DIY Book Club | Historical Fiction

After darkness [Book Club Set]

Piper, Christine

Books

While working at a Japanese hospital in the pearling port of Broome, Dr Ibaraki is arrested as an enemy alien and sent to Loveday internment camp in a remote corner of South Australia. There, he learns to live among a group of men who are divided by culture and allegiance.

At the edge of the orchard [Book Club Set]

Chevalier, Tracy

Books

What happens when you can't run any further from your past? Ohio, 1838. James and Sadie Goodenough have settled in the Black Swamp, planting apple trees to claim the land as their own.

At The Wolf's Table [Book Club Set]

Postorino, Rosella

Books

This novel is based on the shocking true story of the women conscripted to risk their lives as Hitler's food tasters. They called it the Wolfsschanze, the Wolf's Lair. 'Wolf' was his nickname. As hapless as Little Red Riding Hood, I had ended up in his belly.

The binding [Book Club Set]

Collins, Bridget

Books

Emmett Farmer is working in the fields when a letter arrives summoning him to begin an apprenticeship. He will work for a Bookbinder, a vocation that arouses fear, superstition and prejudice - but one neither he nor his parents can afford to refuse.

The birdman's wife [Book Club Set]

Ashley, Melissa, 1973-

Books

Inspired by letters from Elizabeth found tucked inside her famous husbands research, The Birdmans Wife takes the form of an intimate memoir of a woman whose talent and adventurous spirit led her from the glittering salons of London to the wilds of Van Diemans land and New South Wales.

Book of colours [Book Club Set]

Cadwallader, Robyn

Books

London, 1321: In a small shop in Paternoster Row, three people are drawn together around the creation of a magnificent illuminated prayer book. Even though the commission seems to answer the aspirations of each one of them, their secrets, desires and ambitions threaten its completion.

Fever [Book Club Set]

Keane, Mary Beth

Books

They called her Typhoid Mary. They believed she was sick, that she was passing typhoid fever from her hands to the food that she served. They said she should have known. But Mary wasn't sick. She hadn't done anything wrong. She wasn't arrested right away. There were warnings. Requests.

A gentleman in Moscow [Book Club Set]

Towles, Amor

Books

On 21 June 1922, Count Alexander Rostov - recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt - is escorted out of the Kremlin, across Red Square and through the elegant revolving doors of the Hotel Metropol.

The girl who fell from the sky [Book Club Set]

Mawer, Simon

Books

Marian Sutro is an outsider: the daughter of a diplomat, brought up on the shores of Lake Geneva and in England, half French, half British, naive yet too clever for her own good.

Golden Hill [Book Club Set]

Spufford, Francis

Books

One rainy evening a handsome young stranger fresh off the boat pitches up at a counting-house door in Golden Hill Street: this is Mr Smith, amiable, charming, yet strangely determined to keep suspicion simmering.

Habits of the House [Book Club Set]

Weldon, FayLove & inheritance ; 1

Books

"As the Season of 1899 comes to an end, the world is poised on the brink of profound, irrevocable change. The Earl of Dilberne is facing serious financial concerns. The ripple effects spread to everyone in the household: Lord Robert, who has gambled unwisely on the stock market and seeks a place ...

The Hollow Bones [Book Club Set]

Kaminsky, Leah

Books

Berlin, 1936. Ernst Schäfer, a young, ambitious zoologist and keen hunter and collector, has come to the attention of Heinrich Himmler, who invites him to lead a group of SS scientists to the frozen mountains of Tibet. Their secret mission: to search for the origins of the Aryan race.

The invention of wings [Book Club Set]

Kidd, Sue Monk

Books

Hetty Handful Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household.

Ishmael's oranges [Book Club Set]

Hajaj, Claire

Books

It's April 1948, and war hangs over Jaffa. One minute seven-year-old Salim is dreaming of taking his first harvest from the family's orange tree; the next he is swept away into a life of exile and rage. Seeking a new beginning in swinging-Sixties London, Salim finds an unexpected love with Jude, ...

The light between oceans [Book Club Set]

Stedman, M. L.

Books

This is a story of right and wrong, and how sometimes they look the same. They break the rules and follow their hearts. What happens next will break yours. 1926. Tom Sherbourne is a young lighthouse keeper on a remote island off Western Australia.

The lost wife [Book Club Set]

Richman, Alyson

Books

During the last moments of calm in prewar Prague, Lenka, a young art student, and Josef, who is studying medicine, fall in love. With the promise of a better future, they marry--only to have their dreams shattered by the imminent Nazi invasion.

The miniaturist [Book Club Set]

Burton, Jessie, 1982-

Books

On an autumn day in 1686, 18-year-old Nella Oortman knocks at the door of a grand house in the wealthiest quarter of Amsterdam. She has come from the country to begin a new life as the wife of illustrious merchant trader Johannes Brandt, but instead she is met by his sharp-tongued sister,...

Mr Mac and me [Book Club Set]

Freud, Esther

Books

It is 1914, and Thomas Maggs, the son of the local publican, lives with his parents and sister in a village on the Suffolk coast. He is the youngest child, and the only son surviving. Life is quiet - shaped by the seasons, fishing and farming, the summer visitors, and the girls who come...

My brilliant friend. [Book Club Set]

Ferrante, ElenaNeapolitan novels ; 1

Books

The story begins in the 1950s, in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples. Growing up on these tough streets the two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else.

Outside Looking In [Book Club Set]

Boyle, T C

Books

It is Harvard in the early 1960s. Just off campus, Dr Timothy Leary plays host for his PhD students, laying on a spread of cocktails, pizza and LSD. Among the guests is Fitzhugh Loney, a psychology student, and his librarian wife Joanie.

The painted veil [Book Club Set]

Maugham, W. Somerset (William Somerset), 1874-1965

Books

Paris echo [Book Club Set]

Faulks, Sebastian, 1953-

Books

Here is Paris as you have never seen it before – a city in which every building seems to hold the echo of an unacknowledged past, the shadows of Vichy and Algeria.

The Paris winter [Book Club Set]

Robertson, Imogen, 1973-

Books

The prime of Miss Jean Brodie [Book Club Set]

Spark, Muriel

Books

Romantic, heroic, comic and tragic, unconventional schoolmistress Jean Brodie has become and iconic figure in post-war fiction.

The railwayman's wife [Book Club Set]

Hay, Ashley, 1971-

Books

The signature of all things [Book Club Set]

Gilbert, Elizabeth, 1969-

Books

5 January 1800, Alma Whittaker is born into a perfect Philadelphia winter. From the moment Alma Whittaker steps into the world, everything about life intrigues her. Instilled with an unquenchable sense of wonder by her father, a botanical explorer and the richest man in the New World,

The temporary gentleman [Book Club Set]

Barry, Sebastian, 1955-

Books

Jack McNulty is a 'temporary gentleman', an Irishman whose commission in the British army in the Second World War was never permanent. In 1957, sitting in his lodgings in Accra, he urgently sets out to write his story. He feels he cannot take one step further, or even hardly a breath, wit...

The wonder [Book Club Set]

Donoghue, Emma, 1969-

Books

An eleven-year-old girl stops eating, but remains miraculously alive and well. A nurse, sent to investigate whether she is a fraud, meets a journalist hungry for a story. Set in the Irish Midlands in the 1850s, The Wonder - inspired by numerous European and North American cases of 'fastin...

At the Water's Edge [Book Club Set]

Gruen, Sara

Books

In this new novel from the author of Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen creates a wonderfully imagined, spellbinding tale of privilege, loss, and love.

The tattooist of Auschwitz [Book Club Set]

Morris, Heather

Books

I tattooed a number on her arm. She tattooed her name on my heart. In 1942, Lale Sokolov arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was given the job of tattooing the prisoners marked for survival - scratching numbers into his fellow victims' arms in indelible ink to create what would become one ...

Warlight [Book Club Set]

Ondaatje, Michael, 1943-

Books

Just after World War II, Nathaniel and his older sister Rachel stay behind in London when their parents move to Singapore, leaving them in the care of a mysterious figure named The Moth and his eccentric crew of friends.

A Universe of sufficient size [Book Club Set]

Sved, Miriam

Books

I have wished so many times that I had acted differently. I wish that I had been more worthy of you... Eventually the war will end, and then we will find each other. Until then, remember me. Budapest, 1938. In a city park, beneath a bleakly looming statue, five Jewish mathematicians gather ...

A year of marvellous ways [Book Club Set]

Winman, Sarah

Books

Cornwall, 1947. Marvellous Ways is a 90-year-old woman who has lived alone in a remote creek for nearly all her life. Recently she has taken to spending her days sitting on a mooring stone by the river with a telescope. She is waiting for something, she is not sure what, but she'll ...