The characters and places are real, but the stories are charged with creativity that brings each tale to life. Borrow a fictional biography from the Lititz Public Library.
Dear George, Dear Mary by Mary Calvi
George Washington’s relationship with his first love, a rich Colonial belle branded a traitor and condemned to death, may have sparked the flame that became the Revolution.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
In 1942, a Slovakian Jew, forcibly transported to the concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, was put to work as a tattooist and risked his own life to exchange jewels and money for food to keep his fellow prisoners alive.
He by John Connolly
Stan Laurel’s simple screen persona masked a complex entertainer who, when paired with Oliver Hardy, altered the history of comedy.
The Only Woman in the Room by Marie Benedict
Married to an Austrian arms dealer and underestimated by her husband’s friends in the rising Nazi party, a beautiful scientist carried secrets when she fled Europe and landed in Hollywood as actress Hedy Lamarr.
Learning to See by Elise Hooper
In the early 1930s, the fearless and celebrated photographer Dorothea Lange exposed the horrific conditions of the nation’s poor by traveling the country with her camera.
Varina by Charles Frazier
With limited marriage prospects, teenage Varina Howell agreed to wed the much-older widower Jefferson Davis, who pursued a political career and was eventually appointed president of the Confederacy.
The Romanov Empress by C.W. Gortner
When her husband died, Russian empress Maria Feodorovna’s son Nicholas became the inexperienced ruler of a deeply-divided, crumbling empire on the verge of revolution.
Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen by Sarah Bird
Born into bondage on a tobacco farm in Missouri, Cathy Williams decided to disguise herself as a man and join the US Army’s legendary Buffalo Soldiers.
When the Men Were Gone by Marjorie Herrera Lewis
In 1940s Texas, with men off to war, assistant principal Tylene Wilson faced extreme opposition from the press, community, rivals, referees and players when she convinced the school to let her become the football coach.
Button Man by Andrew Gross
Morris Raab, the author’s grandfather, started working in a garment factory on the lower east side of New York as a twelve-year-old boy and ultimately rose to become a major manufacturer of women’s coats, facing a fatal showdown with organized crime in the 1930s.
Everything She Didn’t Say by Jane Kirkpatrick
In 1921, ten years after writing a memoir about twenty-five years traveling the American West with her railroad promoter husband, Carrie Strahorn decides to document what was really on her mind during those adventurous, nomadic years.
Trinity by Louisa Hall
A set of characters bear witness to the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, describing how they fell into the orbit of a brilliant man with a complicated legacy.
The General’s Cook by Ramin Ganeshram
In 1793 Philadelphia, Hercules, President George Washington’s chef, was enslaved in a city where most black Americans were free, and even while he masterfully managed his kitchen and the lives of those in and around it, he was trapped by his circumstances.
The Velveteen Daughter by Laurel Davis Huber
A world-renowned child prodigy artist, Pamela, the daughter of Velveteen Rabbit author Margery Williams Bianco, struggled with severe depressions, an overbearing father, an obsessive love affair and a spectacularly misguided marriage.
Royal Nanny by Karen Harper
Arriving at the Sandringham estate of the Duke and Duchess of York in 1897, Charlotte Bill cared for a generation of royals, including eldest sons David and Bertie, each of whom would one day be king.
March 8, 2019