Search Results
897 results found for "six historical"
- Three Books I'm Reading Now, 9/11/23 Edition
Edan Lepucki's science-fiction time-travel novel, Time's Mouth; I'm reading Paulette Jiles's newest historical Loss, and Vengeance by Paulette Jiles I got full-body chills when I saw that Paulette Jiles had a new historical
- Three Books I'm Reading Now, 4/10/23 Edition
The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading Cold Mountain author Charles Frazier's newest historical fiction 01 The Trackers by Charles Frazier In The Trackers, Cold Mountain author Charles Frazier offers historical
- Review of The Blood of the Old Kings (Bleeding Empire #1) by Sung-Il Kim
I love a historical-fiction-feeling fantasy story like this one, and Blood of the Old Kings sets up
- Three Books I'm Reading Now, 10/13/20 Edition
This title was listed in the Greedy Reading List Six Newish Young Adult Mysteries I Want to Read. 03
- Review of The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn
The Whalebone Theatre begins with offbeat children's performances on a lazy, decadent English estate in the 1920s and builds to the young-adulthood of each of three characters, which are deeply shaped by World War II. The war and all its deprivations seem relentless, but for Cristabel, there is a strange and guilty thrill running through it, for it is exactly this thinning of the ordinary that allows the unordinary through. Joanna Quinn's debut novel is a hefty 558 pages, and the story sweeps through time from the 1920s malaise of the children and the excess of the adults on a secluded English estate, Chilcombe Manor, on to World War II, as experienced by a community of family and friends. Quinn traces the lives of the unflappable orphan Cristabel Seagrave, her stepsister Flossie, and her cousin Digby (raised in the same household as siblings); as well as their inept parents, their parents' unpredictable friends--mainly artists and partiers--that flock to Chilcombe and stay and stay; and the servants who make possible the family's privileged life of debauchery, boredom, and flashes of thrill. Cristabel, Flossie, and Digby are often uncomfortable with the roles placed upon them by others (the difficult and wild orphan, the pleaser of a daughter without a backbone, and the cherished, golden male heir) as they seek to establish their own identities. The nontraditional parental figures--a Russian artist and frequent visitor, a rough-edged maid, a figurative uncle--exert occasional, sometimes powerful influence over the children and how they consider their places in the world. The beginning of the book moves quite slowly, which is fitting for the decadent, ongoing series of lavish dinner parties, hangovers, persistent hangers-on, and malaise occurring for the adults, who are largely without pressing business or life missions where they might direct their generational wealth. The children are largely unattended during this time, but their bonds to each other are solidified. The pacing of the story picks up, appropriately, when World War II begins to shift the world, exerting changes that finally trickle down to Chilcombe and its inhabitants. I loved reading as the children come into themselves--in fits and starts--as young adults, and I came to care deeply about them, their roles in the wartime efforts, and their potential for various happy-ever-afters. The Whalebone Theatre meanders from children's makeshift performances put on in a theatre framed by whale ribs to spy missions related to the French Resistance and the tragedies of war. This is a lovely book to sink into. I listened to The Whalebone Theatre as an audiobook, narrated wonderfully by Olivia Vinall. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? The Whalebone Theatre is Joanna Quinn's debut novel. For books I've read and reviewed about World War II, click here.
- Review of Not for the Faint of Heart by Lex Croucher
the Sheriff of Nottingham, things get complicated for both Mariel and Clem in this sassy, fun, queer historical
- Review of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder #1) by Holly Jackson
I mentioned this book in the Greedy Reading List Six Newish Young Adult Mysteries I Want to Read as well
- Review of When These Mountains Burn by David Joy
This book made my Greedy Reading List for My Six Favorite Summer 2020 Reads.
- Three Books I'm Reading Now, 7/22/21 Edition
(I mentioned her Shadow and Bone series in the Greedy Reading List Six Royally Magical Young Adult Series
- Review of The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff
Lauren Groff's beautiful and brutal novel The Vaster Wilds follows a young servant girl running from the Jamestown colony's disease and starvation; she reveals her secrets while scrabbling for survival in the unforgiving wilderness. The world, the girl knew, was worse than savage, the world was unmoved. It did not care, it could not care, what happened to her, not one bit. She was a mote, a speck, a floating windborne fleck of dust. Lauren Goff's novel The Vaster Wilds begins in the Jamestown colony in the early 1600s. A servant girl is fleeing her early colonial household in the brutal aftermath of plague and starvation. Our main protagonist knows she is being chased because of something she's done, but the facts of the situation aren't revealed to the reader until late in the book. (She doesn't realize, as the reader does, due to the omniscient narrator, that her pursuer succumbs to death early on, and that she is evading new dangers but has no need of pushing on to escape threats of repercussions from her household.) The orphan girl is essentially nameless--she doesn't attach to any of the insulting, ridiculing, or general names adults have carelessly thrown at her in her short life. She is uneducated but thoughtful, and she frequently considers issues of faith and life, separating these from the faulted holy men who introduced her to such concepts. She has visions of the past and of versions of the future in which her spirit transcends the pain and violence and knife-edge of death upon which she has survived. Upon being on her own for the first time, she discovers that she is capable of cleverness in the wild as she dives deeper and deeper into the unforgiving wilderness. She manages to problem-solve enormous challenges and, against all odds, survive. Her life in the wild consists of scrabbling for sustenance and carving out shelter; floating deadly cold rivers; and fleeing from wild strangers and beasts. Hers is a brutal existence buoyed only by meandering thoughts of the past--including her life's one tender connection, to the young daughter of her former household, her former charge--and her growing wonder at the mysteries of the natural world, which are wonderfully imperfect and beautifully wrought by Groff. I listened to The Vaster Wilds as an audiobook. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Groff is also the author of Fates and Furies, Matrix, The Monsters of Templeton, and other novels.
- Three Books I'm Reading Now, 7/16/21 Edition
Nothing to See Here and Alice Hoffman's The World That We Knew--featured in the Greedy Reading List Six
- Three Books I'm Reading Now, 1/28/21 Edition
I mentioned my love for Hart's book The Last Child in the Greedy Reading List The Six Best Mysteries
- Review of Lady Tan's Circle of Women by Lisa See
Lisa See offers a vivid peek at the lives of women in 15th century China, complete with a fascinating female-doctor element that kept me captivated. No mud, no lotus. Lady Tan's Circle of Women is my first book club read of 2024, and wow, does this one start off with a bang. Full-force details of foot-binding, and See doesn't stint on the page time spent on the topic. Whew! Tan Yunxian's grandmother is one of only a few female doctors in 15th century China, and Yunxian is learning all she can from her beloved family matriarch. When terrible tragedies strike, Yunxian's comfort comes in the unlikely form of her father's kind and caring concubine. Yunxian's eventual arranged marriage means she lives under the thumb of a controlling mother-in-law, who severely curtails her ability to practice medicine, as in the family's opinion, Yunxian's main goal should be to birth sons. See presents Yunxian as a feminist in many ways, but doesn't allow her to feel more modern than might seem plausible. She resists some of the constraints put upon her, particularly those credited to tradition rather than wisdom, yet she feels authentically of this time period. The title is interesting; since finishing I have thought more about the eclectic community of women that make up Yunxian's world and the deep ties she builds with some characters that often feel unexpected. I love a female-doctor and medical storyline, and I was particularly captivated by that aspect of Lady Tan, including the treatments, techniques, and beliefs that feel of the time period at hand. I listened to this as an audiobook. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Lisa See is also the author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane.
- Review of A Deadly Education: Lesson One of the Scholomance by Naomi Novik
also wrote the fantastic Spinning Silver and Uprooted, both of which appear on the Greedy Reading List Six
- Review of The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason
ICYMI: The Winter Soldier is a World War I tale full of medical details and lovely, unlikely bonds. This is a five-star read from the author of North Woods. Lucius is a young medical student when World War I sweeps across Europe. With romantic notions in his head about noble work in a field hospital filled with brilliant surgeons, he enlists and heads to his post in the remote Carpathian Mountains. But there he finds one solitary nurse, Sister Margarite, bravely keeping together the makeshift clinic, which has been decimated by typhus. The other doctors have all left. Lucius is surrounded by grave injuries but has never even wielded a scalpel He'll learn more from Sister Margarite--who he's falling for--than he ever could have in his classes. She's been building an immense wealth of practical knowledge while trying to save the broken soldiers. This was wonderful. The details of World War I injuries and methods of treatment were fittingly grim and sometimes gruesome, but Mason's writing is beautiful and evocative, conveying the cold and brutal nature of war and loss, the chilling nature of acts done in coldhearted necessity, and the warm, promising hope of love. The novel began a little slowly for me, but when it got going I became completely lost in it. I read this with my book club. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Daniel Mason is also the author of North Woods, The Piano Tuner, A Far Country, and A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth.
- Three Memoirs I'm Reading Now, 10/7/20 Edition
If you like memoirs, you might also like to take a look at the Greedy Reading List Six Illuminating Memoirs
- Review of The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan #1) by Robert Jackson Bennett
In Robert Jackson Bennett's novel, The Tainted Cup , he blends a rich, historical fiction-feeling story
- Review of The Unmaking of June Farrow by Adrienne Young
June struggles with the complicated implications of her family's curse of hallucinations and mental illness...until she realizes that the red door and visions of the past are real memories from her own time-travel experiences. I wasn't the first Farrow, but I would be the last. June Farrow is biding her time on her family's flower farm in the small town of Jasper, North Carolina. But she's been seeing and hearing visions for a year now, and she believes they're linked to the curse that the community believes has its hold on the Farrow women. June would love to end the curse, the fraying of the Farrow women's minds, once and for all--by never having a child and allowing the mental illness to die with her. But when she realizes she can walk through a magical red door, she finds unexpected circumstances--and realizes that she may be able to reinvent her path forward--and possibly also shift the events of the past. Young builds a story of traveling through time and of shimmers of other realities that might have been--or possibly did occur; whether they happened or not is not always clear. The Unmaking of June Farrow involves some maddening determination on certain characters' parts to keep the time-travel element wholly secret from those who would ultimately be faced with it. (If even the bare bones of this crucial information were shared on a need-to-know basis, a character's possibility of showing up as herself in a dangerous point in time--for example, a time in which she may have been accused of a grave crime--could help secure her own safety and preserve her existence through various timelines and her implications on others.) It was tough not to feel frustrated at characters' reluctance to even allude to the giant elephant in the room, once the situation was laid bare for the reader. Receiving only vague advice (which initially feels faulty, to say the least) about simply walking through the vision of a red door that appears to her leads June into a dangerous situation in the past--a past from which she built deep roots at one point, then simply disappeared. The mystery of why June left a past timeline is intriguing and keeps the story going. The story shifts between events of 1912, 1946, 1950, 1951, and 1989. Late in the book, June begins to understand the "folding of time" and intuits how timelines may have combined. It's a complicated web of cause and effect, and for much of the book I wasn't certain that the bundle of events affected by time-travel added up (which age and version of which person exists in which time, and how does the interaction between different versions affect everything else), but I was willing to roll with it. The circumstances of the ending are largely satisfying, the emotional connections June ultimately makes are poignant, and there's a character-reveal twist that was sweet and lovely. I received a prepublication edition of this book courtesy of NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group: Ballantine, Delacorte Press. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Adrienne Young is also the author of Fable, its sequel Namesake, and The Last Legacy, loosely set in the worlds of Fable and Namesake, and Spells for Forgetting.
- Review of The Last Graduate (Scholomance #2) by Naomi Novik
also wrote the fantastic Spinning Silver and Uprooted, both of which appear on the Greedy Reading List Six
- Review of Heart, Be at Peace by Donal Ryan
Ryan moves the reader through some of the simmering resentments borne of close-knit histories, professions
- Review of When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill
exquisite, the strong-woman elements are irresistible, and despite what felt like slow pacing while historical In Kelly Barnhill's When Women Were Dragons, a historic event has occurred but is being denied by the government and historians alike: a Mass Dragoning, in which thousands of women transformed into dragons Through various preserved historic accounts and young Alexandra Green's observations, the reader begins
- Review of The Fixed Stars by Molly Wizenberg
If you like memoirs, you might also like Six Illuminating Memoirs I Read This Year.
- Three Books I'm Reading Now, 3/3/21 Edition
that play with time and alternate realities, you might also like the books on the Greedy Reading List Six
- Review of Maddalena and the Dark by Julia Fine
Julia Fine's Maddalena and the Dark is a gothic story set in 1700s Venice in which two young women's lives and destinies become intertwined through a series of dark, magical promises designed to secure the elusive destinies they desire. There has already been a bargain, and this is something else that Luisa does not know. It's early 1700s Venice at a prestigious music school for orphans, the Ospedale della Pietà. Quiet, unassuming Luisa has always aimed to be the best at the violin. She wants to join the famed girls' orchestra and to one day become a protégé of Antonio Vivaldi. But her meek and mild manner invites only cold shoulders and contempt from her fellow students. That is, until the mysterious Maddalena arrives. Maddalena is sent to the Pietà temporarily after scandal threatens to ruin her family's longstanding reputation. Her attendance at the school is a last-ditch attempt to preserve her marriage prospects and assert some sense of propriety. Yet she desperately yearns for some measure of independence, which is not easily available to the women of that time. And what is there to trust? A mother who runs out on you? A brother who sells you like chattel and a father too busy to care? The other girls at school only know that Maddalena draws them into her orbit, and everyone wants to be near her. Some are puzzled when she chooses Luisa to be her bosom friend. Nevertheless, Luisa and Maddalena become fast friends, and their link grows every deeper. Then Maddalena hatches a plan in which each of them might help the other achieve her ambitious dream. But a young woman in that time has little say over her destiny. The girls make dark deals and may need to give up all that is precious in order to secure the power they need to determine their fate. Why is it that a girl must always lead the way into unpleasantness?... So many of the girls she grew up with have already been given to old widowers--no one says a word if a husband is sixty and his new bride is sixteen. So many of the girls she grew up with die in childbirth, to be replaced by fresh blood, ad infinitum, until the old man finally dies. Maddalena and the Dark has a distinct gothic tone, and the story treads ever deeper into seedy, suspect, forbidding scenes of magical realism that seem to foretell certain destruction. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? I received a prepublication version of this book courtesy of NetGalley and Flatiron Books. Julia Fine is also the author of The Upstairs House and What Should Be Wild.
- February Wrap-Up: My Favorite Reads of the Month
life in general, from Kate Bowler; The Saints of Swallow Hill, Donna Everhart's recently published historical Sparks Like Stars, Nadia Hashimi's luminous historical fiction about a childhood lived in Kabul and a out No Cure for Being Human. 02 The Saints of Swallow Hill by Donna Everhart This Depression-era-set historical a tale of intense hardship, bad luck, and rough circumstances in a difficult period of our nation's history
- December Wrap-Up: My Favorite Reads of the Month
This month my favorite reads were a historical-fiction fantasy set during the Spanish Inquisition; an I love a mix of historical fiction and fantasy, and while this novel isn't as layered and complex or the Sheriff of Nottingham, things get complicated for both Mariel and Clem in this sassy, fun, queer historical
- Review of A Power Unbound (Last Binding #3) by Freya Marske
been sooooo excited to read this final installment in Freya Marske's Last Binding trilogy, a queer historical
- Review of Lucky Loser: Adventures in Comedy and Tennis by Michael Kosta
Kosta digs into his history as a young professional tennis player--including the unglamorous early tour
- Three Books I'm Reading Now, 7/2/21 Edition
loved last year's gritty, character-driven mystery-thriller Blacktop Wasteland so much that it made my Six
- Review of Wellness by Nathan Hill
We learn about Elizabeth and Jack's histories and motivations, their stunted emotional statuses and the
- Three Books I'm Reading Now, 8/27/21 Edition
you like nonfiction books that read like fiction, you might try the books on the Greedy Reading List Six
- Review of Kills Well with Others (Killers of a Certain Age #2) by Deanna Raybourn
loved A Curious Beginning , the first book in Deanna Raybourn's feisty Veronica Speedwell series of historical
- Review of Trust by Hernan Diaz
The desire to rewrite history in this way reveals a silly, petulant wealthy main character who is easy
- Review of Trust No One (Devlin and Falco #1) by Debra Webb
If you like mysteries, you might also want to look at the Greedy Reading List The Six Best Mysteries
- Review of The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller
I mentioned Wild Game in the Greedy Reading List Six More Illuminating Memoirs to Lose Yourself In.
- September Wrap-Up: My Favorite Reads of the Month
This month my favorite reads were a retelling of a Mark Twain story; historical fiction set in North 01 What the Mountains Remember by Joy Callaway The historical fiction story about the building of the Novel of Maria von Trapp by Michelle Moran I was hooked on the behind-the-scenes feeling of Moran's historical-fiction
- Review of Blood Over Bright Haven by M. L. Wang
The janitor is a cultural outsider with a complicated history, and what he lacks in training he makes
- Review of Death at the Sign of the Rook (Jackson Brodie #6) by Kate Atkinson
Atkinson is also the author of Shrines of Gaiety , Case Histories, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, Life
- Review of His Majesty's Dragon: Temeraire #1 by Naomi Novik
and the intricacies of nations' relationships and airborne dragon battles within the books' alternate history
- Review of Moonbound by Robin Sloan
The dragons are a large part of the history--and are purported to exercise control over humans and creatures
- Review of Those We Thought We Knew by David Joy
Toya Gardner has returned from Atlanta to her rural North Carolina town to track her family's history When two terrible crimes shake the small community, they also bring to light generations of dark history
- Review of Silver Elite by Dani Francis
importantly for me, the adventure, elite training, secret powers, double-edged quest, unrevealed personal history
- Review of Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano
This book is part of the Greedy Reading List Six Book Club Books I Loved Last Year.
- Review of Nocturne by Alyssa Wees
The early story captured my attention with ballet, an orphan's struggles, and Depression-era Chicago, but once Nocturne shifted into dark fantasy I didn't feel connected. In Alyssa Wees's slim (it's 240 pages) fantasy novel Nocturne, set in the Little Italy of 1930s Chicago, promising young dancer Grace dreams of becoming a prima ballerina. As the Depression rages, orphaned Italian immigrant Grace rises through the ranks of the Near North Ballet Company--losing friends, becoming more jaded, and ultimately gaining a valuable, secretive benefactor who may be the key to her job security--but he may not be what he seems. Grace is faced with compromises and tradeoffs, and she must decide where her own loyalties lie and determine how far she's willing to go to keep hold of her long-held dream. I felt connected to Wees's story through Grace's early struggles, her sole real connection, to friend Emilia, and her ballet training and performances. The understated dark undercurrents felt powerful and mysterious. But once the fantasy elements became the focus, the story felt more like a series of ethereal concepts to me. The predator-prey, death-and-life, constricting-and-controlled scenario is orchestrated by an evasive, sinister, and, I felt, annoying man (every Sunday night Grace is forced into a dance and some evasive conversation, and meanwhile she must wait around all week for this?). The story began to feel more juvenile in tone to me as it evolved into a twisted fairy tale, which I often enjoy. Grace's benefactor, who barely speaks, seeks to control her, and has professed his romantic interest in her, has been watching and fixating on her since her childhood (ugh), yet this predatorial scenario is made out to feel more romantic than a horror. As Nocturne became less anchored in emotions and motivations that I could grasp, I lost my connection to Grace. There are twists, and I enjoyed Grace's strong stand at the end, but by that point I had lost my feeling of investment in her story. I received a prepublication edition of this book courtesy of NetGalley, Random House Publishing Group, and Ballantine. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Alyssa Wees is also the author of The Waking Forest. You can check out my Bossy reviews of other fantasy titles here.
- My Twelve Very Favorite 2021 Reads
Cosby; I loved Blacktop Wasteland last year (it was one of my Six Favorite Summer Reads) and I just read She weaves songs into her stories and personal history, and the placement of the music feels seamless of essential projects—the creation of Central Park, the founding of the Met Museum and the Natural History
- Review of This American Woman: A One-in-a-Billion Memoir by Zarna Garg
stage, spouted off comedic takes on her life, and after lots of scrapping and scrambling, the rest was history
- Three Books I'm Reading Now, 7/18/22 Edition
superstar action hero; I'm listening to The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, Kim Michele Richardson's historical Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson Kim Michele Richardson's The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is historical
- Three Books I'm Reading Now, 3/24/21 Edition
the sixth and final book in Turner's Queen's Thief series (which I listed in the Greedy Reading List Six
- Three Books I'm Reading Now, 10/20/25 Edition
Centuries after her death, spindly, awkward historian Owen Mallory unearths her story--and becomes inexorably If Una and Owen are going to change the way history is remembered--or simply get Owen back to his own
- Three Books I'm Reading Now, 5/18/21 Edition
If you like fiction about bands and music, you might like the books on the Greedy Reading List Six Rocking