Best Historical Fiction

  This is a fascinating story of Lucy Stone, pioneering feminist and abolitionist. Lucy Stone grew up on a farm. As much as she loved it, she saw how limited women’s rights were even though they worked as hard as men. Something she witnesses makes her go to a retired judge and ask for explanation of the laws of marriage. Afterwards, it makes her vow not to marry. Already, at a young age, she is determined “to create a life free from dependence on any man.” This means furthering her education in order to be independent and defying her father, who believes in a very limited education for girls. During her college years, she continues to defy important men as she strongly stands by what she believes in. Her actions are reflection of her words. A month before her graduation, as one of the top students, she receives an honor to prepare an essay for commencement, but that honor does not extend to reading her own essay. She needs to select the male classmate, which she refuses to do. Her ...

  Well-crafted novel of Mary Wollstonecraft – arguably the world’s first feminist, one of the world’s most influential thinkers and mother of the famous novelist Mary Shelley. London, 1797. A midwife named Mrs. B arrives at Mary’s house as Mary is about to give birth to her second child. Mrs. B, after attending the birth, now is assisting the weak and feverish mother. She relates the events of those few days with warmness and attentiveness, happening in present time. The story alternates between these two women. As Mary’s story goes back in time, it gives a better understanding of what made Mary who she is. And it is written in a form of Mary relating the events to her just born daughter, Mary Shelley. When Mary’s family moves from the city to the country, she meets a young girl whose father is a scientist. His lectures which she attends make her heart swell with determination to overcome certain obstacles she faces. She is a smart girl and wants to attend advanced classes at schoo...

  Based on a true story, about one detective’s work to preserve the life of his king and prevent an assassination in Edwardian London. William Melville is the head of Britain’s Special Branch, personal bodyguard to Queen Victoria and her family. Through his tenacity and low cunning he has risen from beat constable to Detective Chief Superintendent, “champion of British justice – or notorious thug, depending on which papers you read.” There is a brewing threat to anarchy. Fenians’ passion for independence turns to be a bit radical, as they seek independence or self-rule with no respect for democracy or the rule of law. Their conviction of trying to kill enough emperors, kings, and ministers convinced them to believe that it’s the way to let the common people rise up and be free of monarchy or any kind of chains of bondage. When Queen Victoria passes away in January 1901, among many royals the German Emperor Wilhelm comes to attend her funeral. There are anarchists who might be plott...

  St. Louis, 1917. Julia Stimson is a Superintendent of Nurses at the School of Medicine. The school “was identified by the Red Cross as a base hospital, to be activated in the event of an emergency.” That emergency has arrived. Julia has to recruit “enough qualified nurses willing to give up their lives and embark on an unknowable journey.” Unnecessarily worried, she is overwhelmed with the response of so many young women willing to take that journey. The Great War throws “together people from different backgrounds and cultures like never before.” Once in Rouen, France, her skills are put into a true test. The hospital her team is assigned to is supposed to be “staffed for five hundred patients, not thirteen hundred.” She needs to figure out how to be efficient in the best possible way, by scheduling skillfully nurses, “setting up a system of a day shift and a night shift, with leaders for each, (…) based on their experience, strength, and compatibilities.” Beginning of the year 1...