Hi, historical fiction fans,
I’m still sick this week after a brief respite over the weekend, and I’m just so ready to feel better. At least I’ve had lots of good library books and audiobooks to keep me company. My 60-pound dog, who is not the world’s best nurse, has decided that lying on my chest is the best way for her to help me feel better. I’m not sure it’s working as well as she seems to think it is.
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Bookish Goods
Bedside Book Holder from The Art of Engraving
If you’re anything like me, you’ve always got a stack of books on your nightstand and this little bedside book holder is the perfect way to organize them. $80
New Releases
Spitting Gold by Carmella Lowkis (May 14, 2024)
A gothic mystery set in 19th-century Paris, Spitting Gold sees two sisters reunited years after they fooled the elite by pretending to be spirit mediums. Now, the estranged sisters are united once more to pull off one last con with their elderly father unable to pay off his bills. But are they really pulling one over on this rich family? Or is something supernatural going on?
A Crane Among Wolves by June Hur (May 14, 2024)
June Hur is one of my favorite historical fiction writers. Her novels bring Joseon-era Korea to life in incredible detail, and I never want to put them down. In A Crane Among Wolves, Hur depicts one of the most hated tyrants in Korean history as a girl attempts to save her sister, who was kidnapped to be a part of the emperor’s harem at any cost.
For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter.
Riot Recommendations
This week, I wanted to highlight historical genocides that I think may be less well-known. In the American school system (at least in my experience), the genocide against Native Americans in this country is glossed over. That, along with the United States’ systems of oppression against Black Americans, is not highlighted as a precursor to Nazi Germany, even though Hitler used them as blueprints for his own genocide. This history is so important to understand and acknowledge because if we’re taught to gloss over genocides of the past, what will stop us from ignoring—or missing—genocides of the present and future?
The Armenian genocide, the Khmer Rouge Cambodian genocide, and the Bosnian genocide are just a few examples of how war and conflict can be used to target a specific ethnic, religious, or sociopolitical group. Sadly there are many others.
According to the UN, there are “reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide…has been met” in Gaza. If you’d like to help the Palestinian people currently facing genocide, I highly recommend donating to Save the Children or checking out Operation Olive Branch, which verifies and highlights Palestinians using GoFundMe campaigns to try to escape the ongoing violence. It can feel impossible to help in the face of such overwhelming violence, but those are small ways you can make a difference. Educating yourself and others is another.
The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian
A wealthy American woman volunteering with the Boston-based Friends of Armenia travels to Aleppo to help deliver aid and medical care to the recent refugees of the Armenian genocide. There, she meets Armen, an Armenian engineer who has lost his wife and infant daughter. Neither are expecting to fall in love in the wake of all this violence. Decades later, a novelist with Armenian heritage looks into her family’s past, uncovering shocking truths and secrets, long forgotten and left buried.
In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner
Raami’s childhood in Cambodia is upended when her father brings home news of civil war. Soon, the 17-year-old’s guarded home is swapped for a forced labor camp, and she faces violence, starvation, and death. Remembering is a death sentence, but Raami’s memories of the stories her father told her are all she has to cling to during this never-ending fight for survival.
Girl at War by Sara Nović
A 10-year-old girl growing up in the Croatian capital of Zagreb in the early 1990s watches her life turn upside down as civil war breaks out in the country. Now playground games are forgotten in favor of war games as she becomes a child soldier, forced to take up a gun to defend herself from violence. A chance to escape to America offers her the only possibility of survival. But 10 years later, as she confronts the life and people she left behind, Ana wonders if going home is the only way to confront the ghosts that still haunt her.
That’s it for now, folks! Stay subscribed for more stories of yesteryear.
If you want to talk books, historical or otherwise, you can find me @rachelsbrittain on most social media, including Instagram, Goodreads, and Litsy.
Right now I’m reading The Titanic Survivors’ Book Club by Timothy Schaffert. What about you?