Past Kindle Book Deals but Still Must Read Books!
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942 past books matching Literary Fiction

Manhattan Beach
Jennifer Egan
Literary Fiction · Historical Fiction
A strong match for readers who like World War II historical fiction, women entering dangerous wartime work, family mysteries, and noir-inflected crime.

Manhattan Beach
Jennifer Egan
Literary Fiction · Historical Fiction · Contemporary Fiction · World War 2
Our take
A New York Times bestseller called “a magnificent achievement” by The Boston Globe, Manhattan Beach follows Anna Kerrigan from Depression-era Brooklyn to wartime work as the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s first female diver as she investigates her father’s disappearance and his ties to gangster Dexter Styles. It has a 4.0-star rating from more than 24,500 Amazon reviewers. A strong match for readers who like World War II historical fiction, women entering dangerous wartime work, family mysteries, and noir-inflected crime.
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About the book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A New York Times Notable Book • Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad comes a sweeping historical novel set in the Depression-era and wartime New York, where a young woman’s courage transforms her life on the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Named One of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, Esquire, Vogue, The Washington Post, The Guardian, USA TODAY, and Time
Anna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to visit Dexter Styles, a Booklyn gangster who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. She is mesmerized by the sea beyond the house and by some charged mystery between the two men.
?Years later, America enters World War II and her father has disappeared. Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that once belonged to men, now soldiers abroad. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. One evening at a nightclub, she meets Dexter Styles again, and begins to understand the complexity of her father’s life, the reasons he might have vanished.
“A magnificent achievement, at once a suspenseful noir intrigue and a transporting work of lyrical beauty and emotional heft” (The Boston Globe), “Egan’s first foray into historical fiction makes you forget you’re reading historical fiction at all” (Elle). Manhattan Beach takes us into a world populated by gangsters, sailors, divers, bankers, and union men in a dazzling, propulsive exploration of a transformative moment in the lives and identities of women and men, of America and the world.
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Tuyo
Rachel Neumeier
Fantasy · Coming of Age
Ryo inGara expects to die in battle, but when his warleader leaves him as a tuyo—an enemy sacrifice—he’s captured by a lord of the summer country and drawn…

Tuyo
Rachel Neumeier
Fantasy · Coming of Age · Epic Fantasy · Sword and Sorcery
Our take
Ryo inGara expects to die in battle, but when his warleader leaves him as a tuyo—an enemy sacrifice—he’s captured by a lord of the summer country and drawn into a conflict far larger than their peoples’ war. As darker forces rise, Ryo must confront shifting loyalties and decide whether to aid the man who holds his life in his hands.
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Raised a warrior in the harsh winter country, Ryo inGara has always been willing to die for his family and his tribe. When war erupts against the summer country, the prospect of death in battle seems imminent. But when his warleader leaves Ryo as a sacrifice -- a tuyo -- to die at the hands of their enemies, he faces a fate he never imagined.
Ryo's captor, a lord of the summer country, may be an enemy . . . but far worse enemies are moving, with the current war nothing but the opening moves in a hidden game Ryo barely glimpses, a game in which all his people may be merely pawns. Suddenly Ryo finds his convictions overturned and his loyalties uncertain. Should he support the man who holds him prisoner, the only man who may be able to defeat their greater enemy? And even if he does, can he persuade his people to do the same?
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The Bedlam Stacks
Natasha Pulley
Fantasy · Literary Fiction
In 1859, injured ex-smuggler Merrick Tremayne accepts a perilous mission to Peru to retrieve quinine, hoping to outrun the strange happenings at his crumbling Cornish estate.

The Bedlam Stacks
Natasha Pulley
Fantasy · Literary Fiction · Epic Fantasy · Historical Fantasy · Magical Realism
Our take
In 1859, injured ex-smuggler Merrick Tremayne accepts a perilous mission to Peru to retrieve quinine, hoping to outrun the strange happenings at his crumbling Cornish estate. In a village bordering the Amazon, he meets Raphael, a priest surrounded by rumors of vanishing men and living stone. As myth and reality blur, Merrick uncovers a dangerous legacy tied to his own family.
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An Indie Next Pick
Natasha Pulley's "witty, entrancing novel . . . burnishes her reputation as a gifted storyteller" (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
In 1859, ex–East India Company smuggler Merrick Tremayne is trapped at home in Cornwall with an injury that almost cost him his leg. When the India Office recruits him for an expedition to fetch quinine--essential for the treatment of malaria--from deep within Peru, he knows it's a terrible idea; nearly every able-bodied expeditionary who's made the attempt has died, and he can barely walk. But Merrick is eager to escape the strange events plaguing his family's crumbling estate, so he sets off, against his better judgment, for the edge of the Amazon.
There he meets Raphael, a priest around whom the villagers spin unsettling stories of impossible disappearances, cursed woods, and living stone. Merrick must separate truth from fairy tale, and gradually he realizes that Raphael is the key to a legacy left by generations of Tremayne explorers before him, one which will prove more valuable than quinine, and far more dangerous.
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Deeper than the Ocean
Mirta Ojito
Literary Fiction
In 1919, Catalina Quintana loses her family’s silkworm farm and is pushed into a loveless marriage that sends her across the Atlantic aboard a doomed ship.

Deeper than the Ocean
Mirta Ojito
Literary Fiction
Our take
In 1919, Catalina Quintana loses her family’s silkworm farm and is pushed into a loveless marriage that sends her across the Atlantic aboard a doomed ship. A century later, journalist Mara Denis travels to La Palma and uncovers Catalina’s hidden history—one of forbidden love, survival, and secrets that shaped six generations. A sweeping, multigenerational novel from Pulitzer Prize winner Mirta Ojito.
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A moving multigenerational novel about the enduring power of a mother’s love, the ripple effect of secrets, and the strength of family bonds from a Pulitzer Prize-winning author.
In 1919 Spain, Catalina Quintana is the eldest daughter in a family of silkworm farmers on the tiny island of La Palma in the remote Canary Islands. Fiercely independent, Catalina dreams of building a life with her childhood love. But when a devastating fire ruins her family's silkworm farm, she's forced into a loveless marriage and a journey across the sea to Cuba aboard a doomed ocean liner.
A century later, in 2019, journalist Mara Denis travels to La Palma to cover a modern-day disaster near the island. But the trip becomes personal when her mother asks her to find a long-lost birth certificate. Long haunted by the sea and plagued by dreams of a daughter she's never had, Mara begins to uncover a hidden family history that centers on Catalina, her great-grandmother who, she soon discovers, is listed among the dead in the infamous Valbanera shipwreck. As Mara follows Catalina's trail across Spain, Cuba, and Key West, she unearths a story of forbidden love and resilience that echoes through six generations.
Told in a dual narrative that moves seamlessly between past and present, Deeper than the Ocean is a meditation on the strength of women, the enduring power of a mother's love, and the corrosive hold of family secrets across oceans and time.
This sweeping novel is perfect for fans of Isabel Allende, Julia Alvarez, and Kristin Hannah.
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The Fourth Daughter
Lyn Liao Butler
Asian Fiction · Historical Fiction
A family secret buried by history resurfaces when grief demands attention.

The Fourth Daughter
Lyn Liao Butler
Asian Fiction · Historical Fiction
Our take
A family secret buried by history resurfaces when grief demands attention. The Fourth Daughter follows Liv Kuo as she travels from New York to Taiwan to help her grandmother search for a child taken decades earlier. As stories of loss, survival, and love unfold across generations, the journey becomes one of healing, cultural memory, and reclaiming identity through family bonds and food.
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About the book
In Taiwan, the bond between grandmother and granddaughter opens up a healing world for them both in an inspiring family saga about the comfort of food, untold histories, and indomitable mother love.
Chef Liv Kuo’s star is on the rise…until a traumatic incident leaves her emotionally unable to venture outside her Manhattan apartment. But an unexpected reason to break free comes from Ah-Ma, Liv’s beloved grandmother in Taiwan. Ah-Ma needs Liv’s help in finding her fourth daughter, taken from her when the girl was an infant. After all these years, it seems impossible. It’s also a mystery: Ah-Ma’s fourth daughter is an aunt Liv never even knew existed.
After landing in Taiwan, Liv hears the heartbreaking story of her grandmother’s plight in a country once under martial law, of choices made for her, and of the hopeful search for a lost girl that has endured for more than sixty years. Like the enriching food and traditions that bind Liv and Ah-Ma, their journey for answers brings them together.
And it’s a quest that turns up both a precious old cookbook and a tale of fatal betrayal that shakes everything Liv believed about her family—revelations that could also give her the courage to face the trauma she left behind.
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March
Geraldine Brooks
Literary Fiction · Contemporary Fiction
Geraldine Brooks reimagines the life of Mr.

March
Geraldine Brooks
Literary Fiction · Contemporary Fiction · Historical Literary Fiction
Our take
Geraldine Brooks reimagines the life of Mr. March from Little Women, tracing his journey into the Civil War as he leaves his family to serve the Union. Confronting brutal realities that test his ideals and reshape his marriage, March returns a changed man. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this is a richly detailed, deeply human portrait of love, conviction, and the cost of war.
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Winner of the Pulitzer Prize--a powerful love story set against the backdrop of the Civil War, from the author of The Secret Chord.
From Louisa May Alcott's beloved classic Little Women, Geraldine Brooks has animated the character of the absent father, March, and crafted a story "filled with the ache of love and marriage and with the power of war upon the mind and heart of one unforgettable man" (Sue Monk Kidd). With "pitch-perfect writing" (USA Today), Brooks follows March as he leaves behind his family to aid the Union cause in the Civil War. His experiences will utterly change his marriage and challenge his most ardently held beliefs. A lushly written, wholly original tale steeped in the details of another time, March secures Geraldine Brooks's place as a renowned author of historical fiction.
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The Years of Rice and Salt
Kim Stanley Robinson
Speculative Fiction · Sci-Fi
Kim Stanley Robinson reimagines world history after the Black Death wipes out nearly all of Europe, reshaping global power and belief for centuries.

The Years of Rice and Salt
Kim Stanley Robinson
Speculative Fiction · Sci-Fi · Hard Sci-Fi
Our take
Kim Stanley Robinson reimagines world history after the Black Death wipes out nearly all of Europe, reshaping global power and belief for centuries. Through the lives of soldiers, scholars, rulers, and exiles, a new world emerges—one led by Islamic and Buddhist traditions, marked by upheaval, innovation, and enduring human questions. A Locus Award winner from a master of speculative storytelling.
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About the book
WINNER OF THE LOCUS AWARD • The bestselling author of the Mars trilogy boldly reimagines the past seven hundred years in this “exceptional and engrossing” (New York Post) saga, constructing a world vastly different from the one we know. . .
“A thoughtful, magisterial alternate history from one of science fiction’s most important writers.”—The New York Times Book Review
It is the fourteenth century and one of the most apocalyptic events in human history is set to occur—the coming of the Black Death. History teaches us that a third of Europe’s population was destroyed. But what if the plague had killed 99 percent of the population instead? How would the world have changed? The Years of Rice and Salt is a look at the history that could have been—one that stretches across centuries, sees dynasties and nations rise and crumble, and spans horrible famine and magnificent innovation.
Through the eyes of soldiers and kings, explorers and philosophers, inventors and exiles, renowned storyteller Kim Stanley Robinson navigates a world where Buddhism and Islam are the most influential and practiced religions, while Christianity is a mere historical footnote. Probing the most profound questions as only he can, Robinson shines his extraordinary light on the place of religion, culture, power—and even love—in this bold new world.
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The Education of Dixie Dupree
Donna Everhart
Literary Fiction · Historical Fiction
In 1969 Alabama, eleven-year-old Dixie Dupree navigates a home filled with hidden fractures—her mother’s quick temper, her father’s drinking, and the uncle whose arrival shifts everything.

The Education of Dixie Dupree
Donna Everhart
Literary Fiction · Historical Fiction · Coming of Age
Our take
In 1969 Alabama, eleven-year-old Dixie Dupree navigates a home filled with hidden fractures—her mother’s quick temper, her father’s drinking, and the uncle whose arrival shifts everything. Known for her tall tales, Dixie turns to her diary as the truth becomes harder to face, and harder for others to believe. Donna Everhart’s debut is a resonant, haunting story of family, secrets, and survival.
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Composed in a voice as sure and resonant as that of The Secret Life of Bees, this remarkable debut from the author of The Saints of Swallow Hill is a haunting and heartfelt story of mothers and daughters, the guilt and pain that pass between generations, and the truths that are impossible to hide – especially from ourselves.
In 1969, Dixie Dupree is eleven years old and already an expert liar. Sometimes the lies are for her mama Evie’s sake—to explain away a bruise brought on by her quick-as-lightning temper. And sometimes the lies are to spite Evie, who longs to leave her unhappy marriage in Perry County, Alabama, and return to her beloved New Hampshire. But for Dixie and her brother, Alabama is home, a place of pine-scented breezes and hot, languid afternoons.
Though Dixie is learning that the family she once believed was happy has deep fractures, even her vivid imagination couldn’t concoct the events about to unfold. Dixie records everything in her diary—her parents’ fights, her father’s drinking and his unexplained departure, and the arrival of Uncle Ray. Only when Dixie desperately needs help and is met with disbelief does she realize how much damage her past lies have done. But she has courage and a spirit that may yet prevail, forcing secrets into the open and allowing her to forgive and become whole again.
Narrated by her young heroine in a voice as sure and resonant as The Secret Life of Bees’ Lily or Bastard Out of Carolina’s Bone, Donna Everhart’s remarkable debut is a story about mothers and daughters, the guilt and pain that pass between generations, and the truths that are impossible to hide, especially from ourselves.
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The Song of the Blue Bottle Tree
India Hayford
Literary Fiction · Coming of Age
Some homes call you back even when memory warns you away.

The Song of the Blue Bottle Tree
India Hayford
Literary Fiction · Coming of Age · Historical Literary Fiction
Our take
Some homes call you back even when memory warns you away. In 1967 Arkansas, Genevieve Charbonneau returns to the land of her childhood, guided by ghosts, folk magic, and a fragile hope for connection. As buried trauma surfaces alongside unexpected bonds, she must choose between flight and belonging. This Southern literary fantasy blends grief, resilience, and the quiet power of human and natural ties.
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About the book
Disguised by a name she found on a tombstone and accompanying a Vietnam vet she met in a graveyard, an unconventional young snake-handler who talks to the dead returns to the ghosts of her childhood home in 1967 Arkansas...
Readers of Delia Owens, Barbara Kingsolver, Kelly Mustian, and Quinn Connor will be captivated by this haunting Southern debut about found family, folk magic, the long shadow of trauma, the salvation of human connection, and the transcendent beauty of nature.
“India Hayford’s riveting debut is an exploration of tangled familial bonds, loss, love and the redemption of fierce womanhood. Captivating storytelling that is utterly unforgettable.” —Kim Michele Richardson, New York Times bestselling author of The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek series
Genevieve Charbonneau talks to ghosts and has a special relationship with rattlesnakes. In her travels, she’s wandered throughout the South, escaping a mental hospital in Alabama, working for a Louisiana circus, and dancing at a hoochy-kootch in Texas. Now for the first time in a decade, she’s allowed her winding path to bring her to the site of her grandmother’s Arkansas farmhouse, a place hallowed in her memory.
She intends only to visit briefly – to pay respects to her buried loved ones and leave. But a chance meeting with a haunted young Vietnam vet reconnects her with the remnants of a family she thought long gone, and their union becomes a catalyst for change and salvation. An abused woman and her daughters develop the courage to fight back, a ghost finds the path away from life, and a sanctimonious predator becomes the prey. In the process, Genevieve must choose between her longing for meaningful connection after years as an outsider and her equally excruciating impulse to run.
Written by a naturalist and set on the land where her family roots stretch back two centuries, The Song of the Blue Bottle Tree is a haunting story about letting go and the things we leave behind, the power of names, and the ties that bind. It is both harrowing and triumphant, a visceral Southern debut as otherworldly and beautiful as it is unflinching and wry.
*A Publishers Marketplace BUZZ BOOKS Selection*
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Toward Eternity
Anton Hur
Dystopian · LGBTQIA+
In a near future where nanotherapy grants virtual immortality, literary scholar Yonghun vanishes and returns changed, raising unsettling questions about identity.

Toward Eternity
Anton Hur
Dystopian · LGBTQIA+ · Literary Fiction · Sci-Fi · Speculative Fiction
Our take
In a near future where nanotherapy grants virtual immortality, literary scholar Yonghun vanishes and returns changed, raising unsettling questions about identity. His creation, an AI taught to understand poetry, is placed into an android body and given life, sparking a new evolution of sentient beings. Anton Hur delivers a haunting, lyrical exploration of personhood, progress, and love’s endurance.
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"A love story spanning multiple millenniums, life-forms and variations on immortality, the book posits Victorian poetry as a weapon of empire, insists on nature's resilience in the face of genocide, and manipulates prose into something like a new language....Toward Eternity recognizes both the building and burning of bridges." -New York Times
*A PARADE, LITHUB, and CHICAGO REVIEW OF BOOKS Best New Book. *An AUDIOFILE EARPHONES AWARD WINNER.
Negotiating the terrain of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun and Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility, a brilliant, haunting speculative novel from a #1 New York Times bestselling translator that sets out to answer the question: What does it mean to be human in a world where technology is quickly catching up to biology?
In a near-future world, a new technological therapy is quickly eradicating cancer. The body’s cells are entirely replaced with nanites—robot or android cells which not only cure those afflicted but leaves them virtually immortal.
Literary researcher Yonghun teaches an AI how to understand poetry and creates a living, thinking machine he names Panit, meaning Beloved, in honor of his husband. When Yonghun—himself a recipient of nanotherapy—mysteriously vanishes into thin air and then just as suddenly reappears, the event raises disturbing questions. What happened to Yonghun, and though he’s returned, is he really himself anymore?
When Dr. Beeko, the scientist who holds the patent to the nanotherapy technology, learns of Panit, he transfers its consciousness from the machine into an android body, giving it freedom and life. As Yonghun, Panit, and other nano humans thrive—and begin to replicate—their development will lead them to a crossroads and a choice with existential consequences.
Exploring the nature of intelligence and the unexpected consequences of progress, the meaning of personhood and life, and what we really have to fear from technology and the future, Toward Eternity is a gorgeous, thought-provoking novel that challenges the notion of what makes us human—and how love survives even the end of that humanity.
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Death of the Author
Nnedi Okorafor
Literary Fiction · Contemporary Fiction
After losing her job and facing yet another rejection, Zelu writes a strange, far-future novel that unexpectedly propels her to literary fame—and threatens to consume both her life…

Death of the Author
Nnedi Okorafor
Literary Fiction · Contemporary Fiction · Magical Realism · People of Color · Speculative Fiction
Our take
After losing her job and facing yet another rejection, Zelu writes a strange, far-future novel that unexpectedly propels her to literary fame—and threatens to consume both her life and the story she meant to tell. From Chicago to Lagos and beyond, she confronts identity, autonomy, and the cost of creation. An instant national bestseller praised for its ambition and emotional depth.
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THE INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Recommended by New York Times Book Review• People • NPR • Rolling Stone• Los Angeles Times• Reader's Digest• and more!
“This one has it all.” — George R.R. Martin • “As delicious as it is disorienting.” — Zakiya Dalila Harris • “Suspenseful, timely, and heartfelt.” — People • “Mind-bending.” — New York Times Book Review
In this exhilarating tale by New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor, a disabled Nigerian American woman pens a wildly successful Sci-Fi novel, but as her fame rises, she loses control of the narrative—a surprisingly cutting, yet heartfelt drama about art and love, identity and connection, and, ultimately, what makes us human. This is a story unlike anything you’ve read before.
The future of storytelling is here.
Disabled, disinclined to marry, and more interested in writing than a lucrative career in medicine or law, Zelu has always felt like the outcast of her large Nigerian family. Then her life is upended when, in the middle of her sister’s lavish Caribbean wedding, she’s unceremoniously fired from her university job and, to add insult to injury, her novel is rejected by yet another publisher. With her career and dreams crushed in one fell swoop, she decides to write something just for herself. What comes out is nothing like the quiet, literary novels that have so far peppered her unremarkable career. It’s a far-future epic where androids and AI wage war in the grown-over ruins of human civilization. She calls it Rusted Robots.
When Zelu finds the courage to share her strange novel, she does not realize she is about to embark on a life-altering journey—one that will catapult her into literary stardom, but also perhaps obliterate everything her book was meant to be. From Chicago to Lagos to the far reaches of space, Zelu’s novel will change the future not only for humanity, but for the robots who come next.
A book-within-a-book that blends the line between writing and being written, Death of the Author is a masterpiece of metafiction that manages to combine the razor-sharp commentary of Yellowface with the heartfelt humanity of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. Surprisingly funny, deeply poignant, and endlessly discussable, this is at once the tale of a woman on the margins risking everything to be heard and a testament to the power of storytelling to shape the world as we know it.
“An ambitious, inventive tribute to the power of storytelling itself.” — Nikki Erlick, New York Times bestselling author of The Measure
“A deeply felt dazzle. A blaze. It is true deep to the bones.” — Luis Alberto Urrea, Pulitzer Prize finalist and bestselling author of The House of Broken Angels
"There’s more vivid imagination in a page of Nnedi Okorafor’s work than in whole volumes." — Ursula K. Le Guin
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The Thread Collectors
Shaunna J. Edwards & Alyson Richman
Historical Fiction · Literary Fiction
In 1863, Stella secretly embroiders escape maps for enslaved men in New Orleans, risking her life and her forbidden love for a Black Union soldier.

The Thread Collectors
Shaunna J. Edwards & Alyson Richman
Historical Fiction · Literary Fiction · Romance · Historical Romance · Women's Fiction
Our take
In 1863, Stella secretly embroiders escape maps for enslaved men in New Orleans, risking her life and her forbidden love for a Black Union soldier. In New York, Lily sews quilts for the war effort before embarking south to find her missing husband. Their paths collide in a city shaped by danger, hope, and resistance. Praised for its emotional power and historical depth.
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About the book
“An unforgettable story of female strength, hope and friendship. This collaborative work is magnificent—a true revelation!” —Pam Jenoff, New York Times bestselling author of The Woman with the Blue Star
“A brilliant story brimming with unexpected friendships and family ties. Historically sound and beautifully stitched, The Thread Collectors will stay with you long after the last page is turned.” —Sadeqa Johnson, international bestselling author of Yellow Wife
1863: In a small Creole cottage in New Orleans, an ingenious young Black woman named Stella embroiders intricate maps on repurposed cloth to help enslaved men flee and join the Union Army. Bound to a man who would kill her if he knew of her clandestine activities, Stella has to hide not only her efforts but her love for William, a Black soldier and a brilliant musician.
Meanwhile, in New York City, a Jewish woman stitches a quilt for her husband, who is stationed in Louisiana with the Union Army. Between abolitionist meetings, Lily rolls bandages and crafts quilts with her sewing circle for other soldiers, too, hoping for their safe return home. But when months go by without word from her husband, Lily resolves to make the perilous journey South to search for him.
As these two women risk everything for love and freedom during thebrutal Civil War, their paths converge in New Orleans, where an unexpected encounter leads them to discover that even the most delicate threads have the capacity to save us. Loosely inspired by the authors' family histories, this stunning novel will stay with readers for a long time.
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