Category Archives: Historical Fiction

Like a Love Story by Abdi Nazemian

Like a Love Story by Abdi Nazemian

It’s 1989 in New York City, and for three teens, the world is changing. Reza is an Iranian boy who has just moved to the city with his mother to live with his stepfather and stepbrother. He’s terrified that someone will guess the truth he can barely acknowledge about himself. Reza knows he’s gay, but all he knows of gay life are the media’s images of men dying of AIDS. Judy is an aspiring fashion designer who worships her uncle Stephen, a gay man with AIDS who devotes his time to activism as a member of ACT UP. Judy has never imagined finding romance until she falls… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Homomisia, internalised homomisia & homomisic slurs
  • Amisia
  • Deadnaming
  • Racism
  • Fatmisia
  • Suicide by overdose
  • HIV/AIDS
  • Terminal illness
  • Bullying

The Red Lily by Juliette Cross

The Red Lily by Juliette Cross

The Black Lily resistance needs a larger army if they are to defeat the vampire monarchy. In order to do so, former lieutenant and traitor to the vampire Crown, Nikolai must seek help from the red-hooded temptress he needs to avoid at all costs. The secret he carries could prove dangerous for her if she gets too close…even though keeping her close—very close—is the only thing on his mind. Sienna will do anything for the Black Lily, and when Nikolai asks for her assistance to gain the trust of the commonwealth, it’s the last thing she wants to do. The thought of leaving… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Threats of rape
  • Blood depiction

The Last Paper Crane by Kerry Drewery

The Last Paper Crane by Kerry Drewery

1945, Hiroshima: Ichiro is a teenage boy relaxing at home with his friend Hiro. Moments later there is a blinding flash as the horrific nuclear bomb is dropped. With great bravery, the two boys find Hiro’s five-year-old sister Keiko in the devastated and blasted landscape. With Hiro succumbing to his wounds, Ichiro is now the only one who can take care of Keiko. But in the chaos, Ichiro loses her when he sets off to find help. Seventy years later, the loss of Keiko and his broken promise to his dying friend are… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Radiation poisoning
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a friend
  • Death of a parent
  • Death of a grandparent recounted
  • World War Two
  • Nuclear bombing

A Dream of Lights by Kerry Drewery

A Dream of Lights by Kerry Drewery

Yoora is a teenage girl living in North Korea, dreaming of the lights of foreign cities while eking out a miserable existence in a rural northern village. But then she makes a mistake: she falls in love. With someone far removed from her social class. Someone dangerous to know. When tongues start to wag, her father is executed and she is taken to a prison camp in the mountains. There, escape seems even further from her grasp. But Yoora is about to learn an important lesson: love can surprise you, and it can come in many forms…

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Rape
  • Pregnancy
  • Murder

Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick

Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick

Ben and Rose secretly wish for better lives. Ben longs for the father he has never known. Rose dreams of a mysterious actress whose life she chronicles in a scrapbook. When Ben discovers a puzzling clue in his mother’s room and Rose reads an enticing headline in the newspaper, both children set out alone on desperate quests to find what they are missing. Set fifty years apart, these two independent stories – Ben’s told in words, Rose’s in pictures – weave back and forth in symmetry.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Ableism

Real Easy by Marie Rutkoski

Real Easy by Marie Rutkoski

It’s 1999 and Samantha has danced for years at the Lovely Lady strip club. She’s not used to mixing work and friendship―after all, between her jealous boyfriend and his young daughter, she has enough on her plate. But the newest dancer is so clueless that Samantha feels compelled to help her learn the hustle and drama of the club: how to sweet-talk the boss, fit in with the other women, and make good money. One night, when the new girl needs a ride home, Samantha agrees to drive: a simple decision that turns deadly… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Transmisia
  • Lesbomisia
  • Rape, implied
  • Domestic abuse mentioned

The Bourbon Thief by Tiffany Reisz

The Bourbon Thief by Tiffany Reisz

When Cooper McQueen wakes up from a night with a beautiful stranger, it’s to discover he’s been robbed. The only item stolen—a million-dollar bottle of bourbon. The thief, a mysterious woman named Paris, claims the bottle is rightfully hers. After all, the label itself says it’s property of the Maddox family who owned and operated Red Thread Bourbon distillery since the last days of the Civil War until the company went out of business for reasons no one knows… No one except Paris. In the small hours of a Louisville morning, Paris unspools the lurid tale of Tamara Maddox, heiress to the… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Rape & attempted rape
  • Incest
  • Slavery

Seven for a Secret by Lyndsay Faye

Seven for a Secret by Lyndsay Faye

Timothy and Valentine Wilde must once again delve into the darkest underbelly of old New York. When the beautiful and terrified Mrs Lucy Adams stumbles into the Tombs, headquarters of New York’s newly formed police force, it’s the beginning of a dense, thorny maze of crime for copper star Timothy Wilde. He’s hardened to the injustices of life in the unforgiving city he’s grown up in, but that doesn’t mean he accepts them. With immigrants flooding into the docks every day, each community is both adapting and fighting for its place in the new world, and there are many who… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Slavery
  • Suicide & self-harm
  • Burn scars mentioned
  • Murder
  • Kidnapping
  • Fire mentioned

The Paragon Hotel by Lyndsay Faye

The Paragon Hotel by Lyndsay Faye

The year is 1921, and “Nobody” Alice James is on a cross-country train, carrying a bullet wound and fleeing for her life following an illicit drug and liquor deal gone horribly wrong. Desperate to get as far away as possible from New York City and those who want her dead, she has her sights set on Oregon: a distant frontier that seems the end of the line. She befriends Max, a black Pullman porter who reminds her achingly of Harlem, who leads Alice to the Paragon Hotel upon arrival in Portland. Her unlikely sanctuary turns out to be the only all-black hotel in the city, and its lodgers seem unduly terrified of a white woman on the… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism, racial slurs & white supremacy
  • Misgendering
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Murder & gun violence
  • Lynching
  • Organised crime
  • Animal death & cruelty

Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye

Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye

Like the heroine of the novel she adores, Jane Steele suffers cruelly at the hands of her aunt and schoolmaster. And like Jane Eyre, they call her wicked – but in her case, she fears the accusation is true. When she flees, she leaves behind the corpses of her tormentors. A fugitive navigating London’s underbelly, Jane rights wrongs on behalf of the have-nots whilst avoiding the noose. Until an advertisement catches her eye. Her aunt has died and the new master at Highgate House, Mr Thornfield, seeks a governess. Anxious to know if she is Highgate’s true heir, Jane… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault
  • Domestic violence & child abuse
  • Drug & alcohol abuse
  • Miscarriage
  • Blood depiction
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder
  • War themes

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

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