Historical Fiction World Literature

Noreen McAuliffe's Come Down in the World, a story about a nineteenth-century logging camp, wears a style so seamless and perfectly matched it feels tailor-made. From the first few lines to the quietly explosive finale, the listener is surrounded with instant authenticity that transports us to a time, place, and situation with stakes so high that most of us need a daring writer to imagine them for us.

En plena Guerra Civil española, el joven médico Víctor Dalmau, junto a su amiga pianista Roser Bruguera, se ven obligados a abandonar Barcelona, exiliarse y cruzar los Pirineos rumbo a Francia. A bordo del Winnipeg, un navío fletado por el poeta Pablo Neruda que llevó a más de dos mil españoles rumbo a Valparaíso, embarcarán en busca de la paz y la libertad que no tuvieron en su país.

In 1946, Eva leaves behind the rubble of Berlin for the streets of New York City, stepping from the fiery aftermath of one war into another, far colder one, where power is more important than principles and lies are more plentiful than the truth. Eva holds the key to a deadly secret: Project Bluebird - a horrific experiment of the concentration camps, capable of tipping the balance of world power. Both the Americans and the Soviets want Bluebird, and it is something that neither should ever be allowed to possess.

In 1940s Vancouver, the Japanese have just bombed Pearl Harbor and racial tension is building. The RCMP are rounding up “suspicious” young men, fishing boats and property are being seized, and internment camps are only months away. Daniel Sugiura, a young reporter for the New Canadian, the only Japanese Canadian newspaper allowed to keep publishing during the war, reveals the stories of members of Vancouver’s Japanese community in the midst of war.

Aquí se cuenta la vida de un hombre que solía despertarse, casi siempre, en un lugar diferente del que originalmente había elegido para dormir. Tenía este extraño hábito porque más de la mitad de su vida adulta, 17 años de los 30 que vivió antes de sumarse a una revolución, había sido prófugo de la justicia, bandolero, ladrón, asaltante de caminos, cuatrero. Y tenía miedo de que la debilidad de las horas sueño fuera su perdición.

Germany, 1944. Taken from the camps to serve the Führer himself, Anke Hoff is assigned as midwife to one of Hitler’s inner circle. If she refuses, her family will die. Torn between her duty as a caregiver and her hatred for the Nazi regime, Anke is swept into a life unlike anything she’s ever known - and she discovers that many of those at the Berghof are just as trapped as she is. And soon, she’s falling for a man who will make her world more complicated still.

In late 1944, America’s recapture of the Philippines is jeopardized by what seems an insurmountable threat from Japan: immense Yamato-class battleships, which dwarf every other ship at sea. Built in total secrecy, these 76,000-ton warships seem invincible. American military intelligence knows of two such ships, but there are rumors of a third, built not as a battleship but as an aircraft carrier. Now ready to go operational from Japan’s heavily defended and mined Inland Sea, a carrier of that size could disrupt the entire invasion effort.

When three little girls—Anna, Bernie, and Elica—make a pact to be blood sisters for life, they believe nothing can come between them. Anna is from an affluent Jewish family, while Bernie and Elica are from poor Austrian families who barely make ends meet. As they get older, their social differences become all too real. With infectious Jew-hate-laden rhetoric from Nazi Germany spreading into Austria, it is only a matter of time before their bond of friendship gets severely tested.

Paris, 1939. Le destin d'Emily Ann Saxby, une riche Américaine, bascule quand elle fait la rencontre d'un révolutionnaire traqué par les nazis. Alors que la guerre incendie l'Europe, Cécile Maltais, jeune Canadienne française, est recrutée par les services secrets britanniques. Des décennies plus tard, une romancière accepte d'écrire la biographie d'une espionne, tandis qu'un pasteur récemment libéré de prison reçoit les confidences douloureuses d'une paroissienne centenaire.

After being branded during the battle of Jericho, Moriyah has had no prospects for marriage - until now. She hopes to please the man, but things go horribly wrong and she is forced to flee for her life. Seeking safety at one of the Levitical cities of refuge, she is unprepared for the dangers she faces, and the enemies - and allies - she encounters on her way. Seven years ago, Moriyah was taken captive in Jericho and branded with the mark of the Canaanite gods. Now the Israelites are experiencing peace in their new land, but Moriyah has yet to find her own peace. Because of the shameful mark on her face, she hides behind her veil at all times.

Katherine Woodville's sister never gave her a choice. A happy girl of modest means, Kate hardly expected to become a maker of kings. But when her sister impulsively marries King Edward IV in secret, Katherine's life is no longer hers to control....

Japan has just attacked Pearl Harbor. In London, Prime Minister Churchill disappears. In Washington, President Roosevelt faces an alliance with conflicting objectives. In the Soviet Union, dictator Joseph Stalin watches a Nazi onslaught maul his country. From their isolated perch on Sark Island, feudal rulers Dame Marian Littlefield and her husband oppose their German occupiers in the only way left to them—through a battle of wits. They wonder about the location and well-being of their offspring, Paul, Claire, Lance, and Jeremy.

In 1932 Berlin, Bertie, a trans man, and his friends spend carefree nights at the Eldorado Club, the epicenter of Berlin’s thriving queer community. An employee of the renowned Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld at the Institute of Sexual Science, Bertie works to improve queer rights in Germany and beyond, but everything changes when Hitler rises to power. The institute is raided, the Eldorado is shuttered, and queer people are rounded up. Bertie barely escapes with his girlfriend, Sofie, to a nearby farm. There they take on the identities of an elderly couple and live for more than a decade in isolation.

In this concluding volume of Neal Stephenson’s epic work, “Half-Cocked Jack” Shaftoe must escape the noose of Jack Ketch; the rivalry between Newton and Leibniz comes to a head; and Daniel Waterhouse pursues his dream to build the Logic Mill

On his last long walk, septuagenarian war hero, deserter, and professor Alessandro Giuliani shares his past with an illiterate young factory worker, spinning a remarkable tale of heart-stopping escapes, of loves unrequited and won, of madmen, dwarfs, and mafiosi. But overshadowing all is his most miraculous and terrible adventure, the Great War: a surreal parade of horrors that devastated and defined Alessandro, yet enabled him to experience fully the magic and beauty of the absurd human comedy called life.

Dover 1940 As firebombs fall on Dover, Edie Castle's life is thrown into turmoil when the garage where she lives and works is damaged and her beloved boss is arrested. With no job and nowhere else to go, Edie returns to Castle's Café and her formidable mother, Nellie. Living with her mother is never easy, but tensions reach boiling point when an old friend of Nellie's arrives looking for a place to stay. Meanwhile, desperate to clear her boss's name, Edie turns to his nephew for help.

1915. May and Naomi are extended family, their grandmothers’ lives inseparably entwined on a Virginia plantation in the volatile time leading up to the Civil War. For both women, the twentieth century promises social transformation and equal opportunity. May, a young white woman, is on the brink of achieving the independent life she’s dreamed of since childhood. Naomi, a nurse, mother, and leader of the NAACP, has fulfilled her own dearest desire: buying a home for her family. But they both are about to learn that dreams can be destroyed in an instant.

In an ancient time of fear and superstition, she stood apart because of her unusual blue eyes. In a land of great stone cities and trackless wilderness, she sought her own unique path. But it was with the clan that accepted her - and in the heart of the magic man who saved her - that she found her ultimate destiny. Her name was Kwani. But legend would call her She Who Remembers.…

Island of the World is the story of a child born in 1933 into the turbulent world of the Balkans and tracing his life into the third millennium. The central character is Josip Lasta, the son of an impoverished school teacher in a remote village high in the mountains of the Bosnian interior. As the novel begins, World War II is underway and the entire region of Yugoslavia is torn by conflicting factions: German and Italian occupying armies, and the rebel forces that resist them the fascist Ustashe, Serb nationalist Chetniks, and Communist Partisans.

Michigan's Upper Peninsula is blessed with a treasure trove of storytellers, poets, and historians, all seeking to capture a sense of Yooper Life from settler's days to the far-flung future. Since 2017, the U.P. Reader offers a rich collection of their voices that embraces the U.P.'s natural beauty and way of life, along with a few surprises. The 60-plus short works in this sixth annual volume take listeners on U.P. road and boat trips from the Keweenaw to the Soo and from St. Ignace to Escanaba.