A mix of eras, stories, settings and characters in these historical novels chosen by our librarians. (Updated January 2024)
The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye
An epic tale based on true events illuminates a woman of color's rise to power as one of the few purported female pirate captains to sail the Caribbean, and the forbidden love story that will shape the course of history.
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The East Indian
Kidnapped and transported to the new world after traveling from the British East India Company’s outpost on the Coromandel Coast to the teeming streets of London, Tony finds himself in Jamestown, Virginia, where he works the tobacco plantations as he dreams of becoming a medicine man.
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Beyond the Door of No Return
In 1806 Paris, the renowned botanist Michel Adanson lies on his deathbed, the masterwork to which he dedicated his life still incomplete; and as he expires, the last word to escape his lips is a woman's name: Maram.
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The Lost Journals of Sacajewea
Stolen from her village and then gambled away to a French Canadian trapper and trader, Sacajewea, determined to survive and triumph, crosses a vast and brutal terrain with her newborn son, the white man who owns her and a company of men who wish to conquer the world she loves.
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A Calamity of Noble Houses
Tunisia, 1930s: Against the backdrop of a country in turmoil, in search of its identity, the lives and destinies of the members of two important upper-class families of Tunis intertwine: the Ennaifer family, with a rigidly conservative and patriarchal mentality, and the Rassaa, open-minded and progressive. One terrible night in December 1935, the destiny of both families changes forever when Zbaida Ali Rassaa, the young wife of Mohsen Ennaifer, is accused of having had a clandestine love affair with Tahar Haddad, an intellectual known for his union activism and support for women’s rights.
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The Bullet Swallower
A Mexican bandido sets off for Texas to save his family, only to encounter a mysterious figure who has come, finally, to collect a cosmic debt generations in the making.
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Isola
Inspired by a real 16th-century heroine, an orphaned and betrayed young woman, Marguerite, is marooned on a desolate island with her lover, where she must confront nature's harshness and her own strength in a desperate fight for survival.
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The Great Divide
A sweeping saga of the building of the Panama Canal, told through the stories of the diverse laborers involved in its construction in 1907.
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The Emperor and the Endless Palace
A queer, Asian reimagining of an epic love story blending historical figures with Chinese folklore.
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Loot
Set in 18th-century India, England and France, this sweeping novel follows gifted woodcarver Abbas who embarks on a perilous journey to retrieve the giant wooden tiger he created for Tipu Sultan from an estate in the English countryside, where it is displayed in a collection of plundered art.
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