Historical Fiction: Home
A selection of historical fiction titles that can be found at the Greenburgh Public Library.
Virtual Browse New Historical Fiction
The Girl from the Channel Islands
Summer 1940: Hedy Bercu fled Vienna two years ago. Now she watches the skies over Jersey for German planes, convinced that an invasion is imminent. When it finally comes, there is no counterattack from Allied forces--the Channel Islands are simply not worth defending. Most islanders and occupying forces settle into an uneasy coexistence, but for Hedy, the situation is perilously different. For Hedy is Jewish--a fact that could mean deportation, or worse.
The Personal Librarian
The remarkable story of J. P. Morgan's personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, the Black American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white to leave a lasting legacy that enriched our nation, from New York Times author Marie Benedict, and acclaimed author Victoria Christopher Murray.
Story of a female physician working on the battlefields of WWI France. After graduating from medical school at the University of Edinburgh in 1917, Eleanor Atherton is determined to practice medicine despite her family’s wish for her to find a husband.
HISTORICAL FICTION
A selection of historical fiction books that can be found at the Greenburgh Public Library. Many more can be found by searching the Library catalog.
Suggested Books
The Alice Network by ISBN: 9780062654199Publication Date: 2017-06-06In this enthralling novel from New York Times bestselling author Kate Quinn, two women--a female spy recruited to the real-life Alice Network in France during World War I and an unconventional American socialite searching for her cousin in 1947--are brought together in a mesmerizing story of courage and redemption.
The Book Thief by ISBN: 9780375842207Publication Date: 2007-09-11The extraordinary, beloved novel about the ability of books to feed the soul even in the darkest of times. It is 1939. Nazi Germany. Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can't resist-books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement.
Christy by ISBN: 9781683701262Publication Date: 2017-10-1750th Anniversary Edition of the New York Times Bestselling Novel The train taking nineteen-year-old teacher Christy Huddleston from her home in Asheville, North Carolina, might as well be transporting her to another world. The Smoky Mountain community of Cutter Gap feels suspended in time, trapped by poverty, superstitions, and century-old traditions. But as Christy struggles to find acceptance in her new home, some see her--and her one-room school--as a threat to their way of life.
City of Girls by ISBN: 9781594634734Publication Date: 2019-06-04A unique love story set in the New York City theater world during the 1940s. Told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret.
Cold Mountain by ISBN: 9780802142849Publication Date: 2006-08-31Sorely wounded and fatally disillusioned in the fighting at Petersburg, a Confederate soldier named Inman decides to walk back to his home in the Blue Ridge mountains to Ada, the woman he loves. His trek across the disintegrating South brings him into intimate and sometimes lethal converse with slaves and marauders, bounty hunters and witches.
Dear George, Dear Mary by ISBN: 9781250162946Publication Date: 2019-02-19A novel about heiress Mary Philipse's relationship with George Washington, based on historical accounts, letters, and personal journals bynine-time New York Emmy Award-winning journalistMary Calvi.
The Diary of Mattie Spenser by ISBN: 0312187106Publication Date: 1998-05-15No one is more surprised than Mattie Spenser herself when Luke Spenser, considered the great catch of their small Iowa town, asks her to marry him. Less than a month later, they are off in a covered wagon to build a home on the Colorado frontier. Mattie's only company is a slightly mysterious husband and her private journal, where she records the joys and frustrations not just of frontier life, but also of a new marriage to a handsome but distant stranger. As she and Luke make life together on the harsh and beautiful plains, Mattie learns some bitter truths about her husband and the girl he left behind and finds love where she least expects it. Dramatic and suspenseful, this is an unforgettable story of hardship, friendship and survival.
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by ISBN: 9780375508417Publication Date: 2002-05-07It's first the story of two women in the 1980s, of gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode telling her life story to Evelyn, who is in the sad slump of middle age. The tale she tells is also of two women--of the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth--who back in the thirties ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, a Southern kind of Cafe Wobegon offering good barbecue and good coffee and all kinds of love and laughter, even an occasional murder.
The Great Alone by ISBN: 9781250229533Publication Date: 2019-09-24A desperate family seeks a new beginning in the near-isolated wilderness of Alaska only to find that their unpredictable environment is less threatening than the erratic behavior found in human nature.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Movie Tie-In Edition) by ISBN: 9781984801814Publication Date: 2018-07-10A remarkable tale of the island of Guernsey during the German Occupation, and of a society as extraordinary as its name. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society--born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island--boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all.
The Help by ISBN: 9780399155345Publication Date: 2009-02-10Aibileen is a black maid in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, who's always taken orders quietly, but lately she's unable to hold her bitterness back. Her friend Minny has never held her tongue but now must somehow keep secrets about her employer that leave her speechless. White socialite Skeeter just graduated college. She's full of ambition, but without a husband, she's considered a failure. Together, these seemingly different women join together to write a tell-all book about work as a black maid in the South, that could forever alter their destinies and the life of a small town...
The Invisible Life of Addie Larue by ISBN: 9780765387561Publication Date: 2020-10-06France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever--and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world. But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.
Memoirs of a Geisha by ISBN: 9781400096893Publication Date: 2005-11-22This novel presents with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism the true confessions of one of Japan's most celebrated geisha. Appearances are paramount; where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion.
Next Year in Havana by ISBN: 9780399586682Publication Date: 2018-02-06Havana, 1958. The daughter of a sugar baron, nineteen-year-old Elisa Perez is part of Cuba's high society, where she is largely sheltered from the country's growing political unrest--until she embarks on a clandestine affair with a passionate revolutionary...
The Nickel Boys (Winner 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) by ISBN: 9780385537070Publication Date: 2019-07-16The story of two boys unjustly sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. When Elwood Curtis, a black boy growing up in 1960s Tallahassee, is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, he finds himself trapped in a grotesque chamber of horrors. Elwood's only salvation is his friendship with fellow "delinquent" Turner.
The Nightingale by ISBN: 9780312577223Publication Date: 2015-02-03France, 1939 - In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. When a German captain requisitions Vianne's home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything.
Pride and Prejudice by ISBN: 9781909621657Publication Date: 2016-07-19A tour de force of wit and sparkling dialogue, Pride and Prejudice shows how the headstrong Elizabeth Bennet and the aristocratic Mr Darcy must have their pride humbled and their prejudices dissolved before they can acknowledge their love for each other. Austen's best-loved novel is an unforgettable story about the inaccuracy of first impressions, the power of reason, and above all the strange dynamics of human relationships and emotions.
The Radium Girls by ISBN: 9781492649359Publication Date: 2017-04-18The incredible true story of the women heroes who were exposed to radium in factories across the U.S. in the early 20th century, and their brave and groundbreaking battle to strengthen workers' rights, even as the fatal poison claimed their own lives.
Sisters in Arms by ISBN: 9780062964588Publication Date: 2021-08-03Story of the Six Triple Eight, the only all-Black battalion of the Women's Army Corps, who made the dangerous voyage to Europe to ensure American servicemen received word from their loved ones during World War II.
The Soldier's Wife by ISBN: 9781401341701Publication Date: 2011-06-28As World War II draws closer and closer to Guernsey, Vivienne de la Mare knows that there will be sacrifices to be made. Not just for herself, but for her two young daughters and for her mother-in-law, for whom she cares while her husband is away fighting. What she does not expect is that she will fall in love with one of the enigmatic German soldiers who take up residence in the house next door to her home.
The Song of Achilles by ISBN: 9780062060624Publication Date: 2012-08-28A tale of gods, kings, immortal fame, and the human heart, The Song of Achilles is a dazzling literary feat that brilliantly reimagines Homer's enduring masterwork, The Iliad. An action-packed adventure and an epic love story.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by ISBN: 9780061120077Publication Date: 2006-05-30Growing up in Williamsburg, New York demanded fortitude, precocity, and strength of spirit. Often scorned by neighbors for her family's erratic and eccentric behavior--such as her father Johnny's taste for alcohol and Aunt Sissy's habit of marrying serially without the formality of divorce--no one, least of all Francie, could say that the Nolans' life lacked drama.
We Were the Lucky Ones by ISBN: 9780399563096Publication Date: 2018-01-02It is the spring of 1939 and three generations of the Kurc family are doing their best to live normal lives, even as the shadow of war grows closer. But soon the horrors overtaking Europe will become inescapable and the Kurcs will be flung to the far corners of the world, each desperately trying to navigate his or her own path to safety.
Where the Crawdads Sing by ISBN: 9780735219090Publication Date: 2018-08-14In Where the Crawdads Sing, Owens juxtaposes an exquisite ode to the natural world against a heartbreaking coming of age story and a surprising murder investigation. Thought-provoking, wise, and deeply moving, Owens's debut novel reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.
The Woman with the Blue Star by ISBN: 9780778389385Publication Date: 2021-05-041942. Sadie Gault is eighteen and living with her parents in the Kraków Ghetto during World War II. When the Nazis liquidate the ghetto, Sadie and her pregnant mother are forced to seek refuge in the perilous tunnels beneath the city. One day Sadie looks up through a grate and sees a girl about her own age buying flowers. Ella Stepanek is an affluent Polish girl living a life of relative ease with her stepmother, who has developed close alliances with the occupying Germans.
The Yellow Bird Sings by ISBN: 9781250179760Publication Date: 2020-03-03In Poland, as World War II rages, a mother hides with her young daughter, a musical prodigy whose slightest sound may cost them their lives. As Nazi soldiers round up the Jews in their town, Róza and her 5-year-old daughter, Shira, flee, seeking shelter in a neighbor's barn. Hidden in the hayloft day and night, Shira struggles to stay still and quiet, as music pulses through her and the farmyard outside beckons.
The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata by
The story of Raymundo Mata, a visually impaired member of a 19th century anti-Spanish Philippine revolutionary society, is a polyphonic whirlwind of voices and histories. Told in the form of a memoir, the novel traces Mata's childhood, his education in Manila, his love affairs, and his discovery of the writer and revolutionary, Jose Rizal. Mata's autobiography, however, is de-centred by present-day foreword(s), afterword(s), and footnotes from three fiercely quarrelsome and comic voices: a nationalist editor, a neo-Freudian psychoanalyst critic, and a translator, Mimi C. Magsalin (who also appeared as a character in Apostol's novel Insurrecto).
ISBN: 9781641291835Publication Date: 2021-01-12
