Category: historical fiction
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We return to late Medieval England with The Red Queen, part of the Plantagenet and Tudor series by Philippa Gregory. This book follows Margaret Beaufort as she pursues what she is convinced is her destiny. From a very young age Margaret believes that she has some grand destiny as ordained by God, much like her…
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Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker by Jennifer Chiaverini is a historical fiction novel about Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley. The story starts in the run up to the 1860 election with Elizabeth working as a dress designer and maker for the wives of the various powerful men in and around Washington D.C. One of her more influential and close…
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The Defector by Chris Hadfield returns us to the world of The Apollo Murders with Kaz Zemeckis. About eight months after the rather dangerous events surrounding the Apollo 18 launch, Kaz and Laura are on vacation visiting his extended family in Israel. While on the beach there one day he sees something rather interesting, what…
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Ken Follett dives into the turbulent world stage of 1914 with The Man From St. Petersburg. Walden is a lord and peer of the realm in the British Empire and as such a stalwart defender of that empire who is willing to do whatever it takes to support if the potential war actually starts. When…
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The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon tells the story of Martha Ballard, a midwife who lived in the eighteenth century. The story opens in November of 1789 when a body is found in the frozen Kennebec river in rural Maine. As the local midwife and licensed medical practitioner, Martha Ballard is summoned directly from a…
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The Stone Witch of Florence by Anna Rasche is a rather entertaining historical fantasy. Ginevra di Gasparo wants nothing more than to be a licensed doctor who is able to use her skills with stone magic to openly heal people instead of having to do it furtively and in secret. A decade after being banished…
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The Volunteer- Not For Glory by Jason Morwick and Robert Nelson is about a young man named Hans Sterling. He was only a child when Germany fell at the end of WWII and his family was killed by fleeing Nazis for celebrating the end prematurely. Almost a decade later he is still haunted by that…
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The Apollo Murders by Chris Hadfield is book one of the series The Apollo Murders. Kazimieras Zemeckis, known as Kaz, is a former military pilot turned flight controller who is tasked with overseeing the upcoming NASA launch of Apollo 18. Something that is complicated by the Soviet Union launching Almaz, a spy space station with…
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The White Queen, book two of the Plantagenet and Tudor series by Philippa Gregory, picks up not long after the previous book The Lady of the Rivers. This time it follows the life of Elizabeth Woodville, eldest daughter of Jacquetta of Burgundy, who has recently been widowed when her husband, Lord Grey, was killed during…
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Ghost Riders is part of the Ballad Series by Sharyn McCrumb and focuses on a group of ghost riders from the American Civil War hiding in the Appalachian mountains. Rattler is an old Cherokee who has befriended the local reenactors and frequently visits their camps when they set up so he happens to be visiting…