Historical Fiction California

Juliet must bear the burden of caring for her younger sisters, but that doesn't thwart her desire to run away to be a star on the stage. Taking her sisters, she heads to New York, where her journey to stardom is swift, but the price of fame is dear.

""The Californians is an absolute pleasure from end to end, a thrilling, century-spanning, wholly American tale of art and money, family and land, treasure and time....A brilliant read for fans of Anthony Doerr, Dana Spiotta, and Don DeLillo.”—Matt Bell, author of Appleseed For fans...

Her sister gone, her roommates soon to follow, Leora Mitchell must now face the fact that she, along with the others, are mail-order brides. For years, her life revolved around Brown’s Textile Mill, her sister Lottie, and their friends. Now, as mail-order brides, they’d be scattered across the country, ready to start a new life. The only problem was Leora had no idea what that life looked like, nor did she have any idea who she was without the familiar faces she loved so much.

1958. Kate Morgan is looking for an escape, and she gets her chance by honoring a cryptic plea from her grandfather: Find the beautiful stranger. The search takes her to Hotel del Coronado, the beachfront landmark on the Southern California coast where filming is underway on the movie Some Like It Hot. For a movie lover like Kate, it’s a fantasy come true. So is the offer of a position at the glamorous hotel. But as sure as she is that Coronado is her future, Kate discovers it’s also where the ghosts of the past have come to stay.

Emmeline Amity Callahan is a feisty charmer with a needy heart. Emmeline's an ugly duckling. At least that's what she thinks, that is until she receives a gift that leads her to California's Big Valley where she makes a surprising discovery.

Cassy Kim is being set up as a new kind of espionage device: brilliant analyst, emotionally compromised by the artful leader of a mystical Muslim sect obsessed with divine judgment. But while her background makes her a perfect post-modern spy, her handlers have underestimated her ability to pursue her own agenda. She needs redemption from her own unknown past.

It's 92 AD. The imperial city of Rome rules Western civilization. A young man named Marco from Corinth joins a small team of brilliant engineers to work on classified projects. Titus, the Roman Prefect of Egypt, knew Marco's father and he sponsors the young man, who then promptly falls in love with Titus' daughter, Paula. Titus orders Marco's team to find a new weapon to help defeat the rebels. They create a shockingly powerful device, but before they can deliver it to Titus, the rebels obtain it and begin murdering.

“Gross is a top-notch thriller writer.” —Chicago Sun-Times “Andrew Gross knows how to make your skin crawl. Eyes Wide Open should be read with the door shut and the lights on; a truly terrifying descent into evil.” —Nelson DeMille New York Times bestselling author Andrew Gross...

Seventeen-year-old Hannah Bailey is at the center of a Nazi secret, a secret hidden for nearly a century. Until now. It's 2029. And as the United States teeters on the brink of disaster, Hannah's life begins to crumble all around her. Tragedy strikes unexpectedly. Someone is trying to kill her. And suddenly no one - including herself - is quite who they seem. Unexpected love helps counter the turbulence, but even then, her heart is still torn in two very different directions.

"I couldn't have loved it more." --Fannie Flagg, New York Times bestselling author "Sizzling small-town life in the American South with its secret history, vivid characters, and juicy dramas." --Adriana Trigiani, New York Times bestselling author Featuring two strong women, mother-daughter...

The Mexican American War has ended, but in a California divided between two nations, Anglo squatters continue to antagonize citizens of Mexican descent by making claims on their land. Against this charged backdrop, the lives of the Alamar family - the rightful owners of a San Diego ranch - become politically, economically, and romantically entwined with a family of New England settlers, the Darrells. Inspired by experiences in her own life, Ruiz de Burton insightfully captured a troubling time in American history - a period of intense corruption, greed, racism, and classism.

Pasadena, David Ebershoff's sweeping, richly imagined novel, is set against the backdrop of Southern California during the first half of the twentieth century and charts its rapid transformation from frontier to suburb.

Beneath the California Sky is a historical romance set in the 1880s in the frontier town of Stone Ridge, California. The story follows Anna Prescott, a woman who flees her controlling family in Charleston, seeking independence and a new life in the West. Upon arriving in Stone Ridge, she quickly befriends Mary Harlow, a fellow teacher, and together, they work to build a school for the children of the growing town. Anna’s newfound peace is soon challenged when she meets Michael Hawthorne, a former outlaw trying to escape his past.

Most Anticipated YA by Buzzfeed A fresh spin on the cult-classic Election meets Darius the Great Is Not Okay in Jasmine Zumideh Needs a Win when an international incident crashes into a high school election, and Jasmine is caught between doing the right thing and chasing her dream. It’s 1979...

Southern California, 1960s: endless sunny days surfing in Malibu, followed by glittering neon nights at Whisky A-Go-Go. In an era when women are expected to be housewives, Carol Donelly is breaking the mold as a legendary female surfer struggling to compete in a male-dominated sport—and her daughters, Mindy and Ginger, bear the weight of her unconventional lifestyle.

“Written with grace, empathy, and bright imagination, Learning to See gives us the vivid interior life of a remarkably resilient woman. Dorothea Lange’s story is about passion and art, love and family, but also about the sacrifices women make—and have always made—to illuminate the truth...

“Destined to be a classic L.A. novel.”—Michael Connelly When a teen runs away from his father’s mysterious commune, he sets in motion a domino effect that will connect six characters desperate for hope and love, set across the sun-bleached canvas of Los Angeles. From the acclaimed author...

In this compulsively-readable historical novel, from the author of the critically-acclaimed Two Sisters, comes the story of two young women—one in America’s Gilded Age, one in scrappy modern-day California—whose lives are linked by a single tragic afternoon in history. 1888: Elizabeth...

Calafia is a historical fiction about California’s colonization filled with mystery, suspense, and political saga. Listen to this untold story of the Spanish expedition to settle and civilize the frontier known as Alta California. This fascinating account chronicles the suspenseful clashes of the political architects who planned the expedition. The explorers' grueling journey to the unsettled land and the Indians' resistance to their arrival challenging their culture on the early American western frontier.

Rancho Santa Elena in 1987 seems like the ideal Southern California paradise—that is, until a series of strange crimes threatens to unravel the town’s social fabric: workers attacked with mysterious weapons; a wealthy real estate developer found dead in the pool of his beach house. The only clues are poison and red threads found at both crime scenes. As Detective Benjamin Wade and forensic expert Natasha Betencourt struggle to connect the incidents, they begin to wonder: Why Santa Elena? And why now?