New Historical Fiction for June

Ann Lowe designed some of the most famous dresses of all time, including the wedding dress for Jackie Kennedy, but her story was forgotten by history as so many Black women’s are. Taught to sew at a young age by her mother and grandmother–formerly enslaved–Ann dreams of becoming a celebrated designer. But the path to success in the early nineteen hundreds for a Black woman is no easy thing, especially when a marriage to an abusive alcoholic husband threatens to destroy her dreams. But a when a wealthy Tampa socialite takes note of her talents, Ann is given the opportunity to save herself and her young son and create the life she’s always dreamed of.

After her brother is run out of town by a violent white mob, Luz “Little Light” Lopez is left to fend for herself in 1930s Denver. Soon, she begins to have visions that transport her to her nearby Indigenous homeland, where she remembers how her people thrived for generates and how they were threatened and ripped from their land. Now, it is up to Luz to determine that the story of her family and her people will not be forgotten.

Before Seabiscuit, there was Lexington, a horse led to record-setting victories across the pre-Civil War South by an enslaved groom who was forgotten to time. Told through timelines in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, Horse is the story of a remarkable racehorse and the unsung Black horsemen who was critical to his success.

In a medieval fiefdom, a young, motherless shepherd boy known as Little Marek finds solace in the village midwife, whose ability to communicate with the natural world is viewed as sacrilegious by some. During a year of record drought, the tension between those who believe Ina’s gifts are godless and those who find solace in her religious revelations come to a head, and Little Marek finds himself at the very middle of them.

A Black couple fleeing persecution in America during the Civil Rights movement seek asylum in Ghana. With the help of an old college friend, now the country’s embattled president, they hope to forge a new life for themselves. But problems both political and personal begin to chip at the foundation of their relationship and their new life.

Take a look at the grisly realities of nineteenth-century medicine alongside the little-known story of America’s first nursing school in The Nurse’s Secret. A grifter in 1880s New York cons her way into Bellevue nursing school to evade the police. But when she grows suspicious about a patient’s death, she’ll have to decide what’s more important: protecting her own identity or saving lives.