Best Historical Fiction

 This story is inspired by the story of Mary Lumpkin and Lumpkin’s jail in Richmond, Virginia. Bell Plantation, Charles City, Virginia, 1850. Pheby Delores Brown, after losing her mother and after broken promise of freedom, she is being sold to traders. At an auction, she is “rescued by gentleman’s kindness.” Rubin Lapier is the owner of the jail, where Pheby spent the night before the auction. And now is one of the workers at the jail sewing, mostly mending clothing. Her constant companion is “the click-clack sounds” of slaves’ iron confinements and “the moaning from inside the jail…” Should she follow in the footsteps of a woman she saw at the market? A woman like her, who isn’t free, “yet she lived a life better than some white women.” There is a reason why the jail is called the Devil’s Half Acre. Whenever she thinks she can endure this place, there is a reminder that she cannot. The fastest page-turner ever and heart-pounding read. On one hand, the jail owner, known as the Bul...

  Based on true events, set in post-World War II Italy, about poor children from the south sent to live with families in the north to survive deprivation. The war has devastated Italy, especially south. Seven-year-old Amerigo Sperenza lives with his mother in Naples, surviving on odd jobs. But one day, Amerigo learns that a train will take him north to a better place. In the north, he adapts well to his new surroundings and adopted family. At school, he proves to be good with numbers. With his adopted father he fixes instruments. But his ambitions are much higher. He wants to play those instruments, and not just tune them. At 75%, the story shifts fifty years later. And some chapters bring the voice of Amerigo as he is talking to his late mother. It reveals how things followed in his early age and he also reconnects with some lost friendships. The voice of a grown-up Amerigo is interesting and reads well. However, I enjoyed the wit and the voice of him as a boy so much that I wishe...

  Based on a little-known blizzard that struck the Great Plains on January 12th, 1888. “The storm hit at precisely the wrong time here in northeastern Nebraska, southeastern Dakota. (…) It hit right when most schools were about to disgorge its pupils for the day, or just had.” Gavin Woodson, a newspaperman in Omaha, “writes for the state’s boosters and railroad investors, advertising Nebraska as the Garden of Eden, something it was not. To sell all these acres, recently won from the Indians, to rubes and immigrants who didn’t know any better. To settle this state, grow the population… (…) and make the businessmen, the investors, the railroads happy. And very rich.” January 1888, Nebraska. When unexpected blizzard strikes during a time of day when children are at school, sixteen-year-old Raina Olsen, a schoolteacher, must make a decision to either stay at school, where they can freeze to death when fuel rans out or to send children home and hope they wouldn’t get lost in the storm. ...

  This story brings the opulent life of Russian aristocracy. And the poor peasants being used as an argument to start pogroms against Jews. An argument of Jews taking advantage of simple peasants when lending money. Imperial Russia, 1903. Prince Dimitri Markhov is an esteemed architect and engineer, always looking for new architectural challenges, which is explained by his upbringing. His father didn’t want him to “become the usual aristocratic wastrel,” thus when noticing Dimitri’s artistic talent, he encouraged it. The Tsar greatly admires his abilities, involving him in many projects. They become close friends. One day, while passing through Kishniev, Dimitri notices a wagon full of dead bodies. And that image edged in his mind keeps resurfacing and worrying him. Why the pogrom against the Jews and why there was an attempt on Tsar’s life? At a ball, Dimitri meets Katya, one of the first female doctors in Russia. He joins her for arts circle on Thursday nights, where the talk wit...