I love a well-written historical fiction novel that immerses me in the time period and introduces a female character I can relate to. We may live in different times, but women in all eras feel love, attempt and fail, find strength, perform heroic deeds, suffer mishaps, and experience life. Escaping into their stories makes me question what I would have done in their shoes as well as think about how my own story is still being written. As a historical fiction author, I seek to create those relationships between my characters and readers.
Alice Harris is pressed to marry a Civil War veteran twice her age when her family’s inn fails in 1882 in western North Carolina. She remakes herself by learning to farm tobacco, campaigning for the city’s first public schools, and immersing herself in the large and divisive Carter family.
But marriage offers a tenuous promise of security. When tragedy strikes, Alice turns to the courts to fight for her independence and discovers an unexpected love.
I finished this novel quickly as the story and writing are engaging.
I knew something of Hedy Lamarr’s wartime efforts and intelligence going in, but this story shed much more light on the woman and highlighted the difficulties she faced.
I recommend it for readers who enjoy historical fiction, WW2 stories, and novels about strong women.
Bestselling author Marie Benedict reveals the story of a brilliant woman scientist only remembered for her beauty.
Her beauty almost certainly saved her from the rising Nazi party and led to marriage with an Austrian arms dealer. Underestimated in everything else, she overheard the Third Reich's plans while at her husband's side and understood more than anyone would guess. She devised a plan to flee in disguise from their castle, and the whirlwind escape landed her in Hollywood. She became Hedy Lamarr, screen star.
I liked this historical fiction novel for many reasons. First, I recently visited Florence and was introduced to the story of the monk Savonarola, so I enjoyed the mentioned sights and historical context. Secondly, I appreciated the structure of the novel, with the main point of view being a young well-to-do woman married off to a much older man.
Through the conversations of husband and wife and those of the wife and her slave/maid, the political, religious, and societal events unfold. There's tension throughout as the rising puritanical tide overwhelms Florentine society.
Really well done and a fascinating story of the Renaissance.
Alessandra Cecchi is not quite fifteen when her father, a prosperous cloth merchant, brings a young painter back from northern Europe to decorate the chapel walls in the family’s Florentine palazzo. A child of the Renaissance, with a precocious mind and a talent for drawing, Alessandra is intoxicated by the painter’s abilities.
But their burgeoning relationship is interrupted when Alessandra’s parents arrange her marriage to a wealthy, much older man. Meanwhile, Florence is changing, increasingly subject to the growing suppression imposed by the fundamentalist monk Savonarola, who is seizing religious and political control. Alessandra and her native city are caught…
This historical fiction novel resonated in so many ways, a multi-generational family saga, a foreign land richly described, engaging characters, and the insertion (and importance) of medical conditions.
I immersed myself in the story and was saddened when one character left, only to be drawn into the next character. Love, heartache, devotion, despair, disappointment, futility, too many emotions to name, but all truthfully conveyed.
Highly recommend. I'll leave this recommendation with one favorite quote: "Every family has secrets, but not all secrets are meant to deceive."
OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • SUBJECT OF A SIX-PART SUPER SOUL PODCAST SERIES HOSTED BY OPRAH WINFREY
From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret
“One of the best books I’ve read in my entire life. It’s epic. It’s transportive . . . It was unputdownable!”—Oprah Winfrey, OprahDaily.com
The Covenant of Water is the long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese, the author of…
Imagine a former slave working in the White House before and after Emancipation. What conversations were heard? How was she treated? Did she feel safe or threatened?
Chiaverini dives into the interiority of Mrs. Lincoln's dressmaker's story, the conflicts, the battles, the personal dreams and aspirations, the friendship and falling out around a historical figure few know.
The New York Times bestselling author of Mrs. Lincoln's Sisters and Canary Girls unveils the private lives of President Abraham Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, through the eyes of the First Lady's most trusted confidante and friend in this compelling historical novel.
In a life that spanned nearly a century and witnessed some of the most momentous events in American history, Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley was born a slave. A gifted seamstress, she earned her freedom by the skill of her needle, and won the friendship of First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln by her devotion.
Berlin, 1989. Anne Simpson, an American who works as a translator at the Joint Operations Refugee Committee, thinks she is in a normal marriage with a charming East German. But then her husband disappears and the CIA and Western German intelligence arrive at her door. Nothing about her marriage is as it seems. Anne had been targeted by the Matchmaker - a high level East German counterintelligence officer - who runs a network of Stasi agents. These agents are his 'Romeos' who marry vulnerable women in West Berlin to provide them with cover as they report back to the Matchmaker.…
I’m an Australian USA Today bestselling romance author who writes contemporary romance and uses the pen name Alyssa James to write medieval romance. I think the makeover trope resonates with me because although I’m no beauty queen now, I was definitely an ugly duckling in my teens. For reasons best known to him, my father insisted on close-cropped hair, and financial circumstances dictated out-of-style hand-me-down clothing. After university, I found my own style, but it wasn’t until I was accepted as an international flight attendant that I believed that I couldn’t be all that ugly if Qantas employed me!
Return to Hope Creek is a second-chance rural romance set in Australia.
Stella Simpson's career and engagement are over. She returns to the rural community of Hope Creek to heal, unaware her high school and college sweetheart, Mitchell Scott, has also moved back to town to do some healing of his own.
Mitchell, a former NFL quarterback, doesn't need the complication of encountering Stella again so long after the messy end to their relationship, but as each tries to build a new life, they are drawn together and find their chemistry is just as strong as ever.
When two old flames come back to their home town, sparks are bound to ignite. A rural romance from USA Today bestselling author Alyssa J. Montgomery.
A horrific car accident ended former world number-one Stella Simpson’s tennis career, and a betrayal ended her relationship with her fiancé/coach. When a family friend offers to sell her half of a property in the rural community where she grew up, it seems like the perfect place to escape, heal and begin the next phase of her life. Until she discovers that the man who broke her heart ten years ago has bought the…