New Books in Historical Fiction
Episodes
George Stein, “Sing Before Breakfast: A Novel of Gettysburg ” (George Stein, 2012)
09 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
From July 1 to July 3, 1863, the fields around the small town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, were the site of an intense battle involving more than 160,...
Susan Follett, “The Fog Machine” (Lucky Sky Press, 2014)
21 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Even without the almost daily headlines reporting racial injustice in Ferguson, New York City, Cleveland, Madison, and elsewhere, it would be difficul...
Ann Swinfen, “The Testament of Mariam” (Shakenoak Press, 2014)
25 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In a town in eastern Gallia, circa 65 AD, an old woman learns that she has lost the last of her siblings, a man she has not seen for thirty years. The...
Alix Christie, “Gutenberg’s Apprentice” (HarperCollins, 2014)
15 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
From sixteenth-century Venice we move back a century and travel north to Mainz, Germany, where a “madman” named Johannes Gutenberg has invented a ...
Laura Morelli, “The Gondola Maker” (Laura Morelli, 2014)
15 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
As the son and heir to the workshop of sixteenth-century Venice’s premier gondola maker, Luca Vianello has his career, his marriage, and his place i...
Phillip Margolin, “Worthy Brown’s Daughter” (Harper, 2014)
18 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The year is 1860, months before the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War. Officially, slavery does not exist in Oregon, but the brand-new U.S. state has no ...
Nadia Hashimi, “The Pearl That Broke Its Shell” (William Morrow, 2014)
21 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Women in the Western world take many things for granted: the right to an education and a career, to walk in the street unaccompanied, to make personal...
Oliver Ready (trans.), Vladimir Sharov, “Before and During” (Dedalus Books, 2014)
30 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Historical fiction, by definition, supplements the verifiable documentary record with elements of the imagination. Otherwise, it is not fiction but hi...
Kate Quinn, “The Serpent and the Pearl” (Berkley Trade, 2013)
15 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
No fan of Renaissance history can ignore the far-reaching influence–or the legendary corruption–of the Borgia family. From Rodrigo Borgia, who bec...
Laurel Corona, “The Mapmaker’s Daughter” (Sourcebooks, 2014)
15 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In North America, the year 1492 is inextricably linked to Columbus’s discovery of the West Indies, funded by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Sp...
Dmitry Chen, “The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas” (Edward and Dee, 2013)
15 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
From the Saxons and Danes warring in the British Isles, this month’s interview skews dramatically eastward and dives back two centuries in time, alt...
Bernard Cornwell, “The Pagan Lord” (HarperCollins, 2014)
18 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
As fans of Uhtred of Bebbanburg know, England in the ninth and tenth centuries is just an idea–a hope held by the kings of Wessex that they may some...
Libbie Hawker, “The Sekhmet Bed” (Running Rabbit Press, 2013)
06 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Egypt in the Eighteenth Dynasty seems both impossibly distant in time and disconcertingly present. Over 250 years, the dynasty produced several of the...
Tara Conklin, “The House Girl” (William Morrow, 2013)
16 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Lina Sparrow can’t believe her luck when the boss at her fancy New York law firm offers her a once-in-a-lifetime chance: find a suitable plaintiff f...
Pamela Mingle, “The Pursuit of Mary Bennet” (William Morrow, 2013)
15 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
It seems fair to say that a large proportion of the English-speaking reading public has encountered Jane Austen’s classic novel Pride and Prejudice,...
James Aitcheson, “Sworn Sword” (Sourcebooks, 2014)
15 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The chivalric society of medieval Europe resembled a pyramid, with each man sworn to serve the lord above him in a social hierarchy that reached up to...
Jessica Brockmole, “Letters from Skye” (Ballantine Books, 2013)
21 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In March 1912, a college student at the University of Illinois takes time away from his usual pursuits–painting the dean’s horse blue, climbing do...
Lee Smith, “Guests on Earth” (Algonquin Books, 2013)
17 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
On the night of March 9, 1948, fire consumed the Central Building at the Highland Mental Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina. Although people at the...
James Forrester, “Sacred Treason” (Sourcebooks, 2012)
18 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
London, December 1563. Elizabeth I–Gloriana, the Virgin Queen–has ruled England for five years, but her throne is far from secure. Even though Eli...
Carol Strickland, “The Eagle and the Swan” (Erudition Digital, 2013)
19 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
In 476 CE, according to the chronology most of us learned in school, the Roman Empire fell and the Dark Ages began. That’s how textbook chronologies...
Yangsze Choo, “The Ghost Bride” (HarperCollins, 2013)
18 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Malaya, 1893. Pan Li Lan, a beautiful eighteen-year-old, has watched her Chinese merchant family decline since the death of her mother from smallpox d...
Virginia Pye, “River of Dust” (Unbridled Books, 2013)
23 Sep 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Few possibilities terrify parents more than the kidnapping of a child. Guilt, grief, helplessness, anger, and immobilizing fear mingle to create an em...
Janet Kastner Olshewsky, “The Snake Fence” (Quaker Bridge Media, 2013)
19 Aug 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Sixteen is a difficult age, lodged somewhere between childhood and adulthood. In 1755, young Noble Butler has just finished his apprenticeship as a ca...
Marie Macpherson, “The First Blast of the Trumpet” (Knox Robinson Publishing, 2012)
22 Jul 2013
Contributed by Lukas
There’s nothing quite like sitting down to write a novel about a man who, to quote Marie Macpherson, is blamed for “banning Christmas, football on...
B. A. Shapiro, “The Art Forger” (Algonquin Books, 2012)
18 Jun 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Claire Roth can’t believe her luck when the owner of Boston’s most prestigious art gallery offers her a one-woman show. Of course, there’s a cat...
Laurie R. King, “Garment of Shadows” (Bantam Books, 2012)
24 May 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Morocco in 1924 has political factions to spare. A rebellion in the Rif Mountains threatens to oust Spain from its protectorate in the north–a respo...
William B. McCormick, “Lenin’s Harem” (Knox Robinson, 2012)
22 Apr 2013
Contributed by Lukas
One night in the Russian imperial province of Courland, an eleven-year-old boy more than a little drunk on his parents’ champagne slips away from hi...
Douglas R. Skopp, “Shadows Walking” (CreateSpace, 2010)
15 Mar 2013
Contributed by Lukas
“First do no harm.” Every doctor in the Western medical tradition swears to observe this basic principle of the Hippocratic oath before he or she ...
Tasha Alexander, “Death in the Floating City” (Minotaur Books, 2012)
18 Feb 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Well-brought-up Victorian ladies don’t expect their childhood nemeses to write from out of the blue, pleading for help because, as the nemesis so ta...
Julius Wachtel, “Stalin’s Witnesses” (Knox Robinson Publishing, 2012)
17 Jan 2013
Contributed by Lukas
When does history become performance art? In 1936, Joseph Stalin set out to eliminate any communist leader with sufficient prestige to threaten his m...
Karen Engelmann, “The Stockholm Octavo” (Ecco Books, 2012)
20 Dec 2012
Contributed by Lukas
It’s 1789, and despite the troubles in France, Emil Larsson, a sekretaire in the Customs Office in Stockholm, has life pretty much where he wants it...
Julian Berengaut, “The Estate of Wormwood and Honey” (Russian Estate Books, 2012)
20 Nov 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Illegitimacy doesn’t mean much in today’s Europe and North America. In an age when we celebrate many different kinds of families, “bastard” ha...
Francis Spufford, “Red Plenty: Industry! Progress! Abundance! Inside the Fifties Soviet Dream” (Greywolf Press, 2012)
30 Mar 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Historians are not supposed to make stuff up. If it happened, and can be proved to have happened, then it’s in; if it didn’t, or can’t be docume...