What’s New – historical fiction

History provides fertile material for fiction. The characters and settings are all standing by, just waiting for a creative mind to bend them into a shape that makes sense to readers in our present times. You can check out the following new/old stories at Peter White Public Library

“Matrix” by Lauren Groff

Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine (look her up — she’s fascinating!), deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, 17-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey. At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her: devotion to her sisters, and a conviction in her own divine visions. Marie, born the last in a long line of women warriors and crusaders, is determined to chart a bold new course for the women she now leads and protects. Lauren Groff’s new novel, her first since Fates and Furies, is a defiant and timely exploration of the raw power of female creativity in a corrupted world.

“The Oath” by A.M. Linden

Author A.M. Linden, whose background includes both nursing and anthropology, looks to the time when the ancient Druid culture of Great Britain was dying out and replaced by Christianity. Forced to abandon their hidden sanctuary, the last members of a secretive Druid cult send the youngest of their remaining priests in search their chief priestess’s sister who was abducted by a Saxon war band fifteen years ago. With only a rudimentary grasp of English and the ambiguous guidance of an oracle’s prophecy, the Druid scout manages to find the priestess living in a hut on the grounds of a Christian convent. This novel, rich in both humor and atmosphere, is the first in a series of adventures.

“Booth” by Karen Joy Fowler

From the Man Booker finalist and bestselling author of “We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves” and “The Jane Austen Book Club” comes an epic novel about the theatrical family behind one of the most infamous figures in American history: John Wilkes Booth. Behind the curtains of the many stages they have graced, multiple scandals, family triumphs, and criminal disasters begin to take their toll, and the solemn siblings of John Wilkes Booth are left to reckon with the truth behind the destructively specious promise of an early prophecy. Booth is a startling portrait of a country in the throes of change and a vivid exploration of the ties that make, and break, a family.

“Razzmataz” by Christopher Moore

San Francisco, 1947, serves as the setting for Moore’s latest novel, outrageous follow-up to his madcap novel Noir. Bartender Sammy ‘Two Toes’ Tiffin and the rest of a ragtag bunch of working mugs are on the hustle. They’re trying to open a driving school for Chinatown residents; shanghai an abusive Swedish stevedore; and get Mable, the local madam, and her girls to a Christmas party at the State Hospital without alerting the overzealous head of the S.F.P.D. vice squad. Meanwhile Sammy’s girlfriend, Stilton (a.k.a. the Cheese), and her ‘Wendy the Welder’ gal pals are using their wartime shipbuilding skills on a secret project that might be attracting the attention of some government Men in Black. And to make matters worse, someone is murdering the city’s drag kings, and club owner Jimmy Vasco is sure she’s next on the list and wants Sammy to find the killer. It only gets wilder from there so strap yourselves in for a bit of the old razzmatazz, ladies and gentlemen.

“The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post” by Allison Pataki

“Mrs Post, the President and First Lady are here to see you.” Such is Marjorie Merriweather Post’s average evening. Presidents have come and gone, but she has hosted them all. Covered in diamonds and deemed American royalty, Marjorie nevertheless remains the product of her hardscrabble Midwestern roots and an insatiable drive to live, love, and give. Marjorie’s was a journey that began on the Great Plains, where she glued cereal boxes in her father’s barn as a young girl. None could have predicted that C. W. Post’s homegrown Postum Cereal Company would fundamentally reshape the American way of life and grow into the vast General Foods empire, with Marjorie as its glittering heiress and leading lady. Not content to stay in her prescribed roles of coddled wife, mother, and hostess, Marjorie dared to demand more, making history as a leader in her family’s business and a trailblazer in philanthropy and high society.

“The Murder of Mr. Wickham” by Claudia Gray

After many years of happy marriage, Emma Knightley and her husband are throwing a house party, bringing together distant relatives and new acquaintances-not all of whom are well known to the Knightleys but are certainly beloved by every Jane Austen fan: Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy, Marianne and Colonel Brandon, Anne and Captain Wentworth, and Fanny and Edmund Bertram. Very much not invited is Mr. Wickham, whose latest financial scheme has netted him newfound wealth-and a broadening array of enemies. With his unexpected arrival, tempers flare and secrets are revealed, making it clear that everyone would be happier if Mr. Wickham got his comeuppance. Yet the Knightleys and their guests are all shocked when Wickham turns up murdered-except, of course, for the killer hidden in their midst. Set in Austen’s Regency England, but flavored by the influence of well-mannered mystery writers such as Agatha Christie, who writing a century later, “The Murder of Mr. Wickham” is an engrossing escape of a novel.

“The Foundling” by Ann Leary

It’s 1927 and 18-year-old Mary Engle is hired to work as a secretary at a remote but scenic institution for mentally disabled women called the Nettleton State Village for Feebleminded Women of Childbearing Age. She’s immediately in awe of her employer–brilliant, genteel Dr. Agnes Vogel. Dr. Vogel had been the only woman in her class in medical school. As a young psychiatrist she was an outspoken crusader for women’s suffrage. Now, at age forty, Dr. Vogel runs one of the largest and most self-sufficient public asylums for women in the country. Mary deeply admires how dedicated the doctor is to the poor and vulnerable women under her care. Soon after she’s hired, Mary learns that a girl from her childhood orphanage is one of the inmates. Mary remembers Lillian as a beautiful free spirit with a sometimes-tempestuous side. Could she be mentally disabled? When Lillian begs Mary to help her escape, alleging the asylum is not what it seems, Mary is faced with a terrible choice. Should she trust her troubled friend with whom she shares a dark childhood secret? Mary’s decision triggers a hair-raising sequence of events with life-altering consequences for all.

By Ellen Moore

Head of Cataloging