To The Past

Molokai book cover

Moloka'i


by Alan Brennert


Seven year old Rachel is forcibly removed from her family's 1890's Honolulu home when she contracts leprosy and is placed in a settlement, where she loses a series of new friends before new medical discoveries enable her to reenter the world. 
FIC Brennert
All The Light We Cannot See book cover

All the Light We Cannot See


by Anthony Doerr


From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning author, Anthony Doerr, a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. 
FIC Doerr
The Lady of the Rivers book cover

The Lady of the Rivers


by Philippa Gregory


When the death of Joan of Arc shows her the dangers faced by strong women, Jacquetta, a psychic descendant of a river goddess, studies alchemy and becomes the secret wife of Richard Woodville before returning to the court of Henry VI. 
FIC Gregory
The Invention of Wings book cover

The Invention of Wings


by Sue Monk Kidd


The story follows Hetty "Handful" Grimke, a Charleston slave, and Sarah, the daughter of the wealthy Grimke family. It begins on Sarah's eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership over Handful, who is to be her handmaid. The novel follows the next thirty-five years of their lives. Inspired in part by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke (a feminist, suffragist, and importantly, an abolitionist), Kidd allows herself to go beyond the record to flesh out the inner lives of all the characters, both real and imagined. 
FIC Kidd
Wolf Hall book cover

Wolf Hall


by Hilary Mantel


Assuming the power recently lost by the disgraced Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell counsels a mercurial Henry VIII on his efforts to marry Anne Boleyn against the wishes of Rome, a successful endeavor that comes with a dangerous price. 
LP FIC Mantel
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan book cover

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan


by Lisa See


An evocative story of friendship set against the backdrop of a nineteenth-century China in which women suffered from foot binding, isolation, and illiteracy follows an elderly woman and her companion as they communicate their hopes, dreams, joys, and tragedies through a unique secret language.
FIC See
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society book cover

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society


by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows


As London is emerging from the shadow of World War II, writer Juliet Ashton discovers her next subject in a book club on Guernsey - a club born as a spur of the moment alibi after its members are discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island.
FIC Shaffer  and  SP FIC Shaffer
The Light Between Oceans book cover

The Light Between Oceans


by M.L. Stedman


A captivating, beautiful, and stunningly accomplished debut novel that opens in 1918 Australia - the story of a lighthouse keeper and his wife who make one devastating choice that forever changes two worlds. Set on a remote Australian island, the childless couple live quietly running a lighthouse, until a boat carrying a baby washes ashore. Readers are swept into a story about extraordinarily compelling characters seeing to find their North Star in a world where there is no right answer, where justice for one person is another's tragic loss. 
FIC Stedman
The Help book cover

The Help


by Kathryn Stockett


In Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962, there are lines that are not crossed. With the civil rights movement exploding all around them, three women start a movement of their own, forever changing a town and the way women - black and white, mothers and daughters - view one another. 
FIC Stockett