Category: Past Tense

Inspired by the true story of the Mirabal sisters, In the Time of Butterflies recounts the incredible legacy of the young women, wives, and mothers who were assassinated for their role in an underground movement to overthrow the dictatorial Dominican government of Trujillo. From their teenage years to their growing involvement in the revolution and their eventual discovery and murder, this novel is a tale of resistance and resilience as well as the incredible courage of these women to fight for what it right even when the cost for doing so is unthinkable high.

Over two generations, the first survivors of Mao’s cultural revolution and the second the students who would go on to protest in Tiananmen Square, a family reimagines themselves through the changing political landscape of China. In Vancouver, Maria and Ai-Ming try to piece together their family’s fractured history and their revolutionary roots, even as Ai-Ming seeks refuge from the student occupation taking place in Tiananmen Square.

Mary Wollstonecraft was a feminist before her time, determined to fight for women’s equality amidst the constraints of the late eighteenth century. Set during the arduous birth of her daughter, Mary Shelley–a trailblazing woman in her own right–Wollstonecraft recounts the story of her life to her newborn daughter and the midwife trying desperately to keep them both alive.

Lilith was born into slavery on a Jamaican sugar plantation, and even then, as nothing more than a newborn, the women around her recognize a power in her. As she grows and comes into her own, that power will joined with the The Night Women, a group who have long been planning a revolt. But will Lilith be what helps them to victory and freedom or the weak link in a fragile conspiracy that could change all their lives forever?

In ancient Vietnam, two warrior sisters raised an army of women to overthrow the Han Chinese who had taken over their land. Trung Trac and Trung Nhi, daughters of a Lord, have trained all their lives in Vietnamese traditions, but increasingly oppressive rule of the Han Chinese finally push them to their limit. And with an army of women behind them, these two sisters will overthrow the occupying government and rule as kings over a united people.

In 1942, war rages overseas, and siblings Will and Maggie do their best to contribute to the war effort stateside. Maggie works at the Navy Yard while Will secretly scouts for the Manhattan Project. But when the discover a woman hiding under their back stairs, they are captivated by the mysterious past of this stranger with an affinity for poisons and a talent for killing small creatures. With whispers of spies and the world’s first atomic bomb in the work, questions about what this women wants–and her sudden appearance in their lives–begin to sink in. Is she someone the siblings can trust or a threat to everything they’re working for?

Katharina Edgeworth has a seemingly perfect life with a job at the UN, a pediatric surgeon of a husband, two healthy sons, and heir to a fortune. But the post-war American dream has become her own living nightmare. When the FBI approach her to become an informant, tasked with joining the inner-circle of a high-ranking Soviet spy who was once her friend. As a courier, Katharina is tasked with carrying stolen government documents from D.C. to Manhattan. But even as she navigates the demands of the FBI and secrecy of the KGB, people around her are losing their covers and their lives. And Katharina could be next.

During the heart of the Cold War, an FBI intelligence officer suspects her stalling career has something to do with her age, gender, and race as a young Black woman working in an old boy’s club. But then she’s offered an opportunity to join a shadowy task force aiming to undermine the revolutionary president of Burkina Faso. The United States is suspicious of his communist leanings, and even though Marie respects what he’s doing, she knows this may be her only chance for advancement in the FBI. But over the next few years, as she observes, seduces, and ultimately takes part in the coup that will overthrow President Thomas Sankara, she begins to question what it means to be a good spy, a good American, and, more importantly, a good person.

When a British spy plane crashes in Vichy, France, two girls–one a pilot, one a spy–know their chances of survival are slim. But one of them just might be able to escape. After being captured, “Verity” confesses to her Nazi captors to avoid a grisly execution. But as she tells the story of the pilot Maddie, her best friend who she left in the wreckage of the fuselage, the intricate story of these two girls’ friendship is brought to life. And it’s not quite the story you think it is. After all, it’s a spy weaving it.

Beatriz and her family lost everything in the Cuban Revolution. Now, having fled to America, she’s ready to seek her revenge against Fidel Castro, who had her twin brother murdered. And she knows it’s only with the help of the CIA that she can do it. But as the Cold War swells and Beatriz is consumed by her quest for revenge, she realizes allies and enemies can become an ever-changing target, and she’ll have to make a choice between avenging her past or looking forward to her future when she finally gets her chance at looking Fidel right in the eyes.

Hanne comes from a family of Old Lutherans in nineteenth-century Prussia, where worship must be done in secret and their community is under constant threat. But while a journey to Australia could mean safety for her community, it will also have devastating consequences for Hanne and her new friend Thea, a kindred spirit who accepts Hanne for who she is. Cramped quarters and a raging typhus epidemic on board mean that even if the community makes it to Australia, they’ll never be the same.

This novel in prose tells the story of the last slave ship brought illegally to America in the 1860s, long after the United States had outlawed the importation of enslaved people though not slavery itself. From the horrors of the Middle Passage to swamplands along the Alabama river, African Town tells the story of the 110 men, women, and children kidnapped from Benin who would eventually go on to establish a community of survivors after the Civil War.

The stories of a dairy maid who runs away to a bustling naval port to work as a lady’s maid to an eccentric woman and a teenager pressganged into naval service intertwine in this tale of the dangerous allure of the sea. It’s a story of love, identity, and survival.

What’s more fun than a pirate story? How about a pirate story about a kidnapped chef forced to cook elaborate meals on the high seas? Renowned chef Owen Wedgwood only has one hope of surviving the pirate Mad Hannah Mabbot and that’s by cooking the most exquisite food every seen aboard a pirate ship every Sunday without fail. The larder might not be well stocked, but if Wedgwood wants to survive his new pirate life, he’ll have to make the best meals of his life.

This novel tells the story of the Viking exploration of the North Atlantic from the perspective of a daring woman, Gudrid. In a time when the old Norse gods are still invoked even as Christianity gains favor and the sea is the only gateway to the rest of the world, Gudrid and other Viking explorers voyage into the unknown, from the northern ice fields to the shores of North America.

With Spain in the grips of civil war, a group of refugees embark on a treacherous journey through the mountains and to the ocean where a ship chartered by Pablo Neruda waits to usher them across the Atlantic. For Roser, a pregnant young widow, and an army doctor named Victor Dalmau, a life of exile in Chile offers new hope even as the rest of the world breaks out into war. It’s a story of hope, exile, and belonging set against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War and World War II.

In the heat of the summer of 1518, a plague strikes the women of the city: a plague of dancing. As more and more women join the frenzy and the city declares a state of emergency, a pregnant woman tends to the bees that are her livelihood just beyond city limits. When her sister-in-law returns from a six-year penance, Lisbet’s life is turned upside down. And soon, Lisbet along with her best friend Ida and the sister-in-law she just met, are dancing to a tune perhaps even more dangerous than the one consuming so many others in the streets.

In post-Communist Albania, friends Bujar and Agim struggle with the state of their worlds, both personal and political. They flee to Italy, but while Bujar finds new opportunity to live life authentically, Agim is lost somewhere along the way. And Bujar is haunted by the loss of the one person who meant the most all these years.

A young dairy maid in 1740s Essex follows the lure of the sea despite warnings of its danger in this lush historical novel. Moving to a naval port to work as a lady’s maid for wealthy sea captain’s daughter, she finds her new mistress to be haughty, headstrong, and unexpectedly fascinating. Intertwined with her story, is the story of Luke, pressganged at fifteen into the Royal Navy and forced to learn fast how to survive in this harsh new environment. And when their stories meet, it changes all of their lives irrevocably.

Ijeoma comes of age along with her nation, born in the years before Nigeria’s independence and only 11 when civil war breaks out in the new republic. Sent away to safety, she falls in love with another child. But they are from different tribes. And they’re both girls. Okparanta draws inspiration from war and folklore to paint a beautiful and heart wrenching novel about the challenges of living and loving openly.

Two women in early twentieth-century Vienna find solace in the city’s Jewish quarter, where they are more free to be themselves. They fall in love with each other and their newfound independence, but Julia’s longing for a baby threatens to derail the lives of all those closest to her. Through an exploration of queer characters against the backdrop of a changing city, Hitchman explores how people live through oppression and fight for those they love.

Okay, this one you can’t read quite yet, but you should definitely be pre-ordering it / requesting it at your library / adding it to your TBR. A mixed-race heiress flees Haiti in the wake of the Haitian Revolution, only to find herself in Paris on the verge of another revolution. Soon, she finds herself enamored with the budding movement and the revolutionaries themselves, particularly Robespierre and his mistress, Cornélie Duplay. But her heart is torn between the man whose ideals she loves and the woman who has become her safe harbor.

As the daughter of a rich planter and an enslaved woman, Sylvie de Rosier is able to enjoy the comforts of a lady in 1791 Saint-Domingue society, though she’s never fully accepted by the island elites. As a rebellion sets off the Haitian Revolution, Sylvie and her brother flee to Paris, unwittingly moving from one society in turmoil to another. There, she catches the eye of Robespierre, who sees in her race and her abandonment of her aristocratic roots a perfect example of his ideals. But as Sylvie watches another deadly empire rising in France during the Reign of Terror, she is torn between Robespierre’s ideology and the love and freedom of thought she has found in another.

A Black couple fleeing persecution in 1960s America travel to Ghana where they hope to start a new life without the threat of an FBI agent constantly on their trail. But the country is in a state of political turmoil, and what Melvin and Bernadette hope will be their safe haven soon becomes a place of chaos, where their own relationship begins to crumble. The story is an intimate look into the lives of this couple as well as a tale at the intersection of the American Civil Right’s Movement and postcolonial West Africa.

The story of a nation is told through three generations of families on the banks of the Zambezi River. A single mistake entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy that will ripple throughout the generations in this sweeping novel of past, present, and future that blends fact with fiction and truth with magic.

Yitian has been estranged from his family for years when he gets an urgent phone call from his mother telling him his father has disappeared from their rural Chinese village. Struggling to navigate China’s impenetrable bureaucracy as an American outsider and blindsided by his mother’s secrecy, Yitian has to call on the help of a childhood friend to try to discover how his father’s past during the Cultural Revolution could be connected to his disappearance today.

Goh Junja is trying to survive as the latest in a long line of haenyeo–deep sea diving women–as Korea struggles following the Japanese occupation of World War II. The new political climate, with an influx of U.S. troops and a creeping paranoia of communism, is almost as treacherous. Still grieving her mother’s death, Junja can scarcely keep up, but when her lover is accused of harboring communist sentiments, she must finally learn to adapt to the ever-changing world around her.

Following the bombing of Pear Harbor, racial tension grows in Vancouver, British Columbia. The RCMP round up “suspicious” characters and the creation of internment camps in the interior is only months away. Narrated by a young reporter for the New Canadian, the only Japanese-Canadian newspaper allowed to continue publishing during the war, and told from the perspective of three people in Vancouver’s Japanese community, The Three Pleasures is a depicts a painful period of Canada’s history.

Lilith, born into slavery in eighteenth century Jamaica, becomes a powerful force among the Night Women, a group planning to revolt against the plantation owners enslaving them. But on a sugar plantation rife with secrets, a powerful woman like Lilith won’t go unnoticed. And as she pushes against the bounds of what’s expected–and allowed–for an enslaved woman, she risks becoming a weak link in this desperate conspiracy for freedom.

In 1990s Colombia, a sheltered girl safe in a gated community outside of Pablo Escobar’s reach becomes determined to befriend her family’s new maid, Petrona, whose life has not been so easy. But both Chula and Petrona are caught up in a web of secrets, and as the conflict in Bogotá escalates, they will have to choose between sacrifice and betrayal.

Described as Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca, this historical haunted house novel set in the wake of the Mexican War of Independence follows a woman looking for security after her father is executed and her home burned to the ground, so much so that she ignores the rumors about her new husband and his dead first wife. But Hacienda San Isidro is not the home she imagined. She feels watched all the time and her new sister-in-law won’t even enter the house at night. A local priest, who is more witch than man of God, is the only one who will take her fears seriously. But even his powers may not be enough to keep the darkness of San Isidro at bay.

Release date: May 3, 2022

Shyam Selvadurai’s Mansions of the Moon is a sweeping reimagining of ancient India which tells the story of Yasodhara, the wife of the man who would become the Buddha. He wasn’t the Buddha when she married him, though; he was just Siddhartha Gautama. But as his spiritual calling pulls him away from her and leaves their marriage crumbling, Yasodhara is forced to question how a woman alone in ancient India can get by–and how she might find her own spiritual enlightenment, even without her husband.

Release date: May 3, 2022

As the only female student at a prestigious medical school in the nineteenth century, Nora Beady faces constant scrutiny. Instead of bowing under the immense pressure, she teams up with the sole female doctor on-staff, and the two begin pioneering new techniques for a groundbreaking surgery: the Cesarean section. Success could mean saving countless lives and furthering the roles for women in medicine. But failure would be just one more excuse for the men in control of the medical field to keep women from practicing medicine.

Release date: May 10, 2022

The Last Queen is the story of Jindan, a commoner who would go on to become the last reigning queen of India’s Sikh Empire. When her son inherits the throne at barely six years old, she transforms herself from the role of pampered royal to warrior queen, determined to hold the British Empire at bay. And though they rob the queen of everything she has in an attempt to break her spirit and quash a possible uprising, Jindan still manages to inspire her people through two wars and fight to her dying breath.

Release date: May 10, 2022

The author of The Mercies is back with another historical novel, this time about an odd plague in 1518 Strasbourg. Women are dancing uncontrollably in the streets, but for a young pregnant woman just outside the city limits, it’s the arrival of her sister-in-law after six years of penance that changes everything. No one will tell Lisbet what crime her sister-in-law committed, so she knows it must be serious. But soon Lisbet, her sister-in-law, and her best friend find themselves pushing the limits of what is acceptable at a time when women are already dancing to a dangerous tune.

Release date: May 12th 2022

Chanel Cleeton returns to the world of the Perez family in this novel about Isabel Perez who travels to Barcelona when her younger sister, who has worked for the CIA in the past, goes missing. But apparently Beatriz and Isabel aren’t the first Perez women to spend time in the city. A mysterious picture of their mother sparks questions about their family’s past during the Spanish Civil War that could change their lives forever.

Release date: May 24, 2022

Mary Mallon was a courageous woman, an immigrant from Ireland who worked hard to climb up from the lowest rungs of domestic service into a role as a cook after discovering an uncanny skill in the kitchen. But you probably only know her as Typhoid Mary. There’s good reason for that, considering Mallon left a trail of disease in her wake. But there’s more to her story than that, and in Fever, Mary Beth Keane uncovers it alongside a fascinating look into the scientific breakthrough discovery of “asymptomatic carriers” of disease.

In this book about the life of Greek-Irish writer Lafcadio Hearn, it’s the women in his life telling the story. From the tragic life of a mother forced to leave behind her son to the daughter of a former samurai who would eventually become his wife and literary collaborator. It’s the story of a migratory author whose writing about Japan offered the Western world a glimpse into a culture that was largely unknown to them, but also the women in his life who long for their own stories to be told.

You might recognize the name Tituba as that of the first woman to be accused of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts. As an enslaved woman, Tituba’s story has often been relegated to the sidelines, and little is known for certain about her life before she was brough to colonial Massachusetts by puritan priest Samuel Parrish. Maryse Conde breathes life to her story, mixing fact with fiction and reality with the supernatural to finally give Tituba the central story she deserves.

Based on the incredible life of Dorothy Kirwan Thomas, Island Queen tells a sweeping story of survival and entrepreneurialism. Born into enslavement on a small Caribbean island, Dorothy Kirwan Thomas would go on to buy freedom for herself, her sister, and her mother from her Irish slaveholding father. But that is just the beginning of this remarkable woman’s journey that would lead to her becoming one of the wealthiest and most powerful landowners in the colonial West Indies.

I’ve always been fascinated by Ada Lovelace, daughter of infamous British poet Lord Byron and a mathematician mother, who would go on to become the foremother of computer programming. So no surprise, then, that a biographical historical fiction novel about her would be of interest to me. Ada Lovelace lived a truly fascinating life, from her mother’s attempts to keep her firmly away from anything that might spark the creativity of her Byron heritage to her introduction to Charles Babbage and his fascinating Difference Engine. It’s a deep dive into an extraordinary woman’s all too short life.

In the summer of 1950 in Iran, a young poet named Forugh Farrokhzhad begins to find her voice as a writer, even as tradition would try to hold her back. Farrokhzhad flees a suffocating marriage for an affair with a filmmaker, choosing to live her own life by her own rules, even as she is both uplifted and vilified for it. And as the Iranian Revolution causes upheaval across the country, Forugh Farrokhzhad uses the power of her poetry to inspire generations.