historical fiction Archives - The Gilmore Guide to Books

Workhorse: A Novel

Catherine — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 08:41:27 +0000

Clo Harmon is a 25-year-old assistant at a fashion magazine. She’s a workhorse—eager, bright, hardworking, but with no fashion pedigree. Meaning she will never achieve her dream of being an editor because those jobs only go to the show horses—wealthy, skinny girls with Ivy League degrees and all the right connections. What’s an ambitious, but […]

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Let’s Call Her Barbie

Catherine — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 07:02:02 +0000

As a child of the 60s/70s I was one of the numerous little girls clamoring for a Barbie doll. Much like the opening for the movie Barbie (fabulous, a must see) I’d loved my baby doll to death, but needed something more and Barbie was the dream, but it was not to be for […]

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Belgravia by Julian Fellowes

Catherine — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 07:52:00 +0000

I decided to leave the gloom of October behind and start November with an uncomplicated, lovely novel that opens in a time that seems quiet to us, but was tumultuous for those living it. The novel is Belgravia and it begins with a very real event, the Duchess of Richmond’s ball in Brussels in 1815. […]

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Bright Young Women

Catherine — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 07:53:12 +0000

Pamela Schumacher is the president of her sorority at Florida State University, a job she takes so seriously she doesn’t go out with her friends one Saturday night because she has too much work to do. In the early hours of the following morning this same sense of responsibility will uproot her life from its […]

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September Reading Wrap-Up

Catherine — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 07:54:20 +0000

September has come and gone and with it, the last weak bits of Seattle summer. Shorts and tees have been packed away and I’m back to layering clothes and wearing fuzzy socks. No complaints, I love all things soft and warm—in my clothes. In my books, not so much. Still, September was a month of […]

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August Reading Wrap-Up

Catherine — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 07:12:26 +0000

August has followed summer out the door, but the weather was as lovely as the majority of my reading, with more highs than lows. The first week of September is about to end so I thought I ought to check in with what worked and what didn’t before I head into all the new fall […]

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The River We Remember

Catherine — Tue, 05 Sep 2023 07:59:06 +0000

Summer is just beginning in the small town of Jewel, Minnesota when the body of Jimmy Quinn, one of the town’s wealthiest citizens, is discovered in the nearby river. Given that he was also one of the most disliked there are plenty of people in William Kent Krueger’s The River We Remember who wanted him […]

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The Invisible Hour

Catherine — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 07:08:22 +0000

I had asked to be forgiven in the past, but I was someone else now. I was the girl who knew how to escape, the one who could become invisible, who believed that a single dream was more powerful than a thousand realities. Ivy Jacob is a dreamy, book loving 16-year-old who steps into the […]

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Where There Was Fire

Catherine — Mon, 28 Aug 2023 07:34:30 +0000

The verdant, extravagant beauty of Costa Rica hosts the three-generation family saga found in Where There Was Fire by John Manuel Arias. The Valaverdes are a united family in 1968 until the night a fight leaves their lives in ashes. Now, the remaining family members, Teresa and her daughter Lyra, reluctantly reunite almost 30 years […]

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Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane

Catherine — Fri, 18 Aug 2023 07:30:52 +0000

He has no idea where it all comes from—the loyalty and the rage, the brotherhood and the suspicion, the benevolence and the hate. If you’re looking for refined forays into the more delicate human emotions in your reading than Dennis Lehane is probably not an author you read often or at all. He’s a bareknuckle […]

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