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Historical Fiction Book Recommendation Thread

Are you a lover of Historical Fiction

  • Yes

    Votes: 69 90.8%
  • No

    Votes: 1 1.3%
  • I am new to the genre

    Votes: 6 7.9%

  • Total voters
    76

NSP30

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Good Day, my fellow historical fiction lovers.

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This thread is to recommend your favorite, new, classic, timeless, historical fiction novels. Recommendations can be of different genres such as literary fiction, mystery, horror, romance, fantasy, classics, modern classics, etc. The authors can be of any race, ethnicity, or xesual orientation. But please try to be diverse in terms of location, race, etc, I would love to see some historical fiction recommended set all over the world, this does not mean I don't want you posting your favorites set in Victorian England, just that I want to see some diversity. Now the one caveat is that the books must take place at least 50 years into the past, which would be a cut off period for most historical books fiction or non-fiction, so no books can be posted after 1970. (although I am willing to debate on this)

Need some more info on what is Historical Fiction before you recommend a book?

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Happy Reading!

P.S.
Discussion of the books encouraged as long as they are respectful of another person's views. Please be tactful if you don't care for a book someone recommends.
 

moved_cookie

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Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly- A YA book, but I enjoyed it. Set in France.

Not sure if it counts, but The Red Tent by Anita Diamant, loosely based on the story of Dinah from the book of Genesis.
 

NSP30

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Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly- A YA book, but I enjoyed it. Set in France.

Not sure if it counts, but The Red Tent by Anita Diamant, loosely based on the story of Dinah from the book of Genesis.
Thank you for the recommendation. I have never read a YA historical fiction novel so this will be added to my list.
Yes, The Red Tent is Historical Fiction as well. People talk about this book a lot so I will add this one as well.
 

Pure Heroine

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Pachinko - Min Jin Lee. It follows a family of Korean refugees living in Japan during the early 20th century. Very long and intense, but one of the best books I've ever read.

Homegoing - Yaa Gyasi. Two Nigerian sisters are torn apart by slavery, and each chapter follows one of their descendants, leading up to the modern day.

Wolf Hall (the series) - Hilary Mantel. Okay, I'll admit that pretty much everyone I recommend this series to doesn't really like it, but I really do. It's a dense read and can be a bit difficult to keep up with due to Mantel's unique writing style, but it's still very gripping. It's a reimagining of Thomas Cromwell and his rise to power in Henry VIII's court.
 

NSP30

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Pachinko - Min Jin Lee. It follows a family of Korean refugees living in Japan during the early 20th century. Very long and intense, but one of the best books I've ever read.

Homegoing - Yaa Gyasi. Two Nigerian sisters are torn apart by slavery, and each chapter follows one of their descendants, leading up to the modern day.

Wolf Hall (the series) - Hilary Mantel. Okay, I'll admit that pretty much everyone I recommend this series to doesn't really like it, but I really do. It's a dense read and can be a bit difficult to keep up with due to Mantel's unique writing style, but it's still very gripping. It's a reimagining of Thomas Cromwell and his rise to power in Henry VIII's court.
Yes, a Korean novel thank you, this is definitely going to the top of my historical fiction.
I love your recommendations. Wolf Hall the series has been on my list to read for a while.
 

Pure Heroine

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Yes, a Korean novel thank you, this is definitely going to the top of my historical fiction.
I love your recommendations. Wolf Hall the series has been on my list to read for a while.

You're very welcome! Those are the ones I can remember off the top of my head. Pachinko is one of my all-time favourite novels. I was in a daze for a long time after I put it down. It really opened my eyes about the severe discrimination Koreans face in Japan, even to this day.
 

NSP30

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You're very welcome! Those are the ones I can remember off the top of my head. Pachinko is one of my all-time favourite novels. I was in a daze for a long time after I put it down. It really opened my eyes about the severe discrimination Koreans face in Japan, even to this day.
Thank you again. I had a Korean co-worker and he told me about the discrimination and abuse Koreans faced at the hands Japanese people. It was interesting to learn because in America we think of Asians collectively but they have their own unique histories and grievances.
 

NSP30

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This is a new book by a Black author. It is new and will be released in America and Canada on Sept. 1 2020 and Sept 22 in the UK.
I plan on reading this one in the next few weeks.
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Kyoto, Japan, 1948. “Do not question. Do not fight. Do not resist.”

Such is eight-year-old Noriko “Nori” Kamiza’s first lesson. She will not question why her mother abandoned her with only these final words. She will not fight her confinement to the attic of her grandparents’ imperial estate. And she will not resist the scalding chemical baths she receives daily to lighten her skin.

The child of a married Japanese aristocrat and her African American GI lover, Nori is an outsider from birth. Her grandparents take her in, only to conceal her, fearful of a stain on the royal pedigree that they are desperate to uphold in a changing Japan. Obedient to a fault, Nori accepts her solitary life, despite her natural intellect and curiosity. But when chance brings her older half-brother, Akira, to the estate that is his inheritance and destiny, Nori finds in him an unlikely ally with whom she forms a powerful bond—a bond their formidable grandparents cannot allow and that will irrevocably change the lives they were always meant to lead. Because now that Nori has glimpsed a world in which perhaps there is a place for her after all, she is ready to fight to be a part of it—a battle that just might cost her everything.

Spanning decades and continents, Fifty Words for Rain is a dazzling epic about the ties that bind, the ties that give you strength, and what it means to be free.
 

CocoaGoddess

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The "Her Royal Spyness" series. It was recommended by the r/books subreddit, and I've been hooked and purchased the entire series.

It's much better if you listen to it though, the narrator is absolutely brilliant.

Takes place in 1930s Britain and Europe, main character is a penniless minor royal trying to make her way in the world and solving mysteries while doing so. I think that there are around 8 books so far, and each book covers a variety of topics, some are sobering (the last book was about Happy Valley Kenya and how awful the colonizers were), and some are really fun, like 1930s Hollywood.
 

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The "Her Royal Spyness" series. It was recommended by the r/books subreddit, and I've been hooked and purchased the entire series.

It's much better if you listen to it though, the narrator is absolutely brilliant.

Takes place in 1930s Britain and Europe, main character is a penniless minor royal trying to make her way in the world and solving mysteries while doing so. I think that there are around 8 books so far, and each book covers a variety of topics, some are sobering (the last book was about Happy Valley Kenya and how awful the colonizers were), and some are really fun, like 1930s Hollywood.
Thank you for the recommendation of this series, it seems like a fun read, particularly since I am a hopeless mystery lover. The author of this series is Rhys Bowen.
I am very happy to read that the last book captures the atrocities of colonialism. I hate when historical fiction books glaze over the horrors of past so that the reader can have a more palatable reading experience.
 

NSP30

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Some lesser known Black diaspora historical fiction novels
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Ambitious and masterfully-wrought, Lauren Francis-Sharma's Book of the Little Axe is an incredible journey, spanning decades and oceans from Trinidad to the American West during the tumultuous days of warring colonial powers and westward expansion.

In Trinidad, in 1796, teenage Rosa Rendón quietly but purposefully rebels against typical female roles and behavior. Bright, competitive, and opinionated, Rosa sees no reason she should learn to cook and keep house—it is obvious her talents lie in running the farm she expects to be her birthright, despite her two older siblings. But as her homeland goes from Spanish to British rule, it becomes increasingly unclear whether its free black property owners—Rosa's family among them—will be allowed to keep their assets, their land, and ultimately, their freedom.

By 1830, Rosa is living among the Crow Nation in Bighorn, Wyoming with her husband, Edward Rose and family. Her son Victor has reached the age where he should seek his vision and become a man. But his path is blocked by secrets Rosa has kept hidden from him. So Rosa sets out to take him on a journey to where his story began and, in turn, retraces her own roots, those of a girl who forged her own way from the middle of the ocean to the grassy hills of a far-away land.

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Conjure Women is a sweeping story that brings the world of the South before and after the Civil War vividly to life. Spanning eras and generations, it tells of the lives of three unforgettable women: Miss May Belle, a wise healing woman; her precocious and observant daughter Rue, who is reluctant to follow in her mother's footsteps as a midwife; and their master's daughter Varina. The secrets and bonds among these women and their community come to a head at the beginning of a war and at the birth of an accursed child, who sets the townspeople alight with fear and a spreading superstition that threatens their newly won, tenuous freedom.

Magnificently written, brilliantly researched, richly imagined, Conjure Women moves back and forth in time to tell the haunting story of Rue, Varina, and May Belle, their passions and friendships, and the lengths they will go to save themselves and those they love.

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In this riveting and emotionally powerful historical drama, an ex-FBI agent plunges into the darkest shadows of 1930s Europe, where everything he loves is on the line . . .

International consultant Prescott Sweet's mission is to bring justice to countries suffering from America's imperialistic interventions. With his outspoken artist wife, Loretta, and their two children, he lives a life of equality and continental elegance amid Europe's glittering capitals—beyond anything he ever dared hope for.

But he is still a man in hiding, from his past with the Bureau, from British Intelligence—and from his own tempting, dangerous skill at high-level espionage. So when he has the opportunity to live in Moscow and work at the American Embassy, Prescott and his family seize the chance to take refuge and at last put down roots in what they believe is a fair society.

Life in Russia, however, proves to be a beautiful lie. Reduced to bare survival, with his son gravely ill, Prescott calls on all his skills in a last-ditch effort to free his family from the grips of Stalin. But between honor and expediency, salvation and atrocity, he'll be forced to play an ever more merciless hand and commit unimaginable acts for a future that promises nowhere to run . . .

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In 1804, shortly before the Caribbean island of Saint Domingue is renamed Haiti, a group of women gather to bury a stillborn baby. Led by a lesbian healer and midwife named Mer, the women's lamentations inadvertently release the dead infant's "unused vitality" to draw Ezili—the Afro-Caribbean goddess of xesual desire and love—into the physical world.

As Ezili explores her newfound powers, she travels across time and space to inhabit the midwife's body—as well as those of Jeanne, a mixed-race dancer and the mistress of Charles Baudelaire living in 1880s Paris, and Meritet, an enslaved Greek-Nubian prostitute in ancient Alexandria.

Bound together by Ezili and "the salt road" of their sweat, blood, and tears, the three women struggle against a hostile world, unaware of the goddess's presence in their lives. Despite her magic, Mer suffers as a slave on a sugar plantation until Ezili plants the seeds of uprising in her mind. Jeanne slowly succumbs to the ravages of age and syphilis when her lover is unable to escape his mother's control. And Meritet, inspired by Ezili, flees her enslavement and makes a pilgrimage to Egypt, where she becomes known as Saint Mary.

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Stephen L. Carter's thrilling new novel takes as its starting point an alternate history: President Abraham Lincoln survives the assassination attempt at Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865. Two years later he is charged with overstepping his constitutional authority, both during and after the Civil War, and faces an impeachment trial . . .
Twenty-one-year-old Abigail Canner is a young black woman with a degree from Oberlin, a letter of employment from the law firm that has undertaken Lincoln's defense, and the iron-strong conviction, learned from her late mother, that "whatever limitations society might place on ordinary negroes, they would never apply to her." And so Abigail embarks on a life that defies the norms of every stratum of Washington society: working side by side with a white clerk, meeting the great and powerful of the nation, including the president himself. But when Lincoln's lead counsel is found brutally murdered on the eve of the trial, Abigail is plunged into a treacherous web of intrigue and conspiracy reaching the highest levels of the divided government.
Here is a vividly imagined work of historical fiction that captures the emotional tenor of post–Civil War America, a brilliantly realized courtroom drama that explores the always contentious question of the nature of presidential authority, and a galvanizing story of political suspense.
 

Victoria Baker Harber

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I read some good YA historical fiction by CW Gortner.

He did a really good one on Juana of Castille.

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I am working through the last of Hilary Mantel's series on Thomas Cromwell. In my opinion, her writing is superior to Phillipa Gregory's.
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Also like this one. I would consider it a good historical fiction classic by now.

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It is about England taking/adapting the Catherdal style from France for its churches with the whole period of the Anarchy as a backdrop.
 

NSP30

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I read some good YA historical fiction by CW Gortner.

He did a really good one on Juana of Castille.

19342339._SY475_.jpg


I am working through the last of Hilary Mantel's series on Thomas Cromwell. In my opinion, her writing is superior to Phillipa Gregory's.
71NdiDmAr2L.jpg


Also like this one. I would consider it a good historical fiction classic by now.

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It is about England taking/adapting the Catherdal style from France for its churches with the whole period of the Anarchy as a backdrop.

Thank you, the great recommendations. I watched the mini-series for Pillars of the Earth. I loved it. I can only imagine that the book is a thousand times better.

The Thomas Cromwell Trilogy is a popular series that has been on my list as well. Great writing and accurate history are what I am looking for most when I read literary historical fiction.


C.W Gortner's books seem really interesting, The Vatican Princess seems super interesting have you read that one? I am gonna add The Last Queen to my TBR, it is listed as a historical fiction thriller. I love thrillers.

Great list please add more books if you are so inclined.
 

NSP30

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A "wild opera of a novel,"* The Queen of the Night tells the mesmerizing story of Lilliet Berne, an orphan who left the American frontier for Europe and was swept into the glamour and terror of Second Empire France. She became a sensation of the Paris Opera, with every accolade but an original role—her chance at immortality. When one is offered to her, she finds the libretto is based on her deepest secret, something only four people have ever known. But who betrayed her? With "epic sweep, gorgeous language, and haunting details,"** Alexander Chee shares Lilliet's cunning transformation from circus rider to courtesan to legendary soprano, retracing the path that led to the role that could secure her reputation—or destroy her with the secrets it reveals.


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It is 1937 and Amabelle Désir, a young Haitian woman living in the Dominican Republic, has built herself a life as the servant and companion of the wife of a wealthy colonel. She and Sebastien, a cane worker, are deeply in love and plan to marry. But Amabelle's world collapses when a wave of genocidal violence, driven by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, leads to the slaughter of Haitian workers. Amabelle and Sebastien are separated, and she desperately flees the tide of violence for a Haiti she barely remembers.
Already acknowledged as a classic, this harrowing story of love and survival—from one of the most important voices of her generation—is an unforgettable memorial to the victims of the Parsley Massacre and a testimony to the power of human memory.

I had been trying to stay away from historical fiction about slavery, but this is by a Ghanaian Canadian writer and the story sounds really unique.
%7B1B68CEBF-1BAF-484E-A72A-0029E691BDA6%7DImg100.jpg


Eleven-year-old George Washington Black—or Wash—a field slave on a Barbados sugar plantation, is initially terrified when he is chosen as the manservant of his master's brother. To his surprise, however, the eccentric Christopher Wilde turns out to be a naturalist, explorer, inventor, and abolitionist. Soon Wash is initiated into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky, where even a boy born in chains may embrace a life of dignity and meaning, and where two people, separated by an impossible divide, can begin to see each other as human.

But when a man is killed and a bounty is placed on Wash's head, they must abandon everything and flee together. Over the course of their travels, what brings Wash and Christopher together will tear them apart, propelling Wash ever farther across the globe in search of his true self. Spanning the Caribbean to the frozen Far North, London to Morocco, Washington Black is a story of self-invention and betrayal, of love and redemption, and of a world destroyed and made whole again.

Queer Historical Fiction
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In defiance of the brutal military government that took power in Uruguay in the 1970s, and under which homosexuality is a dangerous transgression, five women miraculously find one another—and, together, an isolated cape that they claim as their own. Over the next thirty-five years, they travel back and forth from this secret sanctuary, sometimes together, sometimes in pairs, with lovers in tow
or alone. Throughout it all, they will be tested repeatedly—by their families, lovers, society, and one another—as they fight to live authentic lives. A groundbreaking, genre-defining work, Cantoras is a breathtaking portrait of queer love, community, forgotten history, and the strength of the human spirit.
 
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Victoria Baker Harber

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Thank you, the great recommendations. I watched the mini-series for Pillars of the Earth. I loved it. I can only imagine that the book is a thousand times better.

The Thomas Cromwell Trilogy is a popular series that has been on my list as well. Great writing and accurate history are what I am looking for most when I read literary historical fiction.


C.W Gortner's books seem really interesting, The Vatican Princess seems super interesting have you read that one? I am gonna add The Last Queen to my TBR, it is listed as a historical fiction thriller. I love thrillers.

Great list please add more books if you are so inclined.

Yes. I forgot about The Vatican Princess! It is actually my favorite of his along with The Last Queen. He did an alright on Catherine De Medici, too. I would say that the one he did on Isabella of Castille was not the greatest though.
 

NSP30

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Yes. I forgot about The Vatican Princess! It is actually my favorite of his along with The Last Queen. He did an alright on Catherine De Medici, too. I would say that the one he did on Isabella of Castille was not the greatest though.
Fantastic. I will add The Vatican Princess to me tbr as well.
This opening paragraph to the The Vatican Princess is really good.
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A "wild opera of a novel,"* The Queen of the Night tells the mesmerizing story of Lilliet Berne, an orphan who left the American frontier for Europe and was swept into the glamour and terror of Second Empire France. She became a sensation of the Paris Opera, with every accolade but an original role—her chance at immortality. When one is offered to her, she finds the libretto is based on her deepest secret, something only four people have ever known. But who betrayed her? With "epic sweep, gorgeous language, and haunting details,"** Alexander Chee shares Lilliet's cunning transformation from circus rider to courtesan to legendary soprano, retracing the path that led to the role that could secure her reputation—or destroy her with the secrets it reveals.


%7B3F9CE892-100B-4622-A27E-9DC1259DB8A1%7DImg100.jpg


It is 1937 and Amabelle Désir, a young Haitian woman living in the Dominican Republic, has built herself a life as the servant and companion of the wife of a wealthy colonel. She and Sebastien, a cane worker, are deeply in love and plan to marry. But Amabelle's world collapses when a wave of genocidal violence, driven by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, leads to the slaughter of Haitian workers. Amabelle and Sebastien are separated, and she desperately flees the tide of violence for a Haiti she barely remembers.
Already acknowledged as a classic, this harrowing story of love and survival—from one of the most important voices of her generation—is an unforgettable memorial to the victims of the Parsley Massacre and a testimony to the power of human memory.

I had been trying to stay away from historical fiction about slavery, but this is by a Ghanaian Canadian writer and the story sounds really unique.
%7B1B68CEBF-1BAF-484E-A72A-0029E691BDA6%7DImg100.jpg


Eleven-year-old George Washington Black—or Wash—a field slave on a Barbados sugar plantation, is initially terrified when he is chosen as the manservant of his master's brother. To his surprise, however, the eccentric Christopher Wilde turns out to be a naturalist, explorer, inventor, and abolitionist. Soon Wash is initiated into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky, where even a boy born in chains may embrace a life of dignity and meaning, and where two people, separated by an impossible divide, can begin to see each other as human.

But when a man is killed and a bounty is placed on Wash's head, they must abandon everything and flee together. Over the course of their travels, what brings Wash and Christopher together will tear them apart, propelling Wash ever farther across the globe in search of his true self. Spanning the Caribbean to the frozen Far North, London to Morocco, Washington Black is a story of self-invention and betrayal, of love and redemption, and of a world destroyed and made whole again.

Queen Historical Fiction
%7B3496B068-0F29-481A-88B4-6283A7181EDA%7DImg100.jpg


In defiance of the brutal military government that took power in Uruguay in the 1970s, and under which homosexuality is a dangerous transgression, five women miraculously find one another—and, together, an isolated cape that they claim as their own. Over the next thirty-five years, they travel back and forth from this secret sanctuary, sometimes together, sometimes in pairs, with lovers in tow
or alone. Throughout it all, they will be tested repeatedly—by their families, lovers, society, and one another—as they fight to live authentic lives. A groundbreaking, genre-defining work, Cantoras is a breathtaking portrait of queer love, community, forgotten history, and the strength of the human spirit.

These are all wonderful recommendations!

Thank you
 

NSP30

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I am usually like for Black people of the diaspora to write books like this one, but this book seems really fascinating a Ghanaian woman living is England during the Tudor period. Has any of my international HF lovers read this book?
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A Book of Secrets is the story of a woman named Susan Charlewood living in Elizabethan England. Born in what is now Ghana, Susan is enslaved by the Portuguese but later rescued by British sailors, who bring her to England. Once in England, she is raised and educated in an English Catholic household.

When Susan comes of age, the family marry her off to an older Catholic man, John Charlewood. Charlewood runs a printing press and uses it to supply the Papist nobility with illegal Catholic texts and foment rebellion amongst the Catholic underclass. When Charlewood dies, Susan takes over the business and uses her new position to find out more about her origins.

A look at racial relationships on the eve of the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade, A Book of Secrets is a revealing and compelling glimpse into a fraught time.

If so it any good or is it problematic?
 

NSP30

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Has anyone read The Girl Meets Duke romance series?
The Duchess Deal is the first book, and it gets loads praise.
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When girl meets Duke, their marriage breaks all the rules…

Since his return from war, the Duke of Ashbury’s to-do list has been short and anything but sweet: brooding, glowering, menacing London ne’er-do-wells by night. Now there’s a new item on the list. He needs an heir—which means he needs a wife. When Emma Gladstone, a vicar’s daughter turned seamstress, appears in his library wearing a wedding gown, he decides on the spot that she’ll do.

His terms are simple:

- They will be husband and wife by night only.

- No lights, no kissing.

- No questions about his battle scars.

- Last, and most importantly… Once she’s pregnant with his heir, they need never share a bed again.

But Emma is no pushover. She has a few rules of her own:

- They will have dinner together every evening.

- With conversation.

- And unlimited teasing.

- Last, and most importantly… Once she’s seen the man beneath the scars, he can’t stop her from falling in love…
 

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Anything by Edward Rutherfurd but especially New York and London. He takes 3-4 fictitious families of differing backgrounds and follows them through real history. They are usually doorstop books but are so interesting, you don't really notice. I learned so much about these cities & how they came to be.
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upload_2020-8-17_13-3-13.jpeg
 

NSP30

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Anything by Edward Rutherfurd but especially New York and London. He takes 3-4 fictitious families of differing backgrounds and follows them through real history. They are usually doorstop books but are so interesting, you don't really notice. I learned so much about these cities & how they came to be.
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Excellent, thank you for these recommendations. I will definitely add London to my TBR.
 

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Hey guys,
Fifty Words for Rain is now GMA's Book Club pick for Sept. I have been reading it slowly.
Anybody else interested in reading this book? If you are let me know and I will make a new thread if not I will just leave my review here once done.
This is a new book by a Black author. It is new and will be released in America and Canada on Sept. 1 2020 and Sept 22 in the UK.
I plan on reading this one in the next few weeks.
412Kpyn2CrL._SX329_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg



Kyoto, Japan, 1948. “Do not question. Do not fight. Do not resist.”

Such is eight-year-old Noriko “Nori” Kamiza’s first lesson. She will not question why her mother abandoned her with only these final words. She will not fight her confinement to the attic of her grandparents’ imperial estate. And she will not resist the scalding chemical baths she receives daily to lighten her skin.

The child of a married Japanese aristocrat and her African American GI lover, Nori is an outsider from birth. Her grandparents take her in, only to conceal her, fearful of a stain on the royal pedigree that they are desperate to uphold in a changing Japan. Obedient to a fault, Nori accepts her solitary life, despite her natural intellect and curiosity. But when chance brings her older half-brother, Akira, to the estate that is his inheritance and destiny, Nori finds in him an unlikely ally with whom she forms a powerful bond—a bond their formidable grandparents cannot allow and that will irrevocably change the lives they were always meant to lead. Because now that Nori has glimpsed a world in which perhaps there is a place for her after all, she is ready to fight to be a part of it—a battle that just might cost her everything.

Spanning decades and continents, Fifty Words for Rain is a dazzling epic about the ties that bind, the ties that give you strength, and what it means to be free.
 

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Hey guys,
Fifty Words for Rain is now GMA's Book Club pick for Sept. I have been reading it slowly.
Anybody else interested in reading this book? If you are let me know and I will make a new thread if not I will just leave my review here once done.


The synopsis sounds really interesting! Thank you for posting it. I’ll be on the lookout for it once it launches.

I look forward to your review as well

Thank you for this thread as well; so many good titles
 

NSP30

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The synopsis sounds really interesting! Thank you for posting it. I’ll be on the lookout for it once it launches.

I look forward to your review as well

Thank you for this thread as well; so many good titles
You are very welcome. Glad you are enjoying it.
 

Jessen

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I was on a WWII-era kick for awhile. Really liked:
All the light we cannot see

The nightingale


The room on rue amelie
 

NSP30

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I was on a WWII-era kick for awhile. Really liked:
All the light we cannot see

The nightingale


The room on rue amelie

I am listening to Kristen Harmel The Book of Lost Names. Is The Room on Rue Amelie good?
 

Jessen

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I am listening to Kristen Harmel The Book of Lost Names. Is The Room on Rue Amelie good?
I really enjoyed it! And I learned later that is was loosely based on a true story, which made it even more interesting.

Book of Names is in my queue so hope to start it soon.

Also read the Tattoo Artist of Auschwitz and the Lost Girls of Paris, but liked the other three more.
 

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I really enjoyed it! And I learned later that is was loosely based on a true story, which made it even more interesting.

Book of Names is in my queue so hope to start it soon.

Also read the Tattoo Artist of Auschwitz and the Lost Girls of Paris, but liked the other three more.
Thank you for these recommendations, I had been looking for books set during WWII and the holocaust. I decided to start with The Book of Lost Names because it seemed relatively tame for that time period and ease my way into some of the heavier works like the Hannah and Doerr books.
 

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%7BA500610F-8401-4F67-B407-A9BB76509E2F%7DImg100.jpg


The dead won't bother you if you don't give them permission.
Boston, 1844.
Tabby has a peculiar gift: she can communicate with the recently departed. It makes her special, but it also makes her dangerous.
As an orphaned child, she fled with her sister, Alice, from their charlatan aunt Bellefonte, who wanted only to exploit Tabby's gift so she could profit from the recent craze for seances.
Now a young woman and tragically separated from Alice, Tabby works with her adopted father, Eli, the kind caretaker of a large Boston cemetery. When a series of macabre grave robberies begins to plague the city, Tabby is ensnared in a deadly plot by the perpetrators, known only as the "Resurrection Men."
In the end, Tabby's gift will either save both her and the cemetery—or bring about her own destruction.
 

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Has anybody read Hamnet? It was recommended to me by a friend on Instagram. I have been waiting weeks for it.
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England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old and the young, alike. The end of days is near, but life always goes on.
A young Latin tutor—penniless and bullied by a violent father—falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman. Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family's land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.
A luminous portrait of a marriage, a shattering evocation of a family ravaged by grief and loss, and a tender and unforgettable re-imagining of a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, and whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays of all time, Hamnet is mesmerizing, seductive, impossible to put down—a magnificent leap forward from one of our most gifted novelists.
 

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Thank you for these recommendations, I had been looking for books set during WWII and the holocaust. I decided to start with The Book of Lost Names because it seemed relatively tame for that time period and ease my way into some of the heavier works like the Hannah and Doerr books.

Glad to help. All the Light and Nightingale are definitely more intense so Lost Names is a good one to start with. It's just so sad to read was happening in Europe during that time.
 

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