The 1930s have always fascinated me. It was such a historically difficult time for the entire world. The Great Depression, the rise of Nazi Germany, WWII, and the rise of two of the world’s most notable leaders, FDR and Winston Churchill. I have spent years of study on this period and written three novels that take place during the thirties. Does it make me an expert? Only one deeply familiar with an exciting decade.
I loved this book because it contains everything that attracts me to this time period, the thirties.
There’s Prohibition, a popular mobster who paints himself as a religious member of the community, politically corrupt NYC, and the story of a young man’s journey from rags to riches.
Doctorow’s brilliant pacing kept me awake, provoking me to jealousy of his genius.
'I was living in even greater circles of gangsterdom than I had dreamed, latitudes and longitudes of gangsterdom'
It's 1930's New York and fifteen-year-old streetkid Billy, who can juggle, somersault and run like the wind, has been taken under the wing of notorious gangster Dutch Schultz. As Billy learns the ways of the mob, he becomes like a son to Schultz - his 'good-luck kid' - and is initiated into a world of glamour, death and danger that will consume him, in this vivid, soaring epic of crime and betrayal.
She checks all the boxes that I hunt for in thirties fiction. The Great Depression, family, and the persistent drive of a protagonist (Elsa) to survive in the midst of harsh adversity. I love when an author paints vivid word pictures of this era, and Hannah does a superb job (as usual).
I want to feel the thirties, to actually mentally become a participant in experiencing what the characters experience. Hannah does just that.
"The Bestselling Hardcover Novel of the Year."--Publishers Weekly
From the number-one bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone comes a powerful American epic about love and heroism and hope, set during the Great Depression, a time when the country was in crisis and at war with itself, when millions were out of work and even the land seemed to have turned against them.
“My land tells its story if you listen. The story of our family.”
Texas, 1921. A time of abundance. The Great War is over, the bounty of the land is plentiful, and America is on…
Twenty-two-year-old Catrine arrives in Paris, the city she's dreamed of since childhood, and it speaks back, but not in ways she expected.
Drifting through the streets of 1981 Paris, the voices of French writers she once read in solitude whisper back, intimate and insistent. Rather than reassure her, they unsettle…
Towles does an excellent job in weaving a narrative that captures a different side to the Great Depression.
It’s not the poverty, the homeless, the downtrodden, but the elite and how they navigated the thirties. Although the protagonist (Katey) is a working-class woman, Towles creates moral complexities for her that paint a vivid picture of the world of the thirties from the heights of the elite.
It gave me a perspective of the thirties I sometimes ignored because it doesn’t fit the image of the unemployment line, the soup kitchens, and people jumping out of windows after the crash. I was able to view the thirties from a different angle.
From the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway and A Gentleman in Moscow, a “sharply stylish” (Boston Globe) book about a young woman in post-Depression era New York who suddenly finds herself thrust into high society—now with over one million readers worldwide
On the last night of 1937, twenty-five-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar when Tinker Grey, a handsome banker, happens to sit down at the neighboring table. This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey on a year-long journey into the upper echelons of New York society—where she will have…
Although not a historical thriller written in the 21st century since the book debuted in 1939, it has become a template for writers of historical thrillers today that are set in the 1930s.
What I love is Chandler’s ability to create metaphors that paint an atmosphere so vivid, so intense, I become not just a reader but an observer, actually a part of the scene I’m observing. This is my goal and the goal of all writers.
Chandler is the master, and I learned from a master. I had to add this to my list, even though not a 21st century work.
Raymond Chandler's first three novels, published here in one volume, established his reputation as an unsurpassed master of hard-boiled detective fiction.
The Big Sleep, Chandler's first novel, introduces Philip Marlowe, a private detective inhabiting the seamy side of Los Angeles in the 1930s, as he takes on a case involving a paralysed California millionaire, two psychotic daughters, blackmail and murder.
In Farewell, My Lovely, Marlowe deals with the gambling circuit, a murder he stumbles upon, and three very beautiful but potentially deadly women.
In The High Window, Marlowe searches the California underworld for a priceless gold coin and finds himself…
Charlotte Rose’s quiet life on a remote island is forever changed the day Michael Cordero, injured and bleeding, steers his ketch, Shearwater, into her cove. Charlotte tends to Michael’s wounds, using the skills she’s learned caring for her husband and son, who are away fishing for salmon. As Michael recovers,…
I love this book because of the way Lasky weaves real life characters with fictional ones setting them into actual historical events.
As a writer, I know this is no easy task. Lasky’s research is deep and accurate, offering a hint of the work she put in to craft this historical thriller.
Writing a novel like A Slant of Light is an artistic achievement that I have to applaud, knowing the effort needed to accomplish such a brilliant work.
“A compelling mystery that culminates in a terrifying showdown” —Booklist
When students of St Ignatius go missing, painter and amateur sleuth Georgia O'Keeffe must infiltrate the school to figure out what's going on in this thrilling historical mystery set in 1930s New Mexico from multi award-winning author Kathryn Lasky.
New Mexico, 1936. Settling in for a harsh winter alone at her house at the Ghost Ranch, painter and occasional amateur sleuth Georgia O'Keeffe makes the most of the weather before a storm rolls in. But when she finds the ideal spot to capture a particularly nice sunset, Georgia discovers a…
When fifty-one innocent women are falsely indicted on prostitution charges and sent to the Bedford Women’s Prison, Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt appoints Judge Samuel Seabury to expose the political rot. NYPD Detective Lee Marshall resigns to become a whistleblower, but his pursuit of justice leads him straight into the embers of the fire that destroyed his family.
As Marshall follows the trail, he uncovers chilling links between the wrongful indictments, the blaze, and a buried chapter of his own past. The closer he gets to the truth, the more he realizes the tragedy was never random—it was set in motion long before the flames ever rose. In a final confrontation where justice and memory collide, Marshall must face the secret that ignited everything.
Upon the Corner of the Moon begins the story of real people who’ve been rewritten into emblems of evil. Macbeth is raised in the royal court, immersed in Christian teachings and guided toward leadership alongside his foster-brother and rival, Duncan. Gruach is raised in the traditions of a Goddess religion…
A brilliant scholar, ancient libraries in danger due to war, suppressed women’s religious history, and a renegade monastery.
A doggedly determined Sofia Papandréou pursues evidence for women in leadership in early Christianity in the dusty corners of libraries, long ignored. Or worse, actively hidden away to deny women their heritage…
