Author: Rachel Brittain

In this retelling of the classic Chinese novel Water Margin, a group of bandits whose progressive ideas the Empire would like to destroy push back against the norms of society. When an expert arms instructor is betrayed and disgraced, she joins the Liangshan Bandits. Together, these powerful outlaws could bring down an empire.

A Scottish seamstress recently immigrated from Scotland, and a young Nathaniel Hawthorne find themselves drawn to each other after Isobel Gamble’s husband abandons her. Nathaniel is still haunted by the women his ancestors condemned to the gallows in Salem. Isobel is a young immigrant, both talented and troubled. Both must contend with what it means to be a “real” American in a time when the Underground Railroad is still in its early days.

First up is one of the books I’m eyeing as I embark on a Tudor reading marathon. Alison Weir has written numerous books about the Tudors, Plantagenets, and other royals, including this book about Katherine of Aragon, King Henry VIII’s first wife, who starts off this series about the six wives of King Henry.

The queen of a newly free Haiti, Marie-Louise Christophe, rules alongside her husband for 10 years before he is overthrown, leaving Marie-Louise and their daughters on their own. Forced to flee to Europe, Marie-Louise must redefine herself and her daughters to prove they are every bit the equal of their royal peers. Even in exile, she knows she is a queen. It’s ensuring everyone else knows it, too; that’s the real battle.

Before Megan Markle or Princess Di, there was Empress Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary, beloved by her people and known by the endearment, “Sisi.” But as monarchies fall, Sisi’s own marriage crumbles, and World War I approaches, will Sisi be able to save her family and her empire without losing herself?

This fictional account of Shakespeare’s marriage and the son he and his wife lost to the plague at only 11 is not only the story of a family, a death, and a woman mostly lost to history, but also of one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, a story of madness and loss written only four years after Hamnet’s death.

In this play from the author of Beloved, the story of Othello is reimagined as a dialogue of words and music between Desdemona and her African nurse Barbary. Desdemona gives voice to the overlooked women at the heart of this Shakespeare play, and it explores the complexities of race, gender, and love, reimagining them as befits a modern audience.

A grandmother and granddaughter face the intergenerational trauma of displacement and war when first, the family is forced to flee during the Land Reform of the growing Communist movement and later again, when the Việt Nam War tears the family apart. Amidst it all, it is the love and hope of a family that keep them together.

The matriarch of an interracial Hawaiian family helps her four granddaughters come to terms with their complicated heritage and history in this novel about survival amidst the backdrop of colonization. It’s a family epic interwoven with the lore, legends, and history of the Pacific.

When the mother of famed mathematician Johannes Kepler is accused of being a witch, Katharina tells her side of the story to her neighbor, a widower with secrets of his own. Katharina may be doing herself no favors with the way she talks about her accusers, but she’s certainly a formidable woman and grandmother caught up in the religious hysteria of her time.

In 1920s Harlem, a woman running from her past by spending nights at the finest speakeasy Harlem has to offer finds herself involved in solving a string of murders after she’s arrested. The police give her two options: help them figure out who’s killing local Black girls or spend her days in a jail cell. It might seem like an easy choice, but given her past and the dangerous killer she now stalks, it might just prove the death of her.

An upstanding furniture salesman with a criminal history is drawn back into the world of crime when his cousin is brought in on a plan to rob the Hotel Theresa. Now, Ray is working as a fence for crooks and shady cops while trying to keep up his family man façade. Whitehead provides us with an insider look into life in 1960s Harlem with this novel of heists, hopes, and family.

When a freak blizzard traps the unprepared schoolchildren of a Dakota territory schoolhouse, school teachers barely older than the children themselves are left to make terrifying decisions that will decide their fates. It’s a story of hardship, courage, and survival based on the accounts of survivors.

A girl attempting to fight her way out of poverty in Chinatown through admittance to an elite girl’s school finds herself trapped in a makeshift encampment after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake levels her home and school. What’s left of the city is on fire as girls wait to be collected by their families. But Mercy isn’t one for waiting. Even if she’s just a girl up against a natural disaster, she’s determined to do something to help.

When a young Black starlet inherits the wealth of a late movie star, speculation runs wild in the press. But the true story of the connection between Kitty Karr Tate and the St. John family stretches back much farther than anyone realizes. And the truth, when Elise St. John learns it, changes everything she thought she knew about her family forever.

After their Ba dies, two siblings living in the American West find the divide between them growing as they search for someplace to lay their father to rest. But the story of how they came to be here, told out of order through lyrical prose, reveals a complicated history that ties their family together.

Two daughters of a legendary surfer pushing to make a place for herself in a male-dominated sport vie for their mother’s time and affection in this book about California surf culture of the 1960s. As one daughter becomes a celebrity surfer in her own right, the other finds herself swept up in the counter-culture movement full of drugs and cults. But through it all, Mindy and Ginger are connected by the trauma of their unorthodox childhood.

When her friend is shot through the window of a saloon, burlesque dancer Blanche risks everything to bring her murderer to justice. Inspired by a forgotten cold case in San Francisco’s storied history, Frog Music is a tale of notorious women, dangerous men, free-loving bohemians, and murder.

Set in the years leading up to WWII in San Francisco, three girls compete for a role in an exclusive “Oriental” nightclub, the Forbidden City. Grace and Helen are both Chinese American, but Ruby is only passing as Chinese. Her friends both know all too well she’s actually Japanese. So when America enters the war and begins interring innocent Japanese citizens, Ruby will be left wondering: which of her friends betrayed her?

Oak Ridge, Tennessee is a city that doesn’t officially exist. There, in a city that has been created in the course of months, young women like June work massive machines that they know play some role in the war effort. But what exactly they’re doing, they don’t know. Security is everywhere. Secrecy is paramount. It’s only when the bombs fall in Hiroshima and Nagasaki that June will realize the role she’s played. Now, confronted with the truth, she’ll have to reckon with the costs of unquestioned patriotism and war.

This is a book for middle grade readers, but I wanted to include it both because I’m a firm believer that good books transcend their target audience and also because it tells an important story, from a perspective often lacking in historical fiction. Loosely based on the memories of her mother, who survived the bombing of Hiroshima, Burkinshaw shares a glimpse into Japanese culture and life during WWII as well as the horrors that befell Hiroshima and Nagasaki through the eyes of a 12-year-old girl.

First serialized in 1965, Black Rain recounts the devastation of the atomic bombs through the eyes of historical accounts. Told through the eyes of an uncle worrying about his niece’s prospects one year after the bombings, Shigematsu sets out to disprove the rumors she was in Hiroshima on the day the nuclear bomb was dropped on the city. Her diaries from those days, recounting the horrors of the explosion and nuclear fallout, will either cement her prospects or ruin her chances of marriage forever.

Zadie Smith sets her sights and talents on a legal trial that divided Victorian England. When an Australian butcher claims to be the heir to a sizable estate, the Tichborne Trial aims to determine whether he is a fraud or the real thing. One Scottish housekeeper who is nobody’s fool and a formerly enslaved Jamaican man who finds himself acting as star witness are drawn deeper and deeper into a case that questions who has the right to tell their story.

From the author of The Wonder, Room, and The Pull of Stars comes a new historical history novel about two young girls who fall in love at a 19th century boarding school. Drawing on the real-life secret diaries of Anne Lister, Learned by Heart is the story of a young tomboy (Anne) and an orphaned heiress sent to England from India. It’s a love story full of secrets and danger, passion and heartbreak. And it’s sure to stick with you long after you’re done reading.

The acclaimed author of Deacon King Kong and The Good Lord Bird returns for a story about a small town full of secrets. A dilapidated neighborhood in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, known as Chicken Hill, where Jewish immigrants and African Americans live side by side, is rocked by the discovery of a skeleton at the bottom of a well. The residents know all too well who is buried there, alongside all the secrets and choices they’ve had to make to survive. Here, neighbors will do whatever it takes to keep each other safe because they know no one else is going to.