By Jennifer Robson
Recommended By Donna Burger, Readers' Services Librarian, Sonia Grgas, Reference Librarian

From the internationally bestselling author of Somewhere in France comes an enthralling historical novel about one of the most famous wedding dresses of the twentieth century—Queen Elizabeth’s wedding gown—and the fascinating women who made it.

By Jeannette Walls

From the author of The Glass Castle, a true-life novel about Walls' grandmother--horse trainer, teacher, flapper, rancher, and pilot.

By Jillian Cantor
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

A reimagining of the life of Marie Curie is told through two parallel timelines, including one that reflects her real–world achievements and another that explores how the world might be different had she made other choices.

By Maggie O'Farrell
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk, Sonia Grgas, Reference Librarian, Donna Burger, Readers' Services Librarian

The award–winning author of I Am, I Am, I Am presents the evocative story of a young Shakespeare’s marriage to a talented herbalist before the ravaging death of their 11– year–old son shapes the production of his greatest play.

By Susan Higginbotham

Based on fact, describes the story of Mary Surratt, who ran a small boarding house where her son brought spies, secessionists and future confederates, including charming actor John Wilkes Booth, and may have been involved in Lincoln’s assassination.

By Margaret George
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager

Married at a tender age to the remote Spartan king Menelaus, the beautiful Helen bears him a daughter and anticipates a passionless marriage in spite of her divine origins before falling in love with the Trojan prince Paris, with whom she flees to Troy, with devastating consequences.

By Erika Robuck

Mariella Bennet, struggling to support her family in Depression-era Key West, takes a job as a maid for Ernest Hemingway's second wife, and becomes caught up in a world of parties, celebrities, and the attentions of Papa himself.

By Marie Benedict
Recommended By Brenda Cherry, Reference Librarian

Tells the story of Rosalind Franklin, who, despite an environment of harassment and bullying in the late 1940s and 1950s, worked in a stringent, scientific manner and became one of the first scientists to map the structure of DNA.

By E.L. Doctorow

A tale inspired by a true story finds the blind Homer Collyer closeted within a once-grand Fifth Avenue mansion with his damaged brother and remembering a life marked by colorful characters, political events, and technological achievements.

By Michael Cunningham

The spirit of Virginia Woolf permeates the lives of several American readers as evidenced in this trio of tales about the author Woolf, a New Yorker planning a party to honour a writer, and a young mother reading Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway.

Became the movie: The Hours.

By Jerome Charyn

A narrative portrait of Abraham Lincoln in his own voice reflects on his major life events, from his picaresque youth in Illinois and improbable marriage to Kentucky belle Mary Todd through his visit to war-shattered Richmond days before his assassination.

By Jane Mendelsohn
Recommended By Adrienne Rein, Library Clerk

"In this brilliantly imagined novel, Amelia Earhart tells us what happened after she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared off the coast of New Guinea one glorious, windy day in 1937 (From the Publisher)."

By Ariel Lawhon
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager

In Germany in 1920, the unexplained appearance of a traumatized, badly scarred young woman who claims to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia, the youngest Romanov daughter, launches a half–century of questions and accusations.

By Irina Reyn
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk

Struggling with the sudden and unexplained departure of her husband, Russian art specialist Tanya Kagan organizes an auction for a priceless artifact with ties to an infamous eighteenth-century woman who may have faced the same issues in her own marriage.

By Robert Harris
Series Cicero
Recommended By Barney Levantino, Reference Librarian

"Harris returns to ancient Rome for this entertaining and enlightening novel of Marcus Cicero's rise to power. Narrated by a household slave named Tiro… (From Publishers Weekly)."

By Susan Sontag

Poland's greatest living actress leads a utopian community to the wilds of 1876 California, where she will struggle to maintain love, hope, and idealism in the harsh reality of the American West.

By Fabio Geda
Recommended By Neela Vass, Head of Acquisitions, Jackie, Head of Readers' Services

In a fictional retelling of a true story, ten–year–old Enaiat leaves his small Afghanistan village after the Taliban takes over in 2000, and when his mother is forced to leave him in Pakistan, he endures a five–year ordeal to make his way to Italy.

By Vaddey Ratner
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian
With Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, July 9, 2013. 7:30 PM.

Her life of privilege in Cambodia shattered by the outbreak of civil war on the streets of Phnom Penh, young Raami endures four years of loss, starvation, and brutal forced labor while clinging to memories of the legends and poems told to her by her father. 

By Isabel Allende

A work of historical fiction chronicles the brave deeds and passionate loves of a spirited woman who journeyed to the New World and helped found a nation.

By Posie Graeme-Evans
Series The Tudor Saga

Anne is a young peasant girl in medieval Britain, whose ability to heal others with her knowledge of herbs brings her to the attention of young King Edward IV, and his unexpected results when she becomes a member of his household.

By Alison Weir

A fictional portrait of Lady Jane Grey, the great-niece of Henry VIII, follows her turbulent life against the backdrop of Tudor power politics and religious upheaval, from her youth, to her nine-day reign as Queen of England, to its tragic aftermath.

By Rebecca Franke
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services, Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

The inspiring story of a Polish family who narrowly escaped the Holocaust by fleeing to the Bialowieza Forest, surviving two years of brutal winters, disease and Nazi raids until their 1944 rescue by the Red Army.

By Sue Monk Kidd
Recommended By Pam Strudler, Programming & Arts Librarian, Pam Martin, Assistant Library Director, Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
With Lisa Jones, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, May 26, 2015. 1:30 PM.

Traces more than three decades in the lives of a wealthy Charleston debutante who longs to break free from the strictures of her household and pursue a meaningful life; and the urban slave, Handful, who is placed in her charge as a child before finding courage and a sense of self.

By Alison Weir
Series Six Tudor Queens novels
Recommended By Pam Martin, Assistant Library Director

Spanish princess Katherine of Aragon, after being widowed from the future King of England, marries his brother and shares a happy marriage that is overshadowed by her failure to bear a healthy son and the king’s growing obsession with another woman.

By Lucy Knisley
Recommended By Jessikah Chautin, Community Engagement Specialist

This moving, hilarious, and surprisingly informative memoir not only follows Lucy’s personal transition into motherhood but also illustrates the history and science of reproductive health from all angles, including curious facts and inspiring (and notorious) figures in medicine and midwifery. Whether you’ve got kids, want them, or want nothing to do with them, there’s something in this graphic memoir to open your mind and heart.

By Jeffrey Brown
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services

Provides a humorous look at parenting through the interactions of little Oscar and his mother and father.

By Arthur Phillips
Recommended By Brenda Cherry, Reference Librarian

A secret Muslim warrior from the height of England’s religious battles is sent to Scotland to uncover the true nature of James VI’s actual religious beliefs while an heirless Elizabeth I lies on her deathbed. By the award-winning author of Prague.

By Anne Easter Smith

A tale inspired by the presumed-dead lost princes of the Tower finds Grace Plantagenet, the illegitimate daughter of Edward IV and the half-sister of the princes, attending a court investigation into a young man’s claim that he is one of the princes and would assume the throne from Henry VII.

By Lauren Conrad
Series L.A. Candy

When 19-year-old Jane is cast in a reality show, she discovers that the fame of her new life comes at a high price to herself & her friendships.

By Barbara Kingsolver

Harrison William Shepherd, a highly observant writer, is caught between two worlds--in Mexico, working for communists Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky, and later in America, where he is caught up in the patriotism of World War II.

By Alison Weir

A fictional portrait of the tumultuous early life of Queen Elizabeth I describes her perilous path to the throne of England and the scandal, political intrigues, and religious turmoil she confronted along the way.

By Alison Weir
Recommended By Meghan F., Children's Services Librarian

A vivid fictional portrait of the tumultuous early life of Queen Elizabeth I describes her perilous path to the throne of England and the scandal, political intrigues, and religious turmoil she confronted along the way, from the deaths of her parents, Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII, to the fanaticism of her sister, Mary I.

By Graham Moore
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager

When electric light innovator Thomas Edison sues his only remaining rival for patent infringement, George Westinghouse hires untested Columbia Law School graduate Paul Ravath for a case fraught with lies, betrayals, and deception.

By Lisa Genova
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services, Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian, Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk
With Lisa Jones, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, August 30, 2011. 1 PM & 7:30 PM.

In the prime of her life, a woman's fate takes a tragic turn when a devastating car accident leaves her crippled with a debilitating brain disorder.

By Don DeLillo
Recommended By Barry Ernst, Reference Librarian

“In this powerful, eerily convincing fictional speculation on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Don DeLillo chronicles Lee Harvey Oswald's odyssey from troubled teenager to a man of precarious stability who imagines himself an agent of history (From the Publisher).”

By Kathleen Rooney
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk, Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian, Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian

Embarking on a walk across Manhattan on New Year's Eve in 1984, eighty–five–year–old Lillian Boxfish recalls her long and eventful life, which included a brief reign as the highest–paid advertising woman in America, whose career was cut short by marriage and loss.

By Gore Vidal

A portrait of America's great president that is both intimate and public.

By Timothy L. O’Brien

As the nation mourns the death of President Abraham Lincoln, Detective Temple McFadden discovers two diaries - one belonging to Mary Todd Lincoln, the other penned by John Wilkes Booth - that reveal a shocking conspiracy behind Lincoln's assassination.

By Nancy Horan

A fictionalization of the life of Mamah Borthwick Cheney, best known as the woman who wrecked Frank Lloyd Wright's first marriage.

By Elle Feldman

Recreation of FDR's love affair with his wife's social secretary, Lucy Mercer Rutherford.

Series Nellie Bly #1
Recommended By Jenn Jordan, Library Aide

A fearless reporter Nellie Bly will stop at nothing to chase down stories that expose injustices against women—even if it comes at the risk of her own life and freedom—in this exciting novel inspired by the true story of one remarkable woman.

By C. W. Gortner

A creative reimagining of the life of iconic fashion designer Coco Chanel traces the development of her exceptional sewing skills in an orphanage, her transformation into a couturier, and the private struggles behind her subsequent fame.

By Allison Pataki
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

The epic reimagining of the extraordinary life of Marjorie Merriweather Post, the American heiress who lived and loved on a grand scale, reveals the heartbreak she endured as a wife four times over in vastly different dramatic marriages.

By Gill Paul
Recommended By Jenn Jordan, Library Aide

In this 1920s version of Sex and the City, Dorothy Parker and three other extraordinary women form a bridge group that grows into a firm friendship as they help each other get over setbacks while jazz music flows through the air and bathtub gin fills their glasses.

By Sarah McCoy

Sarah Brown, the daughter of abolitionist John Brown, used her talent as an artist to make hidden maps for escaped slaves, while in present-day Washington D.C., Eden discovers a porcelain doll head that contains secrets from the past. Genres: Biographical Fiction; Contemporary Fiction; Historical Fiction; Early Modern Era; Civil War Era

By Jillian Cantor
Recommended By Amy B., Children's Librarian

In a reimagining of the life of Anne Frank's sister Margot, Margie Franklin, working as a secretary at a Jewish law firm in Philadelphia, finds her carefully constructed life falling apart when her sister becomes a global icon.

By Maggie O'Farrell

In Florence during the 1550s, captivating young duchess Lucrezia de’ Medici, having barely left girlhood behind, marries the ruler of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, and now, in an unfamiliar court where she has one duty—to provide an heir—fights for her very survival.

By Margaret George
A fictional account of the life of Mary Queen of Scots traces her lineage and describes her childhood, marriages, and her historic fight with Elizabeth over the throne of England.

By Colm Toibin

Nineteenth-century writer Henry James is heartbroken when his first play performs poorly in contrast to Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" and struggles with subsequent doubts about his sexual identity.

By Michael Sledge

A debut novel creates an intimate portrait of the poet Elizabeth Bishop, telling of her life in Brazil and her relationship with her lover, the aristocratic Lota de Macedo Soares.