Catalog Search Results
Literary Reference Center
Novels, short stories, poems, plot summaries and synopses, and literary criticism. Research guides, lesson plans, and citation tools support student learning.
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
The brutal double murder of renowned scientist George Benham and his eccentric French wife, Marguerite, has set London abuzz. Crowds pack the courtroom, the newspapers print lurid theories about the killings. But Frannie Langton claims she cannot recall what happened that evening, how she came to be covered in blood. She does have a tale to tell: a story of her childhood on a Jamaican plantation, her apprenticeship under a debauched scientist who...
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"She's only a number now. When Charlotte Smith's wealthy parents commit her beloved sister Phoebe to the infamous Goldengrove Asylum, Charlotte knows there's more to the story than madness. She risks everything and follows her sister inside, surrendering her real identity as a privileged young lady of San Francisco society to become a nameless inmate, Woman 99. The longer she stays, the more she realizes that many of the women of Goldengrove aren't...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
"The best-selling author of Girl Waits with Gun returns with another adventure featuring the fascinating, feisty, and unforgettable Kopp sisters. After besting (and arresting) a ruthless silk factory owner and his gang of thugs in Girl Waits with Gun, Constance Kopp became one of the nation's first deputy sheriffs. She's proven that she can't be deterred, evaded, or outrun. But when the wiles of a German-speaking con man threaten her position and...
4) The kept
Author
Language
English
Description
In the winter of 1897, a trio of killers descends upon an isolated farm in upstate New York. Midwife Elspeth Howell returns home to the carnage: her husband, and four of her children, murdered. Before she can discover her remaining son Caleb, alive and hiding in the kitchen pantry, another shot rings out over the snow-covered valley. Twelve-year-old Caleb must tend to his mother until she recovers enough for them to take to the frozen wilderness in...
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Heroines in Historical Fiction
Let It Snow (SCPL)
OBD Baby, It's Cold Outside! - Adult
OLPL: Hello, Winter
Let It Snow (SCPL)
OBD Baby, It's Cold Outside! - Adult
OLPL: Hello, Winter
Description
After an epic snow storm ravages the city of Albany, Dr. Mary Sutter, a former Civil War surgeon, begins a search for two little girls, the daughters of close friends killed by the storm who have vanished without a trace. Mary's mother and niece Elizabeth, who has been studying violin in Paris, return to Albany upon learning of the girls' disappearance--but Elizabeth has another reason for wanting to come home, one she is not willing to reveal. Despite...
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
"In 1851, at a remote village in the Scandinavian tundra, a Lutheran minister known as Mad Lasse tries in vain to convert the native Sámi reindeer herders to his faith. But when one of the most respected herders has a dramatic awakening and dedicates his life to the church, his impetuous son, Ivvár, is left to guard their diminishing herd alone. By chance, he meets Mad Lasse's daughter Willa, and their blossoming infatuation grows into something...
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
2023 Read Widely: Central & South Asia
Historical Fiction Set in India
If you Like The Covenant of Water, try...
Historical Fiction Set in India
If you Like The Covenant of Water, try...
Description
"A Hindu perfumer and a Muslim calligrapher fall in love against the backdrop of Partition. On a January morning in 1938, Samir Vij first locks eyes with Firdaus Khan through the rows of perfume bottles in his family's ittar shop in Lahore. Over the years that follow, the perfumer's apprentice and calligrapher's apprentice fall in love with their ancient crafts and with each other, dreaming of the life they will one day share. But as the struggle...
Author
Language
English
Description
"Richly detailed, expertly paced saga of the only female student attending a prestigious medical school in Italy...a truly captivating heroine, for then and for now." --Sally Cabot Gunning, author of The Widow's Warand Painting the Light From the USA Todaybestselling author of The Girl in His Shadowcomes a riveting historical fiction novel about the women in medicine who changed the world forever. Women's work is a matter of life and death. Nora Beady,...
Author
Language
English
Description
In 1937 Hollywood, gossip columnist Sheilah Graham's star is on the rise, while literary wonder boy F. Scott Fitzgerald's career is slowly drowning in booze. But the once-famous author, desperate to make money penning scripts for the silver screen, is charismatic enough to attract the gorgeous Miss Graham, a woman who exposes the secrets of others while carefully guarding her own. Like Fitzgerald's hero Jay Gatsby, Graham has meticulously constructed...
Author
Series
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
Constance Kopp doesn't quite fit the mold. She towers over most men, has no interest in marriage or domestic affairs, and has been isolated from the world since a family secret sent her and her sisters into hiding fifteen years ago. One day a belligerent and powerful silk factory owner runs down their buggy, and a dispute over damages turns into a war of bricks, bullets, and threats as he unleashes his gang on their family farm. When the sheriff enlists...
11) Salt houses
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
2023 Read Widely: The Middle East & North Africa
2024 FPPL Arab American Heritage Month
Arab American Heritage 2023
More Lists...
2024 FPPL Arab American Heritage Month
Arab American Heritage 2023
More Lists...
Description
"From a dazzling new literary voice, a debut novel about a Palestinian family caught between present and past, between displacement and home ... On the eve of her daughter Alia's wedding, Salma reads the girl's future in a cup of coffee dregs. She sees an unsettled life for Alia and her children; she also sees travel, and luck. While she chooses to keep her predictions to herself that day, they will all soon come to pass when the family is up rooted...
Author
Language
English
Description
"A richly layered novel of love, ambition, and duplicity, set against the storied seascape of Newport, Rhode Island. A reckless wager between a tennis pro with a fading career and a drunken party guest--the stakes are an antique motorcycle and an heiress's diamond necklace--launches a narrative odyssey that braids together three centuries of aspiration and adversity. A witty and urbane bachelor of the Gilded Age embarks on a high-risk scheme to marry...
13) Sold on a Monday
Author
Language
English
Description
2 CHILDREN FOR SALE The sign is a last resort. It sits on a farmhouse porch in 1931, but could be found anywhere in an era of breadlines, bank runs and broken dreams. It could have been written by any mother facing impossible choices. For struggling reporter Ellis Reed, the gut-wrenching scene evokes memories of his family's dark past. He snaps a photograph of the children, not meant for publication. But when it leads to his big break, the consequences...
Author
Language
English
Description
Set in Kenya in the 1950s against the fading backdrop of the British Empire, a story of self-discovery, betrayal, and an impossible love. After six years in England, Rachel has returned to Kenya and the farm where she spent her childhood, but the beloved home she d longed for is much changed. Her father s new companion a strange, intolerant woman has taken over the household. The political climate in the country grows more unsettled by the day and...
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
"The author of the award-winning Sally Hemings now brings to life Hannah Elias, one of the richest black women in America in the early 1900s, in this mesmerizing novel swirling with atmosphere and steeped in history. A murder and a case of mistaken identity brings the police to Hannah Elias' glitzy, five-story, twenty-room mansion on Central Park West. This is the beginning of an odyssey that moves back and forth in time and reveals the dangerous...
Author
Language
English
Description
"In London, 1939, Ada Vaughan is a young woman with an unusual dressmaking skill, and dreams of a better life for herself. That life seems to arrive when Stanislaus, an Austrian aristocrat, sweeps Ada off her feet and brings her to Paris. When war breaksout, Stanislaus vanishes, and Ada is taken prisoner by the Germans, she must do everything she can to survive: by becoming dressmaker to the Nazi wives. Abandoned and alone as war rages, the choices...
17) Cherokee America
Author
Language
English
Description
Spring, 1875, in the Cherokee Nation West. A baby, a black hired hand, a bay horse, a gun, a gold stash, and a preacher have all gone missing. Cherokee America Singer, known as "Check," is not amused: one of her sons is caught in a compromising position that results in murder; a neighbor disappears; another man is killed. Tensions mount and violence escalates as Check's mixed race family, friends, and neighbors come together to protect their community--...
18) Crooked heart
Author
Series
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"When Noel Bostock--aged ten, no family--is evacuated from London to escape the Nazi bombardment, he lands in a suburb northwest of the city with Vera Sedge a thirty-six-year-old widow drowning in debts and dependents. Always desperate for money, she's unscrupulous about how she gets it. Noel's mourning his godmother, Mattie, a former suffragette. Wise beyond his years and raised with a disdain for authority and an eclectic attitude toward education,...
Author
Language
English
Description
"Enid Campbell, granddaughter of a duke, grew up surrounded by servants, wanting for nothing except love. But when her brother died in the First World War, a new heir was needed, and it was up to Enid to provide it. A troubled marriage and three children soon followed. Broken by postpartum depression, overwhelmed by motherhood and a loveless marriage, Enid made the shocking decision to abandon her family, thereby starting a chain of events--a kidnap,...
20) Coal black horse
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
When Robey Childs's mother experiences a premonition about her husband, a Civil War soldier, she sends her only son to retrieve his father from the battlefield, wearing a coat that is blue on one side and gray on the other, accompanied by an unusual horse that becomes his only companion, guide, and protector as he makes his way through the death and destruction of war.