1930s
Renée Rosen turns her wise, wry eye to the making of cosmetics giant Estée Lauder in Fifth Avenue Glamour Girl, a fun little slice of historical fiction that takes you directly to the heart of the founding of Lauder’s empire.
Gloria Downing is in the middle of coping with a horrifying scandal ...
Emily Hourican’s Mummy Darlings – a continuation of her Glorious Guinness Girls series, which follows the adventures of three real life Guinness heiresses and their (fictional) housemaid – explores what it’s like to go from a single, light-heeled party girl to a mother with responsibilities ...
Chloe Gong never fails to take her readers on a journey. Foul Lady Fortune opens a fresh series for her, but also serves as a continuation of the adventures of the Shakesperian characters in her These Violent Delights duology. This novel provides Rosalind’s story. I liked it only slightly less tha ...
Rust in the Root does not take place in the same universe as Justina Ireland’s paranormal historical duology Dread Nation/Deathless Divide, which both earned DIKs here. This book can’t possibly be as good as those, right? Surprise! It’s even better.
In a magic-infused alternate history, the ...
Lauri Robinson’s Marriage or Ruin for the Heiress is the first in her new miniseries The Osterlund Saga. This book is set in Chicago during the Great Depression and features a hero and heroine who are both determined never to fall in love. This is a delightful and easy read, with the tiniest b ...
Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb have reunited to write an adventure story about women traveling alone in the 1930s and 1940s. The story of two sisters and their grandmother, all bonded by the spirit of adventure, Three Words of Goodbye is a lovely if slightly rote, very feminist story about how the ma ...
When Stars Rain Down is a lyrical tale of family, friendship and romance. Taking place during the Jim Crow Era South, it celebrates how love can bloom even under the most difficult of circumstances.
Due to the setting, there are depictions of violence - both verbal and physical - perpetrated agai ...
The Lady Has a Past - the fifth book in Amanda Quick’s Burning Cove series - is a fast-paced, lively mystery set in California in the 1930s, full of ambiance and clever plot twists. This is the first book I’ve read in this series, and it can be read as a standalone, but I plan on checking out th ...
I’ve reread Sarah Sundin’s first novel (A Distant Melody) so often that there are parts of it I could quote by heart. What I love about that story, and many of her books since, is that they remind me of the 1950s era WWII movies my parent’s loved. They are sweet, innocent, romantic and revolve ...
The publisher of The Librarian of Boone's Hollow classifies this book as a romance, but I don't agree with this choice. Although love does develop between two of the characters, the dominant story follows the struggles, dreams, and choices of three people living during the Great Depression, as well ...