Books Set in the 1920s

Book Summary

Mirielle West lives a glamorous life in LA as the wife of a silent film star. When a doctor sees a small spot on her hand, she’s quickly whisked across the country to what feels like a different world. She hopes to have only a brief visit to the Louisiana Leper Home, but when she arrives, there is barbed wire, a curfew, and little chance of ever returning to her everyday life.

As Mirelle is assigned work inside the home, she must come to terms with both the illness and its perception in the outside world.

Book Summary

Lawyer Lesley and her husband Robert, a veteran, live at Cassowary House on the Straits Settlement of Penang, Malaysia. When Robert’s old friend, writer “Willie” Somerset Maugham arrives for a visit, it threatens to upend all of their lives.

Novelist Maugham is exhausted by his marriage of convenience that helps conceal his homosexuality. Additionally, he’s lost his savings, his career is in a slump, and his health is failing. He hopes his time at Cassowary House will inspire his next book. He soon discovers that the lives of Lesley and Robert are much more complicated than they look from the outside. From connections to a Chinese revolutionary to the trial of an Englishwoman charged with murder, Maugham now has plenty to write about.

Book Summary

Irene lives a comfortable, affluent life with her husband and children in a thriving 1921 Harlem neighborhood. Her childhood friend, Clare, also has light-skin and has made a different choice. She’s “passing” as white, hiding her real truth from everyone, including her racist husband.

Clare is surprised to find that Irene’s life has more ease, and she longs for the community she left behind. As she tries to insert herself into Irene’s life, Irene is both riveted and repulsed by Clare’s dangerous secret.

Book Summary

Laura is the heiress to the Bradshaw Shoe Company, but ever since her mother passed away, her father has become extremely overprotective and doesn’t seem to care about her dreams for the future. He’s only focused on eliminating the competition in town – the Campbell Shoe Company. Laura’s only joy is the mysterious friend with whom she’s been exchanging letters.

Isaac is the Campbell Shoe fortune heir, making him the most eligible bachelor in town. However, he has no interest in the girls throwing themselves at him. Instead, his mind is on the woman he has been exchanging letters with through an oak tree in the Buffalo Zoo.

Issac is convinced there is more to the longstanding Bradshaw-Campbell feud than meets the eye. Will the truth bridge the divide between him and the woman whose words have captured his heart?

Book Summary

This dual-timeline novel tells the little-known history of Coney Island and America’s first infant incubators.

In 1926, Althea Anderson was a nurse at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. Her heart breaks each time they cannot save another premature baby’s life.

After reading an article detailing the significantly improved survival rates of babies being treated in an incubator sideshow exhibit at Luna Park on Coney Island, Althea inquires of the doctors at Bellevue, who dismiss it as unconventional medicine. Not wanting to see another baby die that could be saved, Althea is forced to make a very difficult choice.

Twenty-five years later, Stella feels like her life is falling apart – her mother recently passed away, she quit the job she loved, and her marriage is struggling. When she discovers a letter, it calls into question everything she thought she knew about herself and her mother.

Book Summary

Nelly Sawyer is the 20-year-old daughter of a Kentucky horse breeder who is alleged to be the “wealthiest Negro in America.” Their family is catapulted to a new level of elite Black society. Her brother is presumed to be the heir to the family fortune, but when he dies unexpectedly, Nelly is suddenly elevated to be the premier debutante. Marriage and societal influence are far from Nelly’s goals, however.

She’s spent the last year working as an undercover investigative journalist. In this capacity, she’s had the opportunity to share the achievements of many everyday Black people living under the shadow of Jim Crow. Her latest assignment throws her into the world of the dangerous so-called Mayor of Maxwell Street.

Jay Shorey is a charming and mysterious young man who longs for the comfort of high society. His parents, a biracial couple in rural Alabama, were murdered and Jay took the chance to escape his hometown. He finds himself in Chicago, where he crosses paths with Nelly, and she asks his help to expose the Mayor and fight the corruption that has overrun Prohibition-Era Chicago.

Book Summary

This is the true story of Anne Hobbs who arrived in harsh and beautiful Alaska in 1927, at the young age of nineteen. She quickly discovered that running a ramshackle schoolhouse would expose her to more than just the elements.

After she allowed Native American children into her class and fell in love with a half-Inuit man, she learned the meanings of prejudice and perseverance, irrational hatred, and unconditional love.

“People get as mean as the weather,” she discovered, but they were also capable of great good.

Book Summary

Just before 1920, American Sylvia Beach opened an English language bookstore called Shakespeare and Company on a quiet street in Paris. Soon that bookstore became a second home to prominent writers like Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce.

When Joyce’s controversial novel, Ulysses, is banned, Beach decides to take a huge risk and publish it under the name of her bookstore in 1922. The book became one of the most infamous and influential books of the century, but that success ultimately threatened the future of Shakespeare and Company.

This book is based on the true story of the publishing of Ulysses. It contains many interesting historical details, including comparisons between life in Paris and US during the 1920s and into the 1930s.

Book Summary

The newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty and the wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright in the otherwise dark years of World War I.

Across the US, hundreds of girls toiled in the glowing dust of the radium-dial factories. The glittering chemical covered their bodies from head to toe; they lit up the night like industrious fireflies.

With such a coveted job, these “shining girls” are the luckiest alive — until they begin to fall mysteriously ill. This shocking non-fiction book explores the radium craze and its lasting aftermath.

Book Summary

London was full of criminal activity between the World Wars in the 1920s. Alice’s family has run the Mint, her gritty neighborhood, for decades. However, with her father in jail again and her brother in debt to dangerous criminals, it’s now up to Alice to provide for the family. 

Alice received the opportunity to join Mary Carr and her notorious group of lady shoplifters called The Forty Elephants. As she learns to steal from posh department stores, she sees a different kind of life outside the Mint. Soon, she wants more and more, no matter the cost.

Book Summary

In 1924 Brooklyn, the lives of three women with very different pasts converge. Beatrice is new to the city from New Orleans and has opened a dress shop. Alice is an orphaned teenage girl who came to New York with Beatrice. Catherine lives down the street from the shop in an elegant brownstone. However, she’s lonely and depressed as she hasn’t been able to have children. 

As Bea and Catherine become friends, Alice becomes jealous and runs away. When she leaves, it sets off a series of events that make both women confront the secrets of their past in order to thrive in their future.

Book Summary

Set in Branchville, South Carolina, in 1924 – shortly after the Boll Weevil Infestation that devastated southern cotton fields – this historical fiction novel tells the story of motherhood and womanhood. The story centers around three women at a crossroad – Gertrude, Retta, and Annie.

Gertrude, a mother of four, must make a difficult decision to save her daughters. Retta is a first-generation freed slave who comes to Gertrude’s aid. And Annie, the matriarch of the influential Coles family, offers Gertrude a job.

Despite having seemingly nothing in common, these three women unite to stand up to injustices long plaguing the small town. This book is a timeless story about the power of family, community, and the ferocity of motherhood.

Warning: Be aware that this book includes some potentially triggering topics, including domestic abuse and child sexual abuse. Additionally, this book includes some racially insensitive language reflective of the era in which it’s set.

Book Summary

After fighting on the Western Front in WWI, Tom Sherbourne returns home and takes a job as a lighthouse keeper on an isolated island. It’s a half-day journey from the west coast of Australia, and supply boats only come once a season. During their years on the island, Tom and his wife, Isabel, suffer two miscarriages and a stillbirth. 

Then, a boat washes up onshore carrying a dead man and a crying baby. Against Tom’s judgment, the couple claims the baby is their own and raises her on the island. Two years later, when they return to mainland Australia, they must face the reality of their choice.

Book Summary

In 1923, the scandalous flapper Dot King was found dead in her Midtown apartment. Her jewels were missing, and a bottle of chloroform was beside her. New York City reporters were enamored with the case, including Julia Harpman, who chased the story while navigating a male-dominated industry.

Julia uncovers twist after twist, involving everyone from socialites to a Harlem maid and bootleggers to Broadway dancers. The ramifications of Dot’s murder are eventually found to ripple from the gangster underworld all the way to the White House.

Book Summary

In 1920, after a seven-decade crusade for the right of women to vote, thirty-five states had ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, twelve have rejected or refused to vote, and one last state, Tennessee, is needed.

The suffragists face vicious opposition from politicians, clergy, corporations, racists who don’t want black women to vote, and even the “Antis” – women who oppose enfranchisement, fearing the nation’s moral collapse.

Book Summary

Revisit the glittering Jazz age with this atmospheric novel that reimagines The Great Gatsby from the perspective of three alternating female voices. When Jay Gatsby was found shot dead in his swimming pool in August of 1922, and a local mechanic was found dead in the woods nearby, the police viewed it as an open-and-shut case of murder/suicide. 

But then a diamond hairpin is found in the bushes around the pool, and three women suddenly become suspects – Daisy Buchanan, who once thought she’d marry Gatsby; Jordan Baker, who has a secret that could derail both her golf career and her friendship with Daisy; and Catherine McCoy, a suffragette who’s fighting for women’s rights and to protect her own sister from a terrible marriage.

This is a tale of money and power, marriage and friendship, love and desire, and ultimately murder.

Book Summary

This YA dual timeline read is a fictionalized account of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Rowan is a present-day 17-year-old about to start her important summer internship when workers discover a skeleton on her property during the renovation of a building.

Her story alternates with William Tillman, a 17-year-old in 1921, whose misguided attempt to “protect” a girl he had a crush on triggers more death, destruction, and division than he could have predicted.

Book Summary

In the 1920s, Prohibition created more problems than it solved, especially in the heart of Texas. Tired soldier Thatcher Hutton finds himself in trouble when he returns to Texas because a local woman goes missing the same day he arrives. Meanwhile, Laurel Plummer is willing to do anything to improve life for herself and her young daughter. This includes helping her father-in-law expand his moonshine production. 

Soon, Thatcher and Laurel find themselves on different sides of prohibition, but being at odds is hard when you’re also drawn to each other.

Book Summary

This book will transport you to the Roaring Twenties in London. The year is 1926, and England is still recovering from the Great War. Each evening, London’s Soho plays host to a ruckus nightlife where starlets rub shoulders with foreign dignitaries and gangsters. 

Nellie Coker owns five successful nightclubs and is ruthless in getting exactly what she wants. Her ambition and shrewdness are driven by her desire to provide the very best for her six children, but it also gets her into trouble. The book opens as she’s being released from a six-month stint in prison due to a liquor license violation. Throughout the novel, she’s surrounded by her blissfully self-absobred adult children and a slew of policemen (some good and some bad).

Book Summary

Jazz is the story of Joe Trace, a middle-aged door-to-door salesman who murders his 18-year-old mistress, Dorcas. His wife, Violet, attacks the girl’s corpse at the funeral.

Providing a different view of the time than many other books set in 1920s New York, this passionate story of love and obsession is filled with the emotions, hopes, fears, and profound realities of black urban life in Harlem. Toni Morrison’s literary prose gives this novel the same cadence and rhythm of the era’s jazz music.

Book Summary

In this non-fiction read, Bill Bryson dives deep into the events of the summer of 1927. The summer began with Charles Lindbergh becoming the first man to cross the Atlantic by plane nonstop, instantly making him one of the most famous people on the planet. 

Back in the US, Babe Ruth began his run to the home run record, and the first “talking picture” changed the movies forever. While the tabloids spent the summer covering the murder trial of a Queens housewife who murdered her husband, gangster Al Capone tightened his grip on the illegal booze business through his reign of terror. A massive storm flooded the South while President Calvin Coolidge took a three-month vacation. And four of the most powerful bankers on Earth met in secret and made a decision that would lead the future crash and depression. 

All these events marked a summer that would have a lasting mark on the twentieth century.

Book Summary

Saffron is a rare female research assistant with a vast knowledge of poisons. While at a dinner party, her professor’s wife drops to the floor. She expected to spend the night talking about an upcoming expedition to the Amazon, but now her mentor, Dr. Maxwell, is the main suspect. He’s always been more supportive of her than others in the all-male, very old-school department, so she wants to help.

Saffron must work to clear his name before the departure date to Brazil. She’ll need her extensive knowledge of botany as she partners with fellow researcher Alexander to investigate greenhouses and dark gardens looking for the deadly poison.

Book Summary

Four years after Rudy lost his eldest brother, a British soldier, to the battlefields of France, Rudy’s family is still torn apart by grief and secrets in the aftermath of WWI. 

When Mariette arrives, claiming to be Edgar’s widow and the mother of his child, Rudy urges her to stay in hopes that she’ll shed light on unanswered questions. But Mariette’s revelations lead to more questions than answers as suspicions threaten to further divide Rudy’s family. Rudy sets out on a quest for the truth that takes him from England to France and beyond.

Book Summary

The protagonist, Kaveri, is a new bride and recently moved to Bangalore to be with her husband, a doctor. She has no plans to be a typical housewife and is studying advanced mathematics and hopes to attend college. Thankfully, her husband, Ramu, adores her and supports her dreams, even if his mother believes women should cook, clean, and center their lives around their husbands. 

During a party one evening, Kaveri notices an uninvited guest lurking in the shadows. A short time later, someone is murdered, and a vulnerable woman has been identified as a suspect. Kaveri isn’t willing to stand by and let this woman pay for someone else’s crime, so she launches an investigation that takes her from a brothel to a mansion.

Book Summary

For most New Yorkers, Grand Central Terminal is a masterpiece of architectural design, but for Clara and Virginia, it represents something entirely different.

For Clara, in 1928, teaching at the Grand Central School of Art was the stepping stone to her future. In a time when there was public disdain for a “woman artist,” Clara is determined to succeed in her dream of creating cover art for Vogue. But she and her friends will soon be blindsided by the looming Great Depression that may destroy the entire art scene.

By 1974, Grand Central had declined to a dangerous place full of pickpockets and drug dealers, and it was at the center of a lawsuit that would decide if the terminal should be preserved or demolished. Virginia, who had recently taken a job in the Grand Central information booth, stumbles upon an abandoned art school within the terminal and discovers a striking watercolor that opens her eyes to the elegance beneath the decay. She sets out to find the artist and finds herself drawn into the battle to save Grand Central.

Book Summary

In 1922, only a few years before becoming a famous actress and an icon for her generation, 15-year-old Louise Brooks left Wichita to make it big in New York. But, much to her annoyance, she is accompanied by Cora Carlisle, a thirty-six-year-old chaperone who is neither mother nor friend. 

Cora is a complicated but traditional woman with her own reasons for making the trip. She has no idea what she’s in for. Ultimately, the five weeks they spend together in 1920s New York City will change both of their lives forever.

Book Summary

On a frigid night in December of 1926, mystery writer Agatha Christie went missing for 11 days. A more extensive search was launched after investigators found her car, which only contained her fur coat, near a pond. The only clues were some tire tracks nearby. Both her husband and daughter were questioned but claimed not to know her whereabouts.