Historical Fiction

Why: The title. The cover. The dark, mysterious teaser. The genre – it’s historical fiction – one of my favorites. And honestly, when I picked this up at a local bookstore in Washington, DC, I was dreading a long, hot and …

For some reason, I’m really attracted to novels from this same time period – a time of western expansion, when life was constant work on the American frontier. Work to keep a house, to make a living, to grow and …

In the fall of 2011, an eighth-grade student of mine wrote a beautiful letter to Ruta Sepetys, the author of Between Shades of Gray, detailing what she’d gleaned from Sepetys’ first novel  – the power of perseverance, integrity, and love. Since then, …

Friends, this was a difficult one for me to get through. The Aviator’s Wife is a work of historical fiction about Ann Morrow Lindbergh, Charles Lindbergh’s wife. Narrated by Ann, the novel follows her from her college years in 1927 until …

Magic. Pure magic. This book…I’m almost at a loss for words! If you haven’t yet read All the Light We Cannot See, it’s imperative that you put it on your TBR list this instant. Anthony Doerr’s brilliant and captivating style …

The Book Thief is one of those books that everyone I knew was raving about five years ago, yet I somehow never managed to sit down and read it. I have been drawn to books about the Holocaust since I …

Alias Grace was my first ever Margaret Atwood novel. *Gasp* not sure how I made it through 28 years of English-studying, book-loving life without reading an Atwood novel! Why exactly did I start with this particular one? I happened upon …

In January, the bookclub I belong to chose The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters. Here’s how I like to approach book club books: borrow or buy it without reading about it. There’s just something about diving into a book without knowing …