2026 DCL Reading Challenge: Fiction Inspired by FactLike this list

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• 2026 DCL Reading Challenge

  View on dcl.org

  Win a $200 gift card to Shanahan's Steakhouse in this year's random prize drawing of challenge finishers! Read any of the titles on this list, or choose your own, for your chance to win.

• Isola

  A Novel

  Goodman, Allegra

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  Based on an actual historical incident, a French noblewoman falls in love with the wrong man on a journey to New France when her guardian maroons the lovers on a small island.

• The Rarest Fruit

  a Novel

  Bélem, Gaëlle, 1984-

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  A tribute to the unsung heroes of history, based on the life of Edmond Albius. An orphan born into slavery is raised by a botanist and discovers how to hand-pollinate vanilla orchids.

• The Eights

  Miller, Joanna, 1969-

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  In October 1920, Oxford officially admitted its first class of female undergraduates. Miller invents stories and backstories for four of these young women who settle into an unlikely camaraderie.

• Bochica

  a Novel

  Flórez-Cerchiaro, Carolina

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  Set at a real-life mansion in Colombia, located next to a pounding waterfall. Three years after her mother's tragic death, Antonia returns to answer questions about her mother's death and her own disturbing dreams.

• World Pacific

  a Novel

  Mann, Peter, 1981-

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  Set in California on the eve of World War II, a German painter and a British intelligence officer’s paths converge on Richard Halifax (a thinly veiled Haliburton), who was previously thought dead in a shipwreck.

• The Director

  Kehlmann, Daniel

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  Filmmaker G.W. Pabst was in France when the Nazis seized power. He flees to Hollywood and is met with indifference, and is summoned back to Austria by his ailing mother. The Nazis order him to Berlin to make propaganda films for the regime. A…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Pretender

  Harkin, Jo

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  Inspired by the true story of one of the Plantagenet pretenders to the throne. A 10-year-old boy becomes the figurehead of a revolt against Henry VII.

• The Reformatory

  A Novel

  Due, Tananarive

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  Based on the true story of Due’s own relative, a 12-year-old boy in Jim Crow-era Florida defends his sister from the son of a white landowner and is sent to a reform school, where he sees the school's violent history through the ghosts that haunt…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Matrix

  Groff, Lauren

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  Set in the 12th century, a woman moves through the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine and is sent to be the prioress of an abbey. There she faces challenges in bureaucracy, fosters her own ambition, and finds power in a life of duty.

• Fifteen Wild Decembers

  Powell, Karen

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  Powell imagines a 6-year-old Emily Bronte, sent to boarding school to join her sisters. Her life is colored by longing for her childhood on the Yorkshire moors, chafing with poverty, and the restrictions of society.

• The Girl in the Green Dress

  a Mystery Featuring Zelda Fitzgerald

  Fredericks, Mariah

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  Based on a real case and set in the 1920s, this mystery is steeped in Jazz Age New York City, post-World War I politics, and features the assistance of Zelda Fitzgerald.