Historical Fiction Girl

Essex 1941. Unhappy with life at home with her privileged family, Hannah Austen-Bagshaw runs away to join the Land Girls Army, carrying with her a dark and terrible secret. Life on the farm is tough, but when Hannah meets handsome working-class flight lieutenant Jack, they form an immediate friendship. But unbeknownst to Jack, Hannah is sheltering a young German pilot who has crash landed in a nearby field. Torn between her duty and her humanity, Hannah knows she risks being arrested as a traitor, but she cannot see the young pilot suffer.

For four young immigrant women living in Boston’s North End in the early 1900s, escaping tradition doesn’t come easy. But at least they have one another and the Saturday Evening Girls Club, a social pottery-making group offering respite from their hectic home lives - and hope for a better future.

Audie Award, Best Female Narrator, 2016. Jacky Faber is framed as passing confidential U.S. information to the British. Forced to flee Boston, she goes undercover as a governess for a prominent Puritan family. When outed by a nosy postmaster, she deserts the respectability of her position, dons a leotard and slippers, and poses as a Russian tightrope walker in a traveling circus. But the law soon catches up with her, and prospects do not look good.

Foxfire chronicles the life of five unforgettably real teenage girls in upstate New York in the 1950s. This controversial, topical tale captures the exhilaration of conspiracy, the blaze of youth, and the inevitable end of violence.

Since following her heart and moving from her comfortable home in Scotland to the harsh mountainside of Ardtur, County Donegal, Hannah McGinley hasn’t had the easiest life. But surrounded by her two children and her loving husband Patrick she has found happiness. When her daughter returns home with news that her school may close as one of the teachers is moving away, Hannah feels compelled to take the vacant post. With the schoolmaster Daniel having lost his sight, Hannah knows that he won’t be able to manage the children alone.

A woman in the British Horticultural Society! The very idea horrifies everyone, including ardent horticulturalist Lavinia Harlow, whose own name has been put forth for membership by the provoking Marquess of Huntly. He does it as a joke, of course, to get back at her for an imagined slight - well, to be fair, she had insulted his writing -and Vinnie, older sister to the infamous Harlow Hoyden, is far too sensible to rise to his ridiculous challenge. Determined to head off further scandal, Vinnie dashes off a polite note refusing the honor - which she has every intention of sending.

Berlin, 1950. When Hanni Winter shows her new husband the heartbreaking photos she captured during the war, his reaction is unexpected. His face white, Freddy can’t take his eyes off the photo of a young girl around four years old.

Sunderland, 1941. As the world war continues the shipyard girls face hardships at home, but work and friendship give them strength to carry on. Gloria is smitten with her newly arrived bundle of joy, but baby Hope’s first weeks are bittersweet. Hope's father is missing at sea, and with their future as a family so uncertain, Gloria must lean on her girls for support. Meanwhile, head welder Rosie has turned her back on love to keep her double life secret. But her persistent beau is determined to find out the truth, and if he does, it could ruin her.

The siege of Troy has lasted almost ten years. Inside the walled city, food is becoming scarce and the death toll is rising. From the heights of Mount Olympus, the gods keep watch.

Hamburg, 1938. Fifteen-year-old Asta is hurrying home from school with her twin brother, Jurgen. The mood in the city is tense - synagogues have been smashed with sledgehammers, and Asta is too frightened to laugh as she used to. But when she and Jurgen are stopped in the street by a friend, her world implodes further. Her Jewish parents have been dragged into the streets by German soldiers, and if she and Jurgen return to their house, they will be taken, too.

England, 1944. On a classified Navy base situated atop the cliffs of Dover, telegraph operator Katie Kingston toils day and night intercepting and translating enemy transmissions in Morse Code, hunting for the next piece of information that will give Britain the edge in the ongoing war. But as the entire base quietly prepares for Britain’s most daring operation yet, Katie has more at stake than her fellow telegraphists. Because among the allied forces due to land on the shores of Normandy in Operation Overlord is Special Forces Lt. Ciaran McElroy, an Irishman who has stolen her heart.

New York City, 1950. Viviana Valentine is Girl Friday to the city’s top private investigator, Tommy Fortuna. The clients can be frustrating, and none more maddening than fabulously wealthy Tallmadge Blackstone, who demands Tommy tail his daughter, Tallulah, and find out why she won’t marry his business partner, a man forty years her senior. It sounds like an open-and-shut case for a P.I. known for busting up organized crime—but the next day, Viviana opens the office to find Tommy missing and a lifeless body on the floor.

Florence, 1943. As the bells toll in the solemn dark streets and enemy soldiers loiter by the city’s beautiful bridges, schoolgirl Gabriella is racked with guilt. She is ashamed of the crush she had on the soldier with raven-black hair, a crush that allowed a secret notebook to fall into the hands of the enemy. Faced with her brother’s haunted eyes and the prospect of never seeing her father again, Gabriella is determined to make things right. She seeks out her old schoolfriend Stefanina, an unlikely member of the Italian resistance with her beautiful curls and scarlet ribbon.

Native American princess or British celebrity? Pocahontas played a pivotal role in the New World, but the powerful pull between her tribe and the new settlement on Virginia's shores took its toll.

Germany, 1943: Two years ago, fate gave a beautiful young Jewish woman named Margarete Rosenbaum the chance to survive the Nazis by pretending to be one of them, hiding in plain sight. Now she must make a terrifying decision....

March, 1942: new mother Alice Milward is itching to return to her job as a shop assistant at Liberty’s. Despite her husband still being missing in action, Alice is determined to give baby Arthur the best possible start. She soon settles back into the rhythm of life on the shop floor, and the Liberty Girls rally to help keep everything on an even keel. But when the American GIs start swarming into London, there are more complications to come. And each of the Liberty Girls has their own impossible storm to weather.

Acclaimed author Elise Hooper explores the gripping, real-life history of female athletes, members of the first integrated women’s Olympic team, and their journeys to the 1936 summer games in Berlin, Nazi Germany. In the 1928 Olympics, Chicago’s Betty Robinson competes as a member of the first-ever women’s delegation in track and field. Destined for further glory, she returns home feted as America’s golden girl until a nearly fatal airplane crash threatens to end everything.

Germany, 1939: When Rosa Herzelfeld boards the SS St Louis, she doesn’t believe its promise of freedom. Surely there can be no escape from the Nazis, not even on the other side of the world. Besides, she knows that no matter how far she travels, there is no escaping her past....

When little Ruthie and her mother are taken to Belzec Extermination Camp in the midst of World War II, Ruthie's mother knows that her daughter's life is in grave danger. Desperate, she will do anything to save her from the terrible fate that awaits her, even at the cost of her own life. But she will have to act fast if she wants to give her daughter a chance of survival. Years later, Ruthie's daughter, Noga, delves into the untold mysteries of her mother's past, on a quest to heal their fragmented relationship.

It is 1939, and working-class Evie Bishop has received a scholarship to study mathematics at Oxford when tragedy turns her life upside down. Evie must seek a new future for herself and, inspired to contribute to the war effort, joins the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force as an Ops Room plotter. Posted to a fighter station on the Sussex Coast, Evie befriends two other WAAFs. But the German bombers seem to know more than they should about the base’s operations, and soon Evie, May and Jess are caught up in a world more dangerous than they ever imagined.