Category: Past Tense

At the Glendale Park Zoo in 1920s Nashville, a young Cherokee horse-driver on loan from a Wild West Show must help her fellow employees get to the bottom of strange happenings going on at the zoo as lingering vestiges of the ancient past begin to manifest in the present.

A prosperous farmer and mother to five boys in the Cherokee Nation West decides to take a stand as she watches the violence in the frontier community around her escalate. People are missing, her son is caught up in a murder case, and guns and gold are going missing. In order to save her community, Cherokee America Singer will have to help her community come together and face these issues — even if it means expelling one of their own.

Rue inherited her knowledge of healing from her mother, but it’s a gift that brings her close to life and death in her community. When a child she helps bring into the world is labeled “cursed,” the superstition of those around her threatens to bring her to ruin — especially as certain questions about her past and her connection to the white family who once owned them come to light.

Tituba, an enslaved woman of Indigenous descent, was one of the first people accused of witchcraft during the infamous Salem Witch Trials. In this fictionalized account, Condé creates a richly imagined take on her life and the choices and events that led to her fateful place in Salem.

The author of The Year of the Witching is back with a historical vampire novel about a young girl raised in the slums who finds a dangerous way out: by answering an ad in the papers for a bloodmaid. In her new position at the notorious House of Hunger, she is swept into a world of darkness and debauchery where bloodmaids go missing in the night. These halls could become home, but that’s only if she can learn the rules to the dangerous games the elite play before she goes missing, too.

This classic of 20th century lesbian vampire fiction follows a woman who escapes from slavery and finds a community of benevolent vampires who take her in as one of their own. It’s a radical exploration of Blackness, family, and queer identity.

A girl who died in the 15th century and has been haunting the Mallorcan monastery ever since falls for a visiting author and her strange, unconventional family in this beautiful historical fiction novel.

Haunted by her past as an enslaved woman, Sethe is still trying to make peace with the horrors she’s endured, particularly those from her time at Sweet Home. Even 18 years after her escape to Ohio, her house is haunted by the spirit of her baby who died nameless with a grave marker that read only “beloved.” But when a teenage girl shows up calling herself Beloved, secrets from Sethe’s past come bursting into the present in this wrenching, heartfelt novel.

A chorus of ghosts — including the young son of Abraham Lincoln — narrate their time in purgatory together in this strange, genre-defying novel by George Saunders.

This gorgeous historical thriller has been compared to Mexican Gothic, probably because both books feature young women facing supernatural events in historic Mexican manors. But believe me, The Hacienda stands on its own. It’s full of Mexican history, a husband with a dark–and secretive–past, a conniving sister-in-law, and a priest who also deals with the supernatural in spite of the wishes of the Catholic Church.

With a new Apple TV miniseries, it’s the perfect time to read this atmospheric novel about science, myth, and modernity. Newly widowed Cora Seaborne escapes with her eleven-year-old son to the Essex coast, where she begins hearing rumors of a serpent claiming lives. A naturalist, Cora feels this may be a previously undiscovered species. Alongside a local vicar, who is also suspicious of these rumors, she is drawn into an intense relationship that will change them both for good.

An aspiring photojournalist in Los Angeles follows her Kurdish boyfriend home to northern Iraq for a wedding where she hopes to acquire a better understanding of his childhood and heritage. But the reality of a town patrolled by the military and under constant threat takes her by surprise. Still there is so much love and beauty here, and when she captures a tragic moment on film, she must find the courage to stand up even with all their lives upended and on the line.

Note: This book takes place in Iraq, not Iran, but deals with Kurdish history, which is inextricably tied to the ongoing protests in Iran as Jina Amini was a Kurdish woman.

Amidst the upheaval of 1950s Tehran, a dreamy teenager finds reprieve–and love– in Mr. Fakhri’s neighborhood stationery shop, full of books and pens and colorful ink. But just before Roya is to marry her betrothed, Bahman, violence erupts, the result of a coup that changes the course of the country irrevocably. Sixty years later, after moving on and immigrating to New England, Roya finally comes face to face with the man she once loved and can ask the questions she has always held in her heart: what happened to you, why did you leave, and how could you forget me?

On an orchard in the small Iranian city of Naishapur, a former judge and his wife tend to their fruit and generations of family on the eve of the Islamic Revolution, watching first hand as corruption and extremism change the face of their country.

In the 1970s, iconic interracial rock duo Opal and Neville Charles become a sensation. But one bold, antiracist protest and the violent repercussions that follow tear the duo apart just as Opal is reaching her peak. Years later, their attempt at a reunion is still haunted by the past, and as music journalist S. Sunny Shelton curates an oral history of her idols, she discovers there’s far more to the story than anyone has uncovered before.

Another oral history about a fictional musical group, Daisy Jones and the Six follows the tumultuous rise and fall of a 1970s rock band. Their story is the stuff of legend, and everyone knows how a producer realized the only thing that could make hot new singer Daisy Jones and upcoming band the Six even bigger is bringing them together. But what they don’t know is why the band broke up at the height of their success. Until now, that is.

Told through the eyes of the people whose paths they crossed is the story of two realist poets — Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima — and their search for the vanished poet Cesárea Tinajero that turned into a life on the run after a violent showdown in the Sonora desert. Funnily enough it’s also set in the 1970s. The seventies are clearly a hot setting for fictional oral histories.

How does a palace concubine become Empress of China? Mei knows nothing of the courtly arts the other concubines use to gain the attention of an Emperor, but her curiosity and intellect set her apart. Soon, Mei is in a unique position to seduce the most powerful man in China, but as divided loyalties split the palace in two, she will first have to survive the coming battle before taking up her rightful place as along the Emperor’s side.

The eldest Romanov sister, Olga, will be the last Grand Duchess of Russia — but she doesn’t know that yet. As she comes of age during a time of shifting cultural mores and unrest, she finds hope and love outside the palace walls. But when war breaks out across Europe and protests turn to revolution, she will watch 300 years of Romanov rule come to a terrible end.

In 16th century Iran, the court is thrown into turmoil when the Shah dies before naming an heir. The Shah’s daughter and protégée, Princess Pari, knows more about politics than almost anyone around her, but her attempts to instill order after her father’s death are met with resentment. Equal of the Sun is the story of an incredible woman and a political player at the heart of a power struggle of epic proportions.

Three women running to and from Key West find themselves trapped during one of the worst storms to ever hit Florida. And, even if they survive, Mirta, Helen, and Elizabeth will never be the same.

When a wealthy white woman is murdered while a storm is brewing just off the coast, a Black veteran finds himself suspected of a terrible crime even as he struggles to find his place in a country he once fought for — but doesn’t seem to have a place for him anymore.

Audible Hall of Fame narrator Bahni Turpin brings her experience as a television and film actress to this novel about an anthropology student from New York who goes to Sea Islands off the Carolina coast in the 1920s to explore her origins as part of a proud Gullah-Geechee family tracing their roots back to the Ibo in West Africa.

Robin Miles is another Hall of Fame narrator whose brilliant voice work has brought to life books as diverse as The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and The Fifth Season. In The Personal Librarian, the incredible legacy of J. P. Morgan’s personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, is brought to light. A Black woman who passed as white, Belle became a fixture of New York City society and a powerful force in the world of art and literature as she helped curate Morgan’s world-class collection.

Karen Chilton leans into a southern accent in her rendition of The Prophets that really brings this Civil War era story about love and betrayal to life.