Historical fiction...

The last garden in England by Julia Kelly

The chance of a lifetime has just been given to Emma Lovett, who has devoted her career to breathing new life into long-neglected gardens: to restore the gardens of the famous Highbury House estate, designed by her hero Venetia Smith in 1907. But as Emma dives deeper into the history of the gardens, she starts to discover secrets that have been concealed for a long time.

When she is hired to plan the Highbury House gardens, she is eager to make them a success, but the gardens promise to change her life forever, and the people she encounters.

When land girl Beth Pedley arrives at a farm on the outskirts of Highbury village in 1944, all she wants is to find a place she might call home. And now that her home has been confiscated and turned into a convalescent hospital for wounded soldiers, Widow Diana Symonds, the mistress of the Grand Estate, is anxiously trying to cling to her pre-war life. But when war threatens the treasured gardens of Highbury House, these three very distinct women are brought together by a secret that will endure for decades.

Meet Me in Bombay by Jenny Ashcroft

In Bombay, it's New Year's Eve, 1913, and Madeline Bright, new to colonial India's sweltering sun, yearns for everything she's left behind in England. Then, Maddy meets Luke Devereaux at the stroke of midnight, and as the year changes, so do both of their lives.

Only her mother, preferring the devoted Guy Bowen as a match for her daughter, disapproves.

But the world is falling apart when Maddy and Luke are falling in love. World War I is on the horizon and no choice but to fight will be offered to Luke. They will be different continents, divided by danger and devastating loss, but bound by the pledge of Luke that in Bombay they will meet again. His only hope is to go back to her—but he must first know who she is.

The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr.

Isaiah belonged to Samuel and Samuel belonged to Isaiah. That was the way it had been from the beginning, and the way it should have been until the end. They tended to the animals in the barn, but also to each other, turning the hollowed-out shed into a place of refuge for human beings, a center of affection and hope in a world governed by cruel masters. But when an elderly man, a fellow slave, attempts to win favor by preaching the gospel of the master on the plantation, the slaves start turning on their own. The love of Isaiah and Samuel, which was once so plain, is regarded as sinful and a direct danger to the peace of the plantation.

Robert Jones, Jr. vigorously summons the voices of the slave and the enslaved to tell the story of these two men with a lyricism reminiscent of Toni Morrison; from Amos the preacher to the calculating slave-master himself to the long line of women surrounding them, women who have borne the plantation's soul on their shoulders. As tensions build and the weight of millennia culminate in a climatic reckoning of ancestors and future generations to come, the Prophets masterfully expose the pain and misery of heritage, but are still shot through with hope, elegance, and reality, depicting the immense heroic force of love.

Our Darkest Night by Jennifer Robson

It is the autumn of 1943, and for Italian Jews, like the Mazin family, life is becoming increasingly dangerous. Antonina Mazin has only one hope of survival, of leaving Venice and her beloved parents and hiding in the countryside with a man she has only just met, with Nazi Germany now occupying much of her beloved homeland, and the danger of imprisonment and deportation becoming ever more certain.

Nico Gerardi studied for the priesthood until circumstances forced him to leave the seminary to manage the farm for his family. Nina would pose as his new bride rather than attempt a risky escape through the mountains. And Nico and Nina have to persuade prying eyes that they are happily married and in love, in order to keep her safe and protect their own secrets.

But for a cultured city girl who dreams of becoming a doctor like her father, farm life is not easy, and Nico's provincial neighbors are wary of this gentle and educated woman they don't know. The more he learns about Nina, the more his doubts grow and his desire to exact revenge grows with them.

Their emotions intensify as Nina and Nico come to know each other, transforming their friendship into something more than a charade.

Yellow Wife by Sadeqa Johnson

Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, on her eighteenth birthday, Pheby Brown was promised her freedom. But when her birthday finally rolls around, instead of the idyllic life she wished for with her true love, at the notorious Devil's Half-Acre, a dungeon where slaves are broken, tortured, and sold every day, she finds herself thrown into the bowels of slavery. Forced to become the mistress of the cruel man who owns the prison, in this strong, exciting tale of one slave's struggle for freedom, Pheby faces the ultimate sacrifice to protect her heart.

Source of information: https://www.goodreads.com/