Fiction Pick of the Week: Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker

Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker by Jennifer Chiaverini
In a life that spanned nearly a century and witness some of the momentous events in American history, Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley was born a slave. She earned her freedom by the skill of her needle and won the friendship of First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln with her devotion. In her sweeping historical novel, Chiaverini illuminates the extraordinary relationship the two women shared, beginning in the hallowed halls of the White House during the trials of the Civil War and enduring almost, but not quite, to the end of Mrs. Lincoln's days. Elizabeth Keckley made her professional reputation in Washington, DC, making expertly fashioned dresses for the city's elite, among them Mrs. Jefferson Davis and Mrs. Robert E. Lee. In March 1861, Mrs. Lincoln chose her from among numerous applicants to be her personal "modiste," responsible for creating the First Lady's beautiful gowns and dressing her for important occasions. In this role, Elizabeth Keckley was quickly drawn into the intimate life of the Lincoln family, a clear-eyed but compassionate witness to events within the private quarters of the White House. 

London, Al Tafar, and NYC

Beautiful Lies by Clare Cook
London 1887. For Maribel Campbell Lowe, the beautiful bohemian wife of a maverick politician, it is the year to make something of yourself. A self-proclaimed Chilean heiress educated in Paris, she is torn between poetry and the new art of photography. But it is soon plain that Maribel's choices are not so simple. As her husband's career hangs by a thread, her real past, and the family she abandoned, come back to haunt them both: When the notorious newspaper editor Alfred Webster begins to take an uncommon interest in Maribel, she fears he will not only destroy Edward's career but both of their reputations.

The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers
"The war tried to kill us in the spring." So begins this powerful account of friendship and loss. In Al Tafar, Iraq, twenty-one-year-old Private Bartle and eighteen-year-old Private Murphy cling to life as their platoon launches a bloody battle for the city. Bound together since basic training when Bartle makes a promise to bring Murphy safely home, the two have been dropped into a war neither is prepared for. In the endless days that follow, the two young soldiers do everything to protect each other from the forces that press in on every side: the insurgents, physical fatigue, and the mental stress that comes from constant danger. As reality begins to blur into a hazy nightmare, Murphy becomes increasingly unmoored from the world around him, and Bartle takes actions he could have never imagined.

Trust Your Eyes by Linwood Barclay
Thomas Kilbride is a map-obsessed schizophrenic so affected that he rarely leaves the self-imposed bastion of his bedroom. But with a computer program called Whirl360, he travels the world while never so much as stepping out the door. He pores over and memorizes the streets of the world. He examines every address as well as the people who are frozen in time on his computer screen. Then he sees something that anyone else might have noticed--but has not--in a street view of downtown New York City: an image in a window. An image that looks like a woman being murdered.

North Carolina, Boston, New York

The Cove by Ron Rash
Deep in the rugged Appalachians of North Carolina lies the cove, a dark, forbidding place where spirits and fetches wander, and even the light fears to travel. Or so the townsfolk of Mars Hill believe--just as they know that Laurel Shelton, the lonely young woman who lives within its shadows, is a witch. Alone except for her brother, Hank, newly returned from the trenches of France, she aches for her life to begin. Then it happens--a stranger appears, carrying nothing but a beautiful silver flute and a note explaining that his name is Walter, he is mute, and is bound for New York. Laurel finds him in the woods, nearly stung to death by yellow jackets, and nurses him back to health. As the days pass, Walter slips easily into life in the cove and into Laurel's heart, bringing her the only real happiness she has ever known. But Walter harbors a secret that could destroy everything--and danger is closer than they know.

The Rising of Roxbury Crossing by James Redfearn
Swept up in the tumult of post-war 1919 and amid the rising tide of immigrants, virulent socialists, labor union strikers and discontented WWI veterans, Boston's primarily Irish police force does the dirty work to keep the city from becoming unglued with long hours, paltry pay and little recognition. In Ireland, the Republican Brotherhood wages a guerrilla war of independence with England, supported by Boston's Irish neighborhoods. Frustrated by political promises, Boston's guardians go on strike for better pay and working conditions. And as the city erupts, Willie Dwyer's nemesis crosses an ocean and comes to hunt him down.

The Sins of the Father by Jeffrey Archer
Only days before Britain declares war on Germany, Harry Clifton, hoping to escape the consequences of long-buried family secrets, and forced to accept that his desire to marry Emma Barrington will never be fulfilled, has joined the Merchant Navy. But his ship is sunk in the Atlantic by a German U-boat, drowning almost the entire crew. An American cruise liner, the SS Kansas Star, rescues a handful of sailors, among them Harry and the third officer, an American named Tom Bradshaw. When Bradshaw dies in the night, Harry seizes on the chance to escape his tangled past and assumes his identity. But on landing in America, he quickly learns the mistake he has made, when he discovers what is awaiting Bradshaw in New York. Without any way of proving his true identity, Harry Clifton is now chained to a past that could be far worse than the one he hoped to escape.

Oz, Monsters, and Delta Force

Out of Oz by Gregory Maguire
Once peaceful and prosperous, the spectacular Land of Oz is knotted with social unrest: The Emerald City is mounting an invasion of Munchkinland, Glinda is under house arrest, and the Cowardly Lion is on the run from the law. And look who's knocking at the door. It's none other than Dorothy. Yes. That Dorothy. Yet amidst all this chaos, Elphaba's granddaughter, the tiny green baby born at the close of Son of a Witch, has come of age. Now it is up to Rain to take up her broom--and her legacy--in an Oz wracked by war.

The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff
In the wake of a wildly disastrous affair with her married archaeology professor, Willie Upton arrives on the doorstep of her ancestral home in Templeton, New York, where her hippie-turned-born-again-Baptist mom, Vi, still lives. Willie expects to be able to hide in the place that has been home to her family for generations, but the monster's death changes the fabric of the quiet, picture-perfect town her ancestors founded. Even further, Willie learns that the story her mother had always told her about her father has all been a lie: he wasn't the random man from a free-love commune that Vi had led her to imagine, but someone else entirely. Someone from this very town.

Black Site by Dalton Fury
After September 11, 2001, Delta Force troop commander Dalton Fury was given the secret mission to hunt down and kill the most-wanted man in the world, the details of which were recounted in his extraordinary New York Times bestseller Kill Bin Laden. Now Fury draws upon his hard-won combat experience--and his gift for true-to-life storytelling--in a thriller that's as close to reality as readers can get.

Black Friday, Midwives, and Vonnegut

Soft Target by Stephen Hunter
Black Friday. America's largest shopping mall. Suburban Minneapolis. 3:00P.M.
Ten thousand people jam the aisles, the corridors, the elevators, and the escalators of America, the Mall--a giant Rubik's Cube of a structure with its own amusement park located in the spacious center atrium. Of those people, nine thousand nine hundred and eighty-eight have come to shop. The other twelve have come to kill.

Maria by Eugenia Price
Born in Charles Town, South Carolina, Mary, a skilled midwife, accompanied her first husband, British soldier David Fenwick, when his regiment fought the Spanish in Cuba. When Spain agreed to give all of Florida in exchange for the city of Havana, Mary (who will become known as Maria) and her husband were forced to relocate to the newly British garrison town of St. Augustine, Florida.

And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life by Charles J. Shields
Kurt Vonnegut remains one of the most influential, controversial, and popular novelists of the twentieth century. Millions know him as a counterculture guru, antiwar activist, and satirist of American culture. But few outside his family and friends knew the full arc of his extraordinary life.