys shares her own suffragette passions. Encouraged by Gladys to leave her sheltered world, Beatrix begins working as a salesclerk at the Marshall Field and Company department store.

Chargée d'écrire une préface pour l'extraordinaire journal que Marie Curie a tenu après la mort de Pierre Curie, Rosa Montero s'est vue prise dans un tourbillon de mots. Au fil de son récit du parcours extraordinaire et largement méconnu de cette femme hors normes, elle construit un livre à mi-chemin entre les souvenirs personnels et la mémoire collective, entre l'analyse de notre époque et l'évocation intime. Elle nous parle du dépassement de la douleur, de la perte de l'homme aimé qu'elle vient elle-même de vivre, du deuil, de la reconstruction de soi, des relations entre les hommes et les femmes, de la splendeur du sexe, de la bonne mort et de la belle vie, de la science et de l'ignorance, de la force salvatrice de la littérature et de la sagesse de ceux qui apprennent à jouir de l'existence avec plénitude et légèreté.

In November 1960, all of America watched as a tiny six-year-old black girl, surrounded by federal marshals, walked through a mob of screaming segregationists and into her school. An icon of the civil rights movement, Ruby Bridges chronicles each dramatic step of this pivotal event in history through her own words.

As Paris rediscovers its joie de vivre, Tabitha Knight, recently arrived from Detroit for an extended stay with her French grandfather, is on her own journey of discovery. Thanks to her neighbor and friend Julia Child, another ex-pat who's fallen head over heels for Paris, Tabitha is learning how to cook for her Grandpere and Oncle Rafe and Tabitha's sojourn is proving thoroughly delightful. That is, until the cold December day they return to Julia's building and learn that a body has been found in the cellar.

In God Don't Like Ugly, she weaves a powerful tale of devastating abuse, the strength of friendship, and the burden of terrible secrets. Shy, overweight Annette Goode is only seven years old when Mr. Boatwright, a boarder in her house, begins sexually abusing her. She keeps this information to herself for years, until gorgeous, self-assured Rhoda Nelson becomes her new friend. Annette confides in Rhoda and finds the strength and courage to survive to adulthood.

New York, 2006. Amy Sullivan’s life is a mess. Fired from her dream job at a prestigious newspaper, she gets a call from her 90-year-old grandmother in the South of France. Maureen Ritter flies to America, the land of her birth, ostensibly to visit her ailing sister, but soon she begins to share with Amy what she’s hidden for more than 60 years—the story of her war.

The distressed traveler Charlotte Cameron encounters on a rainy Scottish night is absolutely the worst man she could have invited into her carriage! It is Phillip Maddox, the reprehensible Duke of Colster, who brought the full weight of the ton's fury down upon her - simply because Charlotte encouraged her sister not to wed the powerful peer. And now the seductive devil responsible for her social ruin is sitting close enough to kiss....

There is no easy path for a woman aspiring to power. A concubine at the palace learns quickly that there are many ways to capture the emperor's attention. Many paint their faces white and style their hair attractively, hoping to lure in the One Above All with their beauty. Some present him with fantastic gifts, such as jade pendants and scrolls of calligraphy, while others rely on their knowledge of seduction to draw his interest. But young Mei knows nothing of these womanly arts, yet she will give the emperor a gift he can never forget.

Born in a time of violent upheaval, young Odion and his little sister, Tutelo, live in fear that one day Yellowtail Village will be attacked. When that day comes, and Odion and Tutelo are marched away as slaves, Odion's only hope is that his parents are coming to rescue them. They are. But War Chief Koracoo and Deputy Gonda think they are tracking an ordinary war party herding captive women and children to an enemy village. Instead, they are following close on the heels of a legendary evil.

In Mules and Men, some of the rich cultural heritage of black America is revealed and preserved. In the 1930s, Zora Neale Hurston returned to her home town of Eatonville, Florida, to collect and record the oral histories, songs, and sermons, many dating back to slavery times, that she remembered hearing as a child. These highly metaphorical folktales, "big old lies", and powerful songs helped her to recover her history, and preserve an important part of American culture.