This column was submitted by Evangeline Cessna, Local History Librarian at the Warren County-Vicksburg Public Library.

This week we are featuring Historical Fiction titles from the New Adult Fiction collection.

John Banville pens an ambitious crime novel that brings together two detectives to solve a globe-spanning mystery in “The Lock-Up.” Rosa Jacobs is a young history scholar who is found dead in her car in 1950s Dublin. Esteemed pathologist Dr. Quirke and Detective Inspector St. John Strafford are assigned to the case, but the victim’s older sister is the one who discovers a lead that cracks open the case. Molly is a journalist who finds out that one of her sister’s friends is from a powerful German family that arrived in Ireland under mysterious circumstances just after World War II. As Quirke and Stafford close in on the killer, but as they do, their personal lives put the lives of everyone working the case — and Quirke’s daughter — in jeopardy. From the mountaintops of Italy to the front lines of World War II Bavaria and onto the gritty streets of Dublin, this grandiose mystery will have you on the edge of your seat.

“The Spectacular” is a thrilling story of love, sacrifice and the pursuit of dreams by author Fiona Davis. In New York City in 1956, 19-year-old Marion Brooks knows she should be happy. Her high school sweetheart is about to propose and sweep her off to a quiet life of domestic bliss in the suburbs. Marion, however, feels trapped and her talents stifled by the thought of quiet domesticity. An opportunity to audition for the famous Radio City Rockettes falls in her lap and she jumps at the chance for a dazzling future as a performer. Meanwhile, the city is under the shadow of a string of bombings orchestrated by a person the press has dubbed the “Big Apple Bomber.” He has been terrorizing the citizens of New York for 16 years by planting bombs in popular, crowded spaces. The police are at a loss and receiving pressure from the public, so, in desperation, they turn to Dr. Peter Griggs who works at a local mental hospital and espouses a radical new technique called psychological profiling. Marion and Peter’s lives are about to collide in the search for a madman. If they hope to find the bomber, they’ll need to take a terrifying risk that may force them to sacrifice everything they have worked for and the people they love.

Two mothers make unthinkable choices in the face of Nazi occupation in Kristin Harmel’s book “The Paris Daughter.” It’s 1939 in Paris and young mothers Elise and Juliette have become fast friends after meeting in the gorgeous Bois de Boulogne. As the ever-creeping shadow of war moves across Europe, both women suspect their lives will be irrevocably changed. Elise then becomes a target of the German occupation, so she must entrust her precious daughter to Juliette. Nowhere is safe in wartime, however, not even Juliette’s quiet little bookshop Librairie des Reves. When a bomb falls on her neighborhood, Juliette’s world is destroyed along with it. When Elise returns to reunite with her daughter, she finds her friend’s bookstore reduced to rubble and Juliette and her daughter nowhere to be found. Juliette has seemingly vanished without a trace and Elise’s desperate search leads her to New York. Will she find Juliette and her daughter? Or will her search lead to more heartbreak?

“Symphony of Secrets” is by Brendan Slocumb. Bern Hendricks is a music professor who discovers a shocking secret about a famous American composer — his music may have been stolen from a Black Jazz Age prodigy named Josephine Reed. Bern is determined to find the truth, but there are powerful people who want it kept hidden. In 1920s Manhattan, Josephine Reed was living on the streets and frequenting jazz clubs when she meets the struggling musician, Fred Delaney. With Josephine as his silent partner, Delaney’s career soars, but which one is the musical genius? Bern and his tech-savvy friend Eboni uncover clues in the present day that indicate Delaney may have had help composing his most successful work. Armed with more questions than answers, Bern and Eboni are on the radar of a powerful organization that will stop at nothing to keep its secret hidden.

Luis Alberto Urrea has based his novel “Good Night, Irene,” on his mother’s own service in the Red Cross. It’s 1943 and Irene Woodward abandons her abusive fiancé in New York in order to enlist with the Red Cross and go to Europe. She becomes fast friends with Dorothy Dunford, a tall Midwesterner with an acerbic wit. Together, they join an elite group of women, nicknamed the Donut Dollies, who command military vehicles at the front lines and provide friendship and a bit of home to the soldiers before they head into battle. After D-Day, Irene and Dorothy join the Allied soldiers pouring into France. They are in harm’s way from the Battle of the Bulge to the liberation of Buchenwald. Through her friendship with Dorothy and a love affair with a courageous American fighter pilot named Hans, Irene learns to trust again. Her most ardent hope is that all three of them make it out of the war alive.

“The Covenant of Water” is a long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese. Spanning the years 1900 to 1977 in Kerala on South India’s Malabar Coast, this book follows three generations of families that suffer a curse of sorts: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning. At the turn of the century, a 12-year-old girl from Kerala’s Christian community is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her 40-year-old husband for the first time. She does this even as she grieves the loss of her father. This young girl — the future matriarch known as Big Ammachi — will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life. There will be joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss. The only constant will be her faith and love of family.