Happy summer!
It barely seems possible that the summer is already in its final two months (eek!) but even as any time off you might have reaches its end, we at Hirsh still wish you a relaxing and enjoyable July and August. With this in mind, we have compiled a list of historical fiction titles to get you through the final months of summer, as well as your final few beach days:
Atomic Love By Jennie Fields (a physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project is confronted by her past and must make an impossible choice)
The Alice Network by Kate Quinn (a former World War I spy recounts her troubling and complicated history)
The Edge of Lost by Kristina McMorris (a young Irish man dreams of leaving his home; twenty years later, an Alcatraz groundskeeper must hide what he knows about a little girl's disappearance)
Becoming Madam Secretary by Stephanie Dray (a young Frances Perkins arrives in New York and climbs her way up to become a cabinet officer)
The Alienist by Caleb Carr (a psychologist, a reporter, and a secretary work together in 1896 New York to solve a series of grisly murders)
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (two women in post-Soviet-invasion Afghanistan are brought together by fate and their marriage to the same man)
Leaving Everything Most Loved by Jacqueline Winspear (an amateur detective works to solve the murder of an woman in 1933 London)
The Vengeance of Mothers by Jim Fergus (a fictional account of the life of Margaret Kelly, a woman sent to live with the Cheyenne people as part of an agreement meant to facilitate peace between Indigenous people and white colonizers.)
The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld (two psychoanalysts work to track down a killer in 1909 New York)
The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris (two people fall in love even as they must face the horrors of the Holocaust)
The Information Officer by Mark Mills (a spy in 1942 Malta investigates a series of murders)
The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory (the history and life of Katherine, Queen of Aragorn, first wife of Henry VIII)
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen (the animal caretaker in a 1932 circus meets and falls in love with the wife of the circus' animal trainer)
Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks (a fictionalized account of the life of the first recorded Indigenous man to graduate from Harvard)
The Commoner by John Burnham Schwartz (in 1959, a young woman marries the Crown Prince of Japan and is met with hostility by his mother; years later, when she herself is the empress, she must persuade another woman to marry her own son)
So come on down to the Hirsh leisure lounge, and explore the past through a story!