Category: Past Tense

She served as an interpreter and guide for the infamous Lewis and Clark expedition, but there is so much more to her story than that. In Debra Magpie Earling’s book, Sacajewea finally gets to be at the center of her own story. It’s a story of brutality and survival amidst a country — and way of life — being overtaken.

A biracial heiress flees Haiti for France, escaping one revolution only to find herself in the midst of another. As she educates herself on injustice and befriends young revolutionary leaders like Robespierre and his mistress Cornélie Duplay, she grows increasingly conflicted over what it is she wants from both herself and from life.

When Kitty Karr Tate dies and bequeaths her estate to the St. John Sisters — three wealthy young Black women — no one is quite sure why she did it. Elise St. John is a star herself and has no interest in dealing with questions from the press. She has no idea why Kitty Karr did what she did either. But when shocking revelations in her journal unveil the truth behind Kitty’s stardom, it has the potential to unravel the lives and careers these women have worked so hard for.

An aging star of 1950s Hollywood, whose illustrious life and many husbands has long sparked rumor, finally agrees to give a tell-all interview. But why did she pick an unknown magazine writer to write her long sought after biography? Monique isn’t sure, but she’s determined to figure it out along with the biggest question on everyone’s mind: who was Evelyn Hugo’s true love?

Swedish artist Hilma af Klint, inspired by her dabblings in séances and the occult, produces the world’s first abstract paintings — but it’s men who get all the credit. As Hilma brings together a group of remarkable women known as the Friday Night Club, their contributions to the world of art and writing cannot be understated. But they’re cast into obscurity — until now.

If you’re familiar with the work of Edgar Degas then you have almost certainly seen one of the young protagonists of this novel: a ballerina named Marie, forever immortalized in his statue, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen. After the sudden death of their father, Marie is sent to the Paris Opera to earn a scant 17 shillings a week, while her sister finds work as an extra on the stage. But lascivious patrons and the Paris demimonde lurk at the edges of the work they’ve taken up, and even as the girls are swept up in the rich world of Paris’s art scene, they must make painful choices to stay off the street.

A fictional artist in imperial Japan is shaped by the country’s growing militarism in the days leading up to WWII. As the country tries to rebuild after the war, he should be enjoying time with his children and grandchildren in his retirement, but he can’t seem to let go of the past.

Intertwining the stories of the first female volunteer librarians during WWI and the first women admitted to the Naval Academy in the 1970s, The War Librarian tells the incredible story of brave and pioneering women. In 1918, timid Emmaline ventures to the frontlines of France, serving as a volunteer librarian and participating in a book club for censored books. Decades later in 1976, Kathleen is eager to prove to herself and her beloved grandmother who raised her that she deserves a spot in the first coed class at the United States Naval Academy — but not everyone among the new class of midshipmen agrees.

When Japanese bombs begin falling over the city of Nanking, students at Minghua University are told to flee. Lian and her classmates embark on a perilous journey across China to the relative safety of the country’s Western Provinces. But it isn’t just their own lives at risk on this journey; they’ve been entrusted with a collection of 500 year old myths and folklore known as the Library of Legends. And the only thing standing between it and aerial attacks are these young students.

The little known story of J.P. Morgan’s personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, is one every library lover should read. Belle da Costa Greene becomes one of the most powerful people in the world of art and books in New York, but she’s also hiding a secret that could unravel her life completely: she’s the daughter of the first African American graduate of Harvard, passing off her darker complexion as part of her supposed Portuguese heritage rather than her true ethnicity. It’s the story of an incredibly intelligent and talented woman forced to go to great lengths to make a place for herself in a society that can’t look past race.

A shy law student in Nazi-occupied Holland becomes an assassin for the Dutch Resistance when her two Jewish best friends are threatened by the growth of fascism in her country. Her point blank assassinations and bombing of munitions factories puts her on the top of Hitler’s most wanted list with a unique nickname: the Girl with Red Hair. Hannie Schaft is undeniably a war hero. But throughout it all, from killing Nazis to falling in love with a fellow resistor, her determination to stay human is what drives — and terrifies — her.

As the wife of the consul general of China, Grace feels like an outsider in the city of Vienna where her husband has been stationed. She has certain obligations, and that includes helping her husband maintain peaceable relations with the Third Reich. But when her tutor and dear friend, Lola Schnitzler is targeted in a brutal pogrom, Dr. Ho is unable to ignore the Nazi’s violence any longer and issues him and his family visas to Shanghai. As the violence against the Jewish population escalates, the two risk everything to help others escape.

In 1679 Edinburgh, a woman is arrested and charged with the murder of her lover. The broadsides have already decided her guilt, and it’s certainly true she had an affair. But does taking a lover also make her guilty of murder? Based on a true story, Foster provides a feminist twist to the lives and fates of women so often silenced by the strong tides of history.

Another book based on a true story, Alias Grace imagines what might have really happened to young accused (and convicted) murderer Grace Marks in 19th century Canada. Certainly, her employer and his housekeeper were brutally murdered. Certainly, Grace was there. But was she an innocent victim herself, or a willing co-conspirator as so many believe? And can an expert in the new field of mental illness and mesmerism finally get to the truth or will he fall prey to Grace’s tangled web of truth and lies?

After being freed from life on a plantation in Jamaica, Frannie Langton expects to begin life anew. But instead, she’s sold into bondage of another sort as an unwilling servant in London. And although she forges a surprising bond with the strange lady of the house, she soon finds herself accused of the brutal double murder of her employers. Frannie knows no one will believe the truth, especially coming from a Black woman, and that her story is more likely to indict her than free her. But, still, Frannie tells her story, and, in doing so, shows that the whole of English society is to blame.

A woman working for an almost defunct dictionary is helping digitize every single entry when she stumbles across a made up word. During the heyday of Swansby’s Encyclopaedic Dictionary in Victorian London, one discontented lexicographer begins inventing his own definitions for words he believes the English language is missing. The stories blend together beautifully as we witness both the beginning and end of this once-famous dictionary.

A film student trying to complete his thesis tracks down who was once a dancer in a Chicago club, and possibly the last living link to legendary Black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. In the present, Sawyer attempts to coax the stories of her Chicago youth out of Honoree Dalcour. As Honoree slowly reveals her secrets, Sawyer discovers that the truth about the past isn’t at all what he expected.

In the summer of 1938, socialites and elites like Lily Dane, her former best friend and former fiancé Budgie, and Nick Greenwald return to Seaview, Rhode Island to get away from it all. But there’s no getting away from their complicated pasts, uneasy secrets, and long-buried dreams. The only question is whether the summer — and their inexorable ties to each other — will leave them unscathed.

In this historical thriller from the author of Mexican Gothic, a young woman in 1970s Baja California gets mixed up in the lives of a glamorous American couple whose machinations and deceits threaten to consume her. What begins as a brief escape from her boring existence soon turns into something far more sinister when one of the Americans dies and Viridian lies to protect her new friends.

Based on true events, The House Is on Fire tells the story of the Richmond’s theater fire in 1811 Virginia. Four people with very different backgrounds and experiences are drawn together by a series of split second decisions made during that fateful night that will change their lives — and their community — forever.

A shocking murder in 1950s Australia resonates through the years when a journalist discovers her grandmother’s book documenting the investigation many years later. It’s a case that has never been fully resolved, and, as Jess soon finds out, has ties to her own family history.

Based on historical documents with added color from Yao-Chang Chen’s imagination, Puppet Flower depicts a formative moment in Taiwanese history: the sinking of an American merchant ship that would lead to military operations targeting local indigenous tribes. Alongside actual historical figures involved in the conflict, Yao-Chang gives us the story of a mixed-heritage woman named Butterfly who serves as both interpreter and mediator between the Americans and Taiwanese.

Virginia Woolf’s sister, Vanessa, was a gifted painter and part of The Bloomsbury Group alongside the writer in their youth. When the book opens, the sisters and their friends have not yet found the artistic success they will become known for, but it is just beyond the horizon. Then, Vanessa falls in love. And Virginia, who has always lived in the glow of her sister’s constant attention and affection, feels betrayed and abandoned. Vanessa must decide if it’s finally time to do something for herself, even if it means tearing their family apart.

Zelda Fitzgerald, the glittering wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, was one of the 20th century’s first flappers. She was also a remarkable woman and writer in her own right, whose words and writing were often co-opted (only sometimes with permission) for F. Scott’s own writing. Their story is a tale of romance, adventure, excess, and tragedy — and it reads as if right out of the pages of The Great Gatsby.