2024 NATIONAL MEDAL
for Museum and Library Service Finalist

Historical Fiction

Send for Me

An achingly beautiful work of historical fiction that moves between Germany on the eve of World War II and present-day Wisconsin, unspooling a thread of love, longing, and the powerful bonds of family.

The Color Purple

A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance and silence.

Vera: A Novel

Narrowly surviving the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, a bordello proprietor's daughter bonds with an unlikely new family, from a Chinese clan and an orphan caregiver to tenor Enrico Caruso and tabloid celebrity Alma Spreckels.

These Violent Delights

The year is 1926, and Shanghai hums to the tune of debauchery.

A blood feud between two gangs runs the streets red, leaving the city helpless in the grip of chaos. At the heart of it all is eighteen-year-old Juliette Cai, a former flapper who has returned to assume her role as the proud heir of the Scarlet Gang—a network of criminals far above the law. Their only rivals in power are the White Flowers, who have fought the Scarlets for generations. And behind every move is their heir, Roma Montagov, Juliette’s first love…and first betrayal.

Our Darkest Night

To survive the Holocaust, a young Jewish woman must pose as a Christian farmer's wife in this story of terror, hope, love, and sacrifice, inspired by true events from the most perilous days of World War II.

Cuyahoga

 

A proto-superhero's efforts to secure a marriage-worthy fortune in 1837 Ohio place him at the center of a madcap city rivalry involving elderly terrorists, steamboat races, wild pigs, and ruined weddings.

The Personal Librarian

A remarkable novel about J. P. Morgan’s personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, the Black American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white in order to leave a lasting legacy that enriched our nation, from New York Times bestselling authors Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray.