June 2026 Historical Fiction Releases
June officially marks the beginning of summer, and summer is my FAVORITE time to binge all the books. Luckily, June 2026 historical fiction releases are so good that we won't have to worry about not having enough good books to read. Here's a list of all the new historical fiction books publishing this June that I think should be on your reading list. And with something for everyone (including book clubs), it's a list that's guaranteed to be a winner!
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The Promise of Wonder
Katherine Webb
June 1 | Amazon Publishing
A tragic accident. A misguided accusation. Are some mistakes unforgivable?
England, 1889. In her family’s rambling manor house in Dorset, fifteen-year-old Theodora Hallewell dreams of magic, adventure, and Toby Meriwether. As Toby prepares to leave for university, Theo plans a midnight gathering—one last chance to make Toby notice her. By dawn, a tragic mistake will shatter the world as they know it.
Years later, Toby has built a respectable life in London, scarred by the past but determined to put it behind him. Theo, struggling with the aftermath of what happened, has begun to fear that the life she has built is more fragile—and far more dangerous—than she ever imagined. Both live under the shadow of that fateful night—until a startling discovery casts what happened in a whole new light, and offers a chance to right the wrongs that have haunted them for so long.
Spanning three decades, The Promise of Wonder is a spellbinding story of lost love, atonement, and the long journey towards forgiveness.
Crescendo
Jane Healey
June 2 | Bloomsbury
Twins Natasha and Max Kitson have lived their lives on the road, together building Max's career as a world-renowned pianist, famous for bringing even the most stalwart audience members to tears. But when, at age 20, the former prodigy begins making uncharacteristic mistakes, he abruptly cancels his remaining concerts and moves himself and his sister into the home of an enigmatic French patron, never realizing that Henri has been his sister's lover.
In Paris, over the course of one summer, Natasha's long-simmering resentments and Max's deep insecurities drive the siblings apart as each vie for Henri's attentions. But neither twin can have their host entirely to themselves, because while, during the day, Henri woos Natasha with lavish gifts and trips to the ballet, it's Max's music that draws Henri from bed each night.
One part delicious family drama, and one part twisted love triangle, Crescendo is an altogether un-put-downable escape to the concert halls, ballet theaters, and bedrooms of 1
The Windsor Affair
Melanie Benjamin
June 2 | Ballantine
Feuding Windsor brothers and their wives—some things, it seems, never change. The Windsor Affair recreates the cataclysmic events that nearly toppled the monarchy and incited the power struggle between Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon and Wallis Simpson. Told from the perspective of both women, the novel propels readers into the fabulous world of the debonair Prince of Wales, café society of the 1930s, and the glittering private lives of the Windsors. The first novel to be dedicated to this infamous rivalry, The Windsor Affair brings us all the gossip and intrigue between the two very different—yet perhaps more similar than they would admit—wives of royals.
As Queen, Elizabeth would become the symbol of British pluck and courage during World War II and remain a British institution the rest of her long life. Wallis would be forever forced to enact the World’s Greatest Love Story even after it sours, as she goes from being admired to vilified and, ultimately, pitied. Against the backdrop of the Abdication Crisis, World War II, coronations, funerals, births, and deaths, these two women maintain a biting, sharp-tongued feud—until age and the long arm of history bring about a kind of understanding. For the last communication between these bitter rivals was a simple, surprising message: “In friendship, Elizabeth.”
An Artful Dodge
Karen Odden
June 2 | Soho Press
She’s stolen gems, purses, and hearts—but can she steal her life back from the ring of thieves that’s claimed it?
London, 1879: Twenty-year-old Kit Jimeson has fingers so nimble she can nick a necklace off a lady in a crowded theater without raising alarm. Kit and her dodge partner, Mary, are the highest earners in the notorious all-women thieving ring in South London’s Elephant and Castle district.
Kit, whose mother had been a thief before her, dreams of a different life, one where she’s not constantly on the lookout for constables and plainclothes detectives, and where a mistake or pure bad luck won’t land her in the hangman’s noose. She has been saving her earnings so her younger sister, a maid for a wealthy Mayfair family, might have a shot at respectability.
Kit is very close to leaving the life entirely when the legendary former thief Maggie O’Connell brings her plans to a halt. Beautiful, charismatic Maggie has returned to reclaim leadership of the ring after twenty years in a brutal Australian penal colony. But Maggie desires more than mere wealth or power: She longs for revenge against those who sent her away. Kit, with her quick mind and dangerously clever hands, is Maggie’s best weapon. If Kit wants to walk away with her life, she must carry out a heist that will demand every skill she possesses.
Land
Maggie O'Farrell
June 2 | Knopf
On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster.
The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, expecting the work to be completed, but Tomás is unexpectedly sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a copse. His life, and the lives of those of his family, will never be the same again. Liam is terrified by the sudden change in his taciturn father. What was it that caused such cracks to open in Tomás, and how is Liam, aged only ten, going to finish the mapping and get them both home?
Land is a novel about separation and reunion, tragedy and recovery, colonization and rebellion. It is a story of buried treasure, overlapping lives, ancient woodland, persistent ghosts, a particularly loyal dog, and how, when it comes to both land and history, nothing ever goes away. As spellbinding and varied as the landscape that inspired it, Land is, above all, a story of survival, for our times and for all time.
The Unicorn Hunters
Katherine Arden
June 2 | Del Rey
Anne of Brittany was a child when France invaded and drove her royal father to his death. Now she is a young woman, sovereign duchess of an occupied realm, and France means to crown their conquest by marrying her to their king. Such an alliance would put her title, her lands, and her body forever in the hands of her enemies.
But Anne refuses to be the last duchess of Brittany.
Her only hope of resisting conquest is another alliance sealed with marriage, so Anne arranges a daring last gambit: a secret betrothal to Charles of France’s greatest rival. But secrets are hard to keep in a world where rival courts spy on each other with diviners.
The forest of Brocéliande was once the haunt of Merlin the Enchanter and the long-lost faerie queen. But magic is long gone from Broceliande, except for the occasional sight of a unicorn and one critical quirk: This ancient forest is completely hostile to divination.
While pretending compliance with France, Anne plans a unicorn hunt in Brocéliande. A bit of pointless pageantry. A diversion so she can wed in secret.
Or so she thinks.
There's Only One Sin in Hollywood
Rasheed Newson
June 2 | Flatiron
Xavier C. Barlow, one of Hollywood’s young Black stars taking the industry by storm in the late 1950s, is Skyline Studios’s ambitious attempt to rival Sidney Poitier. His arrival into the industry is calculated, his charm is magnetic, and his seductive screen presence appeals to both audiences and celebrities across generations.
But years later, after Xavier dies at the height of his fame, Aaron Touissant—Skyline’s designated backlot fixer who helps the studio’s stars stay as deep in the closet as humanly possible—is finally ready to expose the powerful culprits responsible for his untimely death.
Tinker
Jennifer M. Lane
June 2 | Pen & Key Publishing
Pittsburgh, 1794. The people of western Pennsylvania suffer under a hefty tax on whiskey. When the local militia takes up arms against the hated tax collector, his estranged daughter finds herself caught in the crossfire.
Her safety threatened and her name in tatters, Caroline Neville begs her father to present the farmers' case to the President and ask for relief. When he refuses, Caroline adopts a nom de guerre, submitting articles to the Gazette under the pseudonym "Tom the Tinker." She calls for a peaceful gathering to coordinate a plea for the tax’s repeal, hoping to turn the tide before her family’s lives are lost.
Then she meets Tench, the reporter who prints her demands. He’s part of the militia opposing the tax, and he has no idea she’s Tom the Tinker or a Neville. The deeper they fall in love, the harder it is to tell him the truth. Meanwhile, Caroline’s efforts for peace take a turn toward rebellion. As she faces losing her family, her home, and Tench, she must race to put it all right before she’s charged with treason.
A Pair of Aces
Marie Benedict & Victoria Christopher Murray
June 2 | Berkley
Eunice Carter, assistant district attorney for the City of New York and Manhattan’s first Black female prosecutor, has her sights set on the one and only Lucky Luciano, head of New York City’s five largest organized crime families. Other prosectors have tried to bring down Lucky, but they’ve all focused on the crime syndicate’s traditional businesses—bootlegging, gambling, loan sharking, and drug dealing—or tax evasion. No one has thought to approach the mob through its role in prostitution. Until Eunice. But she can’t get Luciano alone.
Polly Adler has worked long and hard to build up her high-class brothel business. Her client list is filled with well-known names, both the famous and the infamous, who all know her booze is top-notch, her music first-rate, her food exquisite, and her girls the best. But Lucky has gone too far, putting her girls in danger, and Polly finally sees the chance to end his reign once and for all.
Together, Eunice and Polly fashion a case utilizing a network of women. Bridging the enormous divide between them and risking their own lives, they assemble evidence bit by bit, under the nose of the man they’re trying to convict. It is this very alliance—of two women from vastly different worlds—that launches the most sensational trial New York City has ever seen.
The Queen's Coronation
Jennifer Ryan
June 2 | Ballantine
London, 1953. Buckingham Palace and the many employees vital to the smooth running of the monarchy find themselves in bedlam as the Queen's coronation quickly approaches.
Caroline Brimstone, assistant dresser to the queen, watches the queen finding the strength to rule—a woman taking charge of her future. Meanwhile, Caroline’s life is worn thin by her gambler husband, and she is barely holding on as every penny she earns seems to run out the door. When a trip to Balmoral brings her face-to-face with the man she once loved, she finds herself at a crossroads between what her life is and what her life could be. Can she, like the queen, find the strength to define her own future?
Lucy Jones is a junior wardrobe assistant who positively radiates life—she's young, idealistic, and eager to become a famous singer. So when a handsome, wealthy man at the palace promises to help her on her way to stardom, she's over the moon to have such a supportive husband-to-be. And if he's asking some things of her that she's not quite sure about, isn't that just part of the glamorous life?
Miranda Miller has come over from America just in time to help with preparations as a temporary secretary in the palace. The job is a perfect way to gather information for the article she's writing about the coronation for a magazine back in New York; the article that will keep her boss from firing her because of her gender.
But as all three women discover, just because a woman will soon be sitting upon the throne, it doesn't mean that society will change overnight—and if they want to carve places for themselves in this world, they'll have to do it together.
The Witch’s Stone
Kirsty Ferry
June 4 | Boldwood Books
Some legends never die – they wait for you to come home.
When Jess Morgan arrives in Northumberland to research the history of a crumbling chapel, she’s drawn to the legend of the Brinkburn Witch – a woman said to appear when blood is spilled near an ancient standing stone. But the longer Jess stays, the stranger things become. Whispers echo through empty corridors, shadows move where none should, and the boundary between dreams and memory begins to blur.
Over a century earlier, Eliza Stratford turned to the witch for help after a violent betrayal – and sealed her fate with a terrible bargain. Now her story, and the secrets she died to protect, are surfacing again.
As Jess unearths the truth behind the legend, she begins to suspect her own connection to the past runs deeper than she ever imagined – and that some ghosts will do anything to be remembered…
Daughters of the Sun and Moon
Lisa See
June 9 | Scribner
In 1870, three Chinese women arrive in the small, dusty, and violent pueblo of Los Angeles. Dove, the bound-footed daughter of an imperial scholar, is entrancing and innocent. These characteristics should bring her great rewards, beginning with her arranged marriage to a much older merchant. Petal, the big-footed daughter of peasants, has grown up hungry and with dirt between her toes. In a moment of desperation, Petal’s father sells her to buy money for rice seed, and she is loaded onto a ship to the Gold Mountain—America—where she is once again sold. Moon is married to a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. She is educated, speaks fluent English, and has been endowed with a face of great beauty, yet her failed footbinding as a child has left her with a limp that lessens her value in the eyes of many.
Each woman has her own desires. Dove wants to love and be loved, Petal desires freedom, and Moon seeks justice. Together they face a larger society that wishes them not one ounce of good will. Anti-Chinese sentiment is strong in Los Angeles, and this eventually leads to the Night of Horrors during which all three women are challenged in ways they could not have imagined. Brought together by hardship and heartbreak, they must use their bravery, endurance, and ability to “eat bitterness” to discover their voices, find freedom, and connect through solace and friendship. Together they are daughters of the sun and moon.
Children of the Wild
Kevin Powers
June 9 | Harper
Ewer’s Rock, Virginia, 1917. Roy Young is restless, eager to leave this isolated rural valley for university and return with the technical knowledge to modernize his family’s farm and bring them properly into the twentieth century.
Samantha Hatton, the minister’s daughter and Roy’s best friend since childhood, knows that both Roy and the town expect them to marry. But Samantha, a daring and ambitious young woman, hungers for more.
Above them on the mountain, tending to a lost herd of cattle, is silent Ennis Duke, the mysterious wild boy whose arrival in the valley will upend Ewer’s Rock’s understanding of itself and its place in the world.
Within a year, the lives of these three young people will be dramatically transformed. America has joined the Great War, and Roy and Ennis feel duty-bound to join the fight. In the crucible of conflict, thousands of miles from the familiarity of home, the two men forge a fierce bond. Meanwhile, back in Virginia, Samantha’s love and courage endure unthinkable sacrifice in a corner of the world fractured by violence.
The Daffodil Days
Helen Bain
June 9 | Scribner
In the early 1960s in a small English town, the church bells ring. The people go about their days, catching glimpses of one another.
There’s the local doctor, who knows more about his patients than he would sometimes prefer. There’s the young assistant at the dress shop, who understands that the ladies who come there for a new outfit are often hoping to find a new self. There are the men who ring the tower bells at the church three times a week, the notes, harmonious and clashing, rippling out across the rooftops of the town.
Among all these lives, one young couple moves into focus. New to the town with their small daughter, they have escaped London for a quieter existence at Court Green, the thatched house beside the church. The life they intend to build—out of secondhand furniture stenciled with hearts and flowers, expertly cooked suppers for weekend guests, and devotion to the work that matters to them both—will be a good and happy one.
The Daffodil Days depicts a pivotal year in the marriage of 20th-century literature’s most infamous couple, primarily the wife: Sylvia Plath. It is a kaleidoscopic portrait of this enigmatic writer, refracted through the rich inner lives of a rural community caught, if only for a moment, in her light. Here, Sylvia is capable and charismatic, vulnerable but strong, full of spirit.
Sometime This Century
Samantha Silva
June 9 | Harper Perennial
Annabel Blake was born in the wrong century. An Austen-loving book nerd, she dreams of being a writer herself, with a just-penned Regency novel to prove it. Her hopes sink when her hot author crush rejects her: The novel reads like she’s never been in love. Ouch.
Annabel sees a chance to rewrite it when her ex-pat boss sends her to England to sort out her family’s “crumbling old pile” of a country house. Tempted by an invitation tucked in an antique writing desk and a “period” coachman at her door, Annabel’s whisked away to a local Regency Society ball—cue candlelight, costumes, dancing—that might be just the inspiration she needs. There’s even the achingly perfect—and wildly out of her league—Henry Leighton D’Evercy.
When Annabel’s audacious influencer sister crashes the party with her super-chill ex-boyfriend, the unlikely trio wake to find themselves trapped in the actual Regency era. No Wi-Fi, lattes, cellphones—just a world where manners, money, and marriage rule.
As Annabel falls deeply for D’Evercy, she must decide: write her perfect love story…or live it.
Red Sheet
James Ellroy
June 9 | Knopf
t’s late October 1962. The Cuban Missile Crisis has just concluded. The Russkies blinked and pulled their ICBMs out of Cuba. Attorney General Robert Kennedy fears reprisals from seething commies. He orders a red probe and puts the LAPD on the job.
Freddy Otash is injudiciously named the lead investigating officer. He’s a stone-cold criminal with police sanction and a harrowing dope habit. He homes in on a red-front trade union. There’s a murder on Halloween night. It may link to ex-VP and current gubernatorial candidate Richard Nixon and two commie snuffs from eight years back. Freddy’s overworked and overamped. He’s running the probe, and Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman—Tricky Dick Nixon’s head goons—have hired him to keep Nixon away from the smear-minded press.
L.A. is coming unglued. Ex-cop/lawyer Tom Bradley is running for a city council seat and pushing the Rumford Fair Housing Act. Playboy kingpin Hugh Hefner is along for the ride, out to exploit racial tension and peddle untold copies of his smut rag.
The Stargazer of Nantucket
Julie Gerstenblatt
June 9 | HTP Books
Massachusetts, 1851
Winifred Starbuck wants only one thing: to join her parents on their final merchant voyage—from Nantucket Island to bustling San Francisco, then across the glittering Pacific to the distant ports of China. Yet renowned trade captains Nell and Peter Starbuck have forbidden their daughter from coming aboard on the adventure of a lifetime. So Winnie does what any strong-willed eighteen-year-old would do: she stows away.
Once the ship sets sail, Winnie is plunged into turbulent waters, treachery, and the thrill of life on the high seas. As she drifts farther from shore, and closer to fabled Canton port, she uncovers a long-buried secret—one that reveals the truth behind her parents’ desperate fear. And as she continues to chart her own course, she’ll have to plumb the depths of her courage to take on a world far bigger—and more dangerous—than she ever imagined.
Feast
Catherine Kurtz
June 9 | Berkley
Minha is born on the backstreets of late nineteenth-century London, the daughter of an Indian spice merchant and an English prostitute. She has a remarkable gift: an incredible sense of taste. She can taste the earth in which potatoes were grown or the tree on which fruits have ripened. She can smell each ingredient—and identify a single false note. But Minha’s gift and her mixed-race heritage provoke mistrust and rejection, even within her own family. Escaping alone to France, Minha chances upon work in the Château de Bellefalaise, where for the first time her strange abilities are lauded.
As official poison taster for Duc Nicolas, Minha must taste every morsel of food that will pass his lips. Others in the household are hostile to her, but when she discovers a man hiding in the stables, their unexpected meeting turns into the first true connection she’s felt since arriving in France.
But mystery and paranoia continue to swirl around the château, with the Duc’s poisoner unidentified and antagonism toward Minha growing. She knows it’s only a matter of time before fingers begin pointing her way. Will she run again, or is this the time to stand and fight?
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The Fabric of Wishful Thinking
Kathleen Curtis Wilson
June 9 | Köehler Books
In 1910 rural Virginia, guns and homemade liquor were readily available. Good citizens turned a blind eye and a sheriff rarely interfered. Married women were at the mercy of a husband and his family.
Ella, a young woman with two small children, is trapped in an abusive marriage to Red Hutchinson, with no way out. At the time, no woman had a way out under those circumstances, but she didn't know that. When calamity befalls her daughter, Ella makes the most heart wrenching decision a woman can face.
Sommers McCloud, an unsophisticated nineteen-year-old believes he can produce a new fabric of beauty and artistry vastly different from the endless white cotton woven in his father's textile mill. He needs help and secretly hires Ella, a decision that tears apart a family and complicates both their lives. A first love is an intense emotion and hardest to relinquish.
Rural Appalachia has intrigued authors and readers with romanticized versions of the region and its people for more than 100 years, often ignoring the reality of men and women struggling to make a living and a life in a hard land of steep mountains, dense forests, and great beauty.
We've Been Here Before
Myrtle Henry Sodhi
June 9 | Dundurn Press
Woven together with folklore and memory, We've Been Here Before begins with the childhood stories of Lise-Rose, who struggles with speech and coming of age in a community anchored in both West African spirituality and the Catholic Church. Lise-Rose must choose either to follow the ancestral ways of her father, who is spiritually bound to the sea, or her mother, who has rooted herself in Catholicism. The path of her life changes, however, after an encounter with a shape-shifting figure from the village.
Like Lise-Rose's ancestors, her descendants struggle to honour ancestral knowledge while living on foreign lands. Margaux, Lise-Rose's great-granddaughter, embarks on a new life with her mother in Canada. Facing racism and isolation, they attempt to establish roots in a country that seems both limitless and oppressive.
Across generations, Sodhi explores how a woman reclaims a connection to her stories and ancestors while forging her own voice.
The Underground Sisters
Soraya M. Lane
June 15 | Lake Union
We’ll make sure they never forget. We’ll make sure that every recipe, every poem, every note is remembered, and never, ever forgotten. Even if it takes me a lifetime, I promise you that no one will forget…
Amsterdam, 1940: Schoolteacher Aletta knows the war will soon reach her and the Jewish children in her class. When her family hide an injured Allied airman in their home, they must decide: how much will they risk when resistance could prove deadly?
Paris, 1940: Since her mother’s death, Chloe has dedicated herself to protecting her brothers. So when the SS accuses Claude of being in the Resistance, she sacrifices herself to save him.
Forced together in Ravensbrück concentration camp, Chloe, Aletta and her mother, Emma, forge an unbreakable bond. Surrounded by unimaginable cruelty, they mount their own kind of resistance—secretly teaching children and preserving fellow prisoners’ precious memories. In a place designed to strip away humanity, their friendship becomes an act of defiance, their determination to bear witness a lifeline of hope.
As the war rages on and whispers of a longed-for liberation grow, can their courage and sisterhood see them through to freedom? And if they survive, how can they ever be the same?
Death Was Not on the Guest List
Jenni L. Walsh
June 16 | Thomas & Mercer
In Chicago’s Gold Coast district, twenty of the city’s most glamorous socialites gather for a charity whist drive at the Bellevue House mansion. Brightest among them are Ginevra King Mitchell and Edith Cummings, real-life debutantes who inspired Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker in The Great Gatsby.
But when their sharp-tongued hostess turns up dead and a blizzard traps everyone inside, suspicion and gossip give way to fear. After all, one guest has a habit of burying husbands, another a proclivity for poison. Their charming veneers belie jealousies, ambitions, and deceits aplenty, enough to drive any one of them to kill.
As whispers turn to accusations, the police start closing in. Ginevra and Edith compete to solve the murder, uncovering secrets far more dangerous than the gossip columns ever revealed. But when a second body is found—strangled with Ginevra’s own pearls—their restless rivalry becomes a race for survival. Who’s next? And is the answer hidden in Fitzgerald’s exasperating novel?
Isis of Egypt: Goddess of Thrones
Malayna Evans
June 23 | Alcove Press
Isis, goddess of thrones and magic, steals the crown of Egypt and hands the power to her husband, Osiris. Together, Isis and Osiris live an idyllic life, ruling justly until the god of chaos, set on revenge for a crime Isis knows nothing about, traps Osiris in a box—a box that quickly vanishes.
Driven by rage and desperation, Isis spends decades disguised as a human woman, isolated from home and family as she searches for her lost love. When she finally uncovers the box, what she finds will change her life—and the fate of gods and mortals—forever. Unless Isis can right the wrongs of a betrayal she didn’t commit and deliver Egypt into the hands of a worthy leader, Egypt will fall into chaos.
Isis of Egypt: Goddess of Thrones is a feminist retelling about the woman behind one of the ancient world’s most widespread and enduring cults, a goddess whose message of empathy and resilience resonates still today.
Little Wild
Laura Evans
June 23 | Henry Holt
Suffolk, 1937. As the English countryside swelters in a historic heat wave, preparations for a party at Snare House are in full swing. The Winthers’ only daughter, Joanie, is returning from a summer in Europe, a flying visit before she leaves for university in Oxford. Only Margaret, long-time ward of the family and Joanie’s closest friend, knows the truth: Joanie won’t be going to Oxford. Instead, the two will be leaving the stultifying society they know to live together in London, as lovers.
Then the pair is discovered, and everything goes wrong. Banished to a cabin in the nearby woods, Margaret is alone with her estranged father. As summer curdles into fall and magpies throng the forest, Margaret begins to lose herself. Her dreams turn dark and terrifying, and she wakes from them with dirt on her soles and scratches on her back. Everything suggests that a perverse power is awakening within her—perhaps the very one which led to her mother’s ostracism and eventual death. If she can harness it, Margaret may be able to secure an approximation of the love she’s always craved—but at what cost?
The Top of the World
Ethan Joella
June 30 | Scribner
June 1975. Maggie Bishop has just graduated high school, the future hers to embrace—but she’s still reeling from the death of her older brother, Chip. A devastating diagnosis the summer before prompted Chip to leave home for a few months, never revealing where he went. Maggie’s search for clues leads her to The Red Maple Inn, a mountaintop resort in the Poconos.
At the Red Maple, Maggie is welcomed into a tight-knit community. As she unravels secrets about her brother’s final days, she begins to connect with the people he loved, and whose lives he touched. Through the warmth of strangers, Maggie begins to heal and is able to help others cope with loss.
Set in a nostalgic resort town over two transformative summers, this dual-narrative novel explores sibling relationships, coming of age, and the quiet power of human connection. Perfect for fans of emotional storytelling and small-town summer books, The Top of the World is a timeless story about memory, grief, second chances, and hope.
Days of Sun and Shadow
India Hayford
June 30 | Kensington
Alabama, 1813: In the midst of the battle and massacre at Fort Mims, a baby is born. It’s a portentous beginning for Emilie McCain, who has inherited the Sight—visions that come in dreams guided by an owl. Owl is Emilie’s steadfast companion, a welcome balance to her mother’s neglect. Along with the Sight, Emilie possesses an innate talent for communicating with horses. In an era when a woman legally belongs to her husband, such gifts may be the only things that are hers to keep.
The family makes a perilous move to Arkansas Territory, where Emilie becomes a master horse trainer and leatherworker. For all her skill with horses, Emilie sometimes fails to see the dark truth about the people she encounters. Other dangers, even when predicted, may be impossible to defend against—yellow fever, greed, vengeance, and the unforgiving land itself.
Through love, marriage, heartache, and hardship, Emilie gains strength and resilience. After years of avoiding emotional entanglements, she meets a man who presents her with a horse to be trained and an offer of friendship she could sorely use. But with his arrival come other tests of her will and her judgement. Finally, a shocking revelation inspires an act beyond her imagining—and may set her free to find the place she truly belongs . . .
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Hi, I'm Carlie
I’m a historical fiction fanatic passionate about sharing newly released books, book club picks, and the types of stories that linger long after the last lines. If that sounds like the type of books you love to read, then you’re in the right place!
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