Best Historical Fiction

 It is heart-wrenching to see how one human being is capable of mistreating another human being. The wronged ones in order to survive need to keep their spirit alive. In this story, each person is allowed to keep one thing they value the most, and leave the rest behind. The spirit also comes through the story-telling, traditions, love for family and staying together. Ukraine, 1941. Hanna lives with her family in a Jewish community in a small town of Kwasova. She doesn’t understand why some people from her village are disappearing as her parents try to protect her from knowing the evil. They don’t tell her about the enormous taxes being levied on Jews. “Or of the consequences of practicing” their religion. When the actions get dramatic, removing Jews from their homes at nights, some get killed, the rest are taken to the camps. Hanna’s family is being warned, “Everyone is hungry now and a hungry man will do anything not to see his family starve.” Home is where family is. The forest b...

 The London Restoration – one might imagine it entails restoration of London after a devastation of war. Or maybe it’s about restoration of love in London. One young couple gets married at the beginning of the war, then pushed away from each other due to war, and now after the war trying to restore the love bond damaged by war. A beautiful love story. London, 1945. Diana Somerville is a woman of great intuition and ability to read hidden messages. Thus during the war she was recruited as a codebreaker. However, what her husband knows is that she was doing translation work. He on the other hand was a stretcher bearer in the Belgian trenches, and later Italian. Once the war ends, she disappears for five weeks without any word. When he needed her the most, she was gone. “Then there were the weeks of convalescence when his pain and flashbacks were secondary to his worry for her.” The story goes back in time to 1941 and reveals how she was enlisted as a codebreaker agent. And furt...

 “The exodus of Chinese universities and middle schools began in 1937, the official start of the Second Sino-Japanese War.” The purpose of schools relocating to China’s interior was about “safeguarding the nation’s intellectual legacy, so necessary for building the future.” China, 1937. Nineteen-year-old Hu Lian has been studying at Minghua University in Nanking. She comes from a humble family. She is one of only three students awarded scholarship. Now, due to Japanese bombing the city, the students are ordered to flee. Since most of China is illiterate, the university students are valued highly. Men are not allowed to enlist as soldiers. The students are evacuating to a wartime campus in Changtu. A journey which takes 1,000 miles is marked by constant aerial attack. They are also assigned to transport the Library of Legends – valued books of Chinese myths and folklore. Each student carries one book and they are assigned to read the stories as they travel. Even during the war, th...

 Story of the alleged affair, between the married Lydia Robinson and Branwell Bronte, her son’s tutor, illuminates “portrait of a courageous, sharp-witted woman who fights to emerge with her dignity intact.” It may not be a woman you’d sympathize with, but it gives voice to a woman who is voiceless and suffocating. She is a complex human character full of passion and worth of attention. Yorkshire, 1843. Lydia has lost her youngest daughter and mother within the same year. She is dealing with grief, rebelling teenage daughters, scrutinizing mother-in-love, and impassive husband. She craves enjoyment, her husband’s love, his touch, instead she receives coldness. Miss Anne Bronte is governess to her daughters and now Mr. Branwell Bronte joins the household to be her son’s tutor. With the appearance of Mr. Bronte, the temperature in the room rises. Once again, she starts feeling the music that she plays and sings. She yearns for something more. She’s been feeling lonely, with...

 Based on “the true story of the Cheapside Hoard, dug up in a Cheapside cellar in 1912, (…) it is one of the most famous caches of jewels in the world, it is also the most mysterious. How could someone neglect to retrieve five hundred precious pieces of jewelry and gemstones?” This story is an imagined tale woven between the facts. Present day Boston. Kate Kirby, American jewelry historian, writing for an American magazine, receives a call about the Cheapside jewels. She flies to London, where at the London Museum, as the curator of the museum presents the jewels, a button catches her eye. She has seen similar button in her great-grandmother’s sketches. There is also a diamond ring. Now, she is off to India in hopes of tracing the history of the Golconda diamond set in the ring. London, 1912. Impoverished Irish immigrant Essie Murphy visits her brother at construction work, while a worker strikes through the floor finding a stash of treasure. Her brother sneaks in a small gold bu...

 This story brings a historical background of a city once prospering from textile mills and now facing union strikes. But for most of the part this is a moving story of a father, who after losing his wife, struggles to keep his family together. Fall River, Massachusetts, in 1911 is celebrating one hundred years of being America’s “largest cotton manufacturing city in the country.” The owners are very proud of it and pretty sure that the city will have another centennial celebration. Joseph Bartlett is one of the owners, which happened by accident. He sympathizes with labor, which doesn’t put him in a good position with other owners. Now, his wife passes away and at the same time his older son assaults a young woman. And later, he notices his younger son being diverted in the wrong direction by his friend’s daughter. On a sunny August day, Sarah Strong, a suffragist, approaches Joseph as he understands, unlike his peers, that the hardships at the mills don’t need to be endur...

 During WWII, forgers played important role in the Resistance. It was a network of “brave people who used their artistic ability and scientific ingenuity to produce convincing documents that allowed innocent people to survive.” Florida, 2005. Eva Traube, librarian, comes across an article talking about a book, which she thought had vanished forever. Paris, 1942. Eva is pursuing her doctorate in English literature. Her father, Polish-born Jew, is arrested. But before that he arranged with his employer for fake documents for Eva in order for her to escape to the free zone in Switzerland. Since she has to escape with her mother now, she is given blank documents and supplies to forge their own documents. From Paris, they travel east, toward the Alps and make a stop in Aurignon. Where, even though their papers are very legible looking, there is something else that gives them away. Now, a Catholic priest asks Eva for help in forging papers for Jewish children. He convinces her to d...