Historical Novels Review | Issue 114 (November 2025)

HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW

NOVEMBER 2025 ISSUE 114

FREE HISTORY

How to Ride the Waves of Time | More on page 8

FEATURED IN THIS ISSUE

...

Once Upon a Gothic ...

Turning Publishing on Its Head (Literally)

Page 10

Borgia of Blythswood

Love and Other Poisons by Lesley McDowell

Page 12

Interweaving Timelines

Chanel Cleeton on Intersecting Points of View

Page 12

Painting Power

Matthew Plampin's These Wicked Desires

Page 14

A Haunted Past

Simon Tolkien's Literary Journey

Page 15

Historical Fiction Market News

Page 1

New Voices

Page 4

History & Film

Page 6

HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW

ISSN 1471-7492

Issue 114, November 2025 | © 2025 The Historical Novel Society

PUBLISHER

Richard Lee

Marine Cottage, The Strand, Starcross, Devon EX6 8NY UK <richard@historicalnovelsociety.org>

EDITORIAL BOARD

Managing Editor: Bethany Latham

Houston Cole Library, Jacksonville State University 700 Pelham Road North, Jacksonville, AL 36265-1602 USA <blatham@jsu.edu>

Book Review Editor: Sarah Johnson

Booth Library, Eastern Illinois University, 600 Lincoln Avenue, Charleston, IL 61920 USA <sljohnson2@eiu.edu>

Publisher Coverage: Bethany House; Bookouture; HarperCollins, IPG; Penguin Random House US; Severn House; Australian presses; university presses

Features Editor: Lucinda Byatt

13 Park Road, Edinburgh, EH6 4LE UK <textline13@gmail.com>

New Voices Column Editor: Myfanwy Cook

47 Old Exeter Road, Tavistock, Devon PL19 OJE UK <myfanwyc@btinternet.com>

REVIEWS EDITORS, UK

Ben Bergonzi

<bergonziben@gmail.com>

Publisher Coverage: Birlinn/Polygon; Bloomsbury UK; Duckworth Overlook; Faber & Faber; Granta; HarperCollins UK; Head of Zeus; Orenda; Pan Macmillan; Simon & Schuster UK; Storm; Swift Press

Alan Fisk

<alan.fisk@alanfisk.com>

Publisher Coverage: Aardvark Bureau; Black and White; Bonnier Zaffre; Crooked Cat; Freight; Gallic; Honno; Karnac; Legend; Pushkin; Oldcastle; Quartet; Saraband; Seren; Serpent’s Tail

Ann Lazim

<annlazim@googlemail.com>

Publisher Coverage: All UK children’s historicals

Aidan Morrissey

<aidankmorrissey@gmail.com>

Publisher Coverage: Allison & Busby; Canelo; Penguin Random House UK; Quercus

Adele Wills

<adele.wills@btinternet.com>

Publisher Coverage: Alma; Atlantic; Canongate; Glagoslav; Hachette UK; Pen & Sword; The History Press

REVIEWS EDITORS, USA

Tracy Barrett

<tracy.t.barrett@gmail.com>

Publisher Coverage: All North American children's historicals

Kate Braithwaite

<kate.braithwaite@gmail.com>

Publisher Coverage: Poisoned Pen Press; Skyhorse; Sourcebooks; and Soho

Bonnie DeMoss

<bonnie@historicalnovelsociety.org>

Publisher Coverage: North American small presses

Peggy Kurkowski

<pegkurkowski@gmail.com>

Publisher Coverage: Bellevue; Blackstone; Bloomsbury; Casemate; Macmillan (all imprints); Grove/Atlantic; and Simon & Schuster (all imprints)

Janice Ottersberg

<jkottersberg@gmail.com>

Publisher Coverage: Amazon Publishing; Europa; Guernica; Hachette; Kensington; Pegasus; Penzler; and W.W. Norton

REVIEWS EDITORS, INDIE

Karen Bordonaro

<kbordonaro@historicalnovelsociety.org>

Publisher Coverage: all self- and subsidy-published novels

EDITORIAL POLICY & COPYRIGHT

Reviews, articles, and letters may be edited for reasons of space, clarity, and grammatical correctness. We will endeavour to reflect the authors’ intent as closely as possible, and will contact the authors for approval of any major change. We welcome ideas for articles, but have specific requirements to consider. Before submitting material, please contact the editor to discuss whether the proposed article is appropriate for Historical Novels Review

In all cases, the copyright remains with the authors of the articles. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the authors concerned.

MEMBERSHIP DETAILS

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL SOCIETY was formed in 1997 to help promote historical fiction. We are an open society — if you want to get involved, get in touch.

MEMBERSHIP in the Historical Novel Society entitles members to all the year’s publications: four issues of Historical Novels Review, as well as exclusive membership benefits through the Society website. Back issues of Society magazines are also available. For current rates, please see: https://historicalnovelsociety.org/members/join/

Vanessa

HISTORICAL FICTION MARKET NEWS

HNS UPDATES

After four years as a UK reviews editor, Ben Bergonzi will be stepping down after the February issue of HNR. HNS extends thanks to him for his expertise, dedication, and all his work with publishers and reviewers.

This means that we have an opening for a new UK-based reviews editor, responsible for requesting books from a select list of publishers, assigning books to reviewers, editing reviews, and submitting them by each quarterly deadline. As with other roles within the HNS, this is a volunteer position, with a time commitment of up to a few hours/ week, typically, and slightly more around the deadlines. Strong writing, organizational, communication, and time management skills are needed. In addition to contributing to the production of this magazine, it’s a great way of becoming more involved with the publishing industry. To express interest or if you have questions, please email Sarah Johnson at sljohnson2@eiu.edu.

NEW BOOKS BY HNS MEMBERS

Congrats to everyone who sent in details on their new books! If you’ve written a historical novel or nonfiction work published (or to be published) in June 2025 or after, send the following details to me at sljohnson2@eiu.edu by January 7, 2026: author, title, publisher, release date, and a blurb of one sentence or less. Please shorten your blurbs down to one sentence, as space is limited. Details will appear in the February 2026 issue of HNR. Submissions may be edited.

The Queen’s Spade by Sarah Raughley (HarperCollins, Jan. 14) is a thrilling, Black feminist historical retelling of Queen Victoria’s real life African goddaughter Sarah Forbes Bonetta.

Sailing Toward the Tempest by Kent M. Schwendy (Black Rose Writing, Mar. 6) is a historical military fiction following the exploits of a British officer in 1795 as he learns that the French are not the only enemy he must face while he navigates the Caribbean Sea, naval politics, and personal adventures on land.

In The Rowans (Winter Island Press, March 21), Beverly Cooper Pierce braids the conflicted lives of a Massachusetts family in the years between witchcraft delusion and Revolution, as visionary daughter Tamsin tries to flee the lineage of trauma passed down by her great-grandmother Priscilla Rowan, a healer-mystic jailed for witchery in 1692.

Jessie Haas’s Dearest Blood, A Romance of the Revolution (West Parish Press, Apr. 9) is based on the life of Frances Montresor, who witnessed the first bloodshed of the American Revolution as a fifteen-year-old Tory girl in present-day Westminster, Vermont; returning to Westminster as a spirited young widow at war’s end, she met the Tory-hating American hero Ethan Allen, and discovered an unlikely attraction.

It’s late 1775, and colonial sea captain Jonas Hawke’s loyalty to his king is tested amid the chaos of impending revolution in Thomas M. Wing’s historically accurate In Harm’s Way (Acorn Publishing, Apr. 10); Hawke proves once again that the man who fights for his family is far more dangerous than the one who fights for his king.

In Marlo Faulkner’s The Second Mrs. London: Charmian Kittredge Shares Her Life with Jack London (Luminare Press, Apr. 23), the time is 1900 San Francisco when mutual instant chemistry between her and a young man ready for literary fame does not cease when he marries another, for she determines to be in his world no matter the consequences as his friend, editor, lover, sparring partner, wife, boat crew, enabler, nurse and, finally, widow of Jack London.

Nicknamed Hotspur (as if his spurs never cool) for tirelessly defending England, Sir Harry Percy builds an idyllic life with his sweetheart, until duty intrudes when Henry IV squanders the treasury, antagonizes the Scots, outlaws free speech, and brutalizes Wales, sparking a revolt that he dispatches Sir Harry to quell—only to reject the settlement Harry negotiates—as an old question arises anew: is the king above the law? Read more in To Be Worthy in Honor: Book II of the Epic of Hotspur by Liz Sevchuk Armstrong (BWL, May 1).

The two books in Cynthia Elder’s two-part historical fiction series, Tales of the Sea, The Journey Begins and The Drumbeats of War (both Holand Press, May), reveal the lives of a seafaring family from Massachusetts in the 1800s. Based on original letters, ship’s logs and personal journals, the novels elevate the voices of men, women, soldiers and formerly enslaved people during a time of political upheaval and change.

In Iron Age Ireland, a young man comes of age as his society faces the looming threat of Rome’s expansion in The Oak and the Eagles by Patrick Tooban (Atmosphere Press, June 23).

Set at the dawn of the eighth century, The Nautilus of Leonesse by T.J.S. Hayes (FJL Press, July 15) is the third volume in the epic series, The Song of the Francs, which recounts the youthful adventures in exile of Charles, son of Pepin, who would one day become Europe’s greatest hero.

This Leavened Land by Thomas Mauser (Munn Avenue Press, July 17) is set in eastern Tennessee during the American Civil War and tells the story of a plainspoken young farm boy as he experiences love, loss, and betrayal as the Civil War tragically turns long-time friends and neighbors into bitter enemies and hunts down the one man who has taken nearly everything away from him.

First in a series of novels about the Persian Empire’s beginnings, Kristin Swenson’s Howl of the Golden Jackal (PGB Press, July 25) tells the story of Amytis of Media (the bastard daughter of a paranoid king) who, upon learning that her wild, mountain country could be ravaged by Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonians, takes matters into her own hands, ultimately changing the course of human history.

In Lisa A. Traugott’s To Condemn a Witch (Rose Castle Media, Aug. 11), the prequel to To Rescue a Witch, it’s 1729 in Scotland; a healer, a scandalous mistress, and the ghost of a burned witch must form an unlikely coven to protect a changeling child from a sadistic witch hunter who wants to steal her magic.

From obedient daughter to dutiful wife, a story of love, loss and one immigrant’s struggle for self-determination in early 20th century America is revealed in Little Bird: A Novel by Barbara Viniar (Sibylline Press, Aug. 15).

In the young-adult novel Women of Glass and Steel by Mary Lash (Grist Mill Press, Aug. 15), 16-year-old Della Pereira struggles to find love, escape from the notoriety of her suffragist mother, and create a future beyond working in the mill in Seneca Falls, New York, on the World War I homefront.

Aboard the Titanic, where opulence knows no bounds and the horizon seems limitless, two women fight for the futures they dream

of, fraught with secrets that could change everything in Donna Jones Alward’s Ship of Dreams: A Novel of the Titanic (One More Chapter/ HarperCollins, Aug. 26).

J. M. Elliott’s Of Wind and Wolves (Warden Tree Press, Sept. 1) is a brutal, haunting epic set on the Scythian steppe, as young Sarmatian warrior Anaiti undertakes the kill that will seal her arranged marriage and save her besieged people—yet in a land bound by war and duty, refusing to take a life could grant her freedom… or cost her everything.

First in the new Dawn of America series, Regan Walker’s The Irish Yankee (Patriotic Books Publishing, Sept. 3) tells the real story of Irish Yankee Jeremiah O’Brien, who in 1775 seized a British-armed schooner to thwart her cargo of lumber from reaching British forces in Boston, becoming the “the hero of the Lexington of the Sea.”

The Austens by Sarah Emsley (Pottersfield Press, Sept. 15) is a debut novel contrasting Jane Austen’s choice to write fiction with her sisterin-law Fanny Austen’s choice to marry for love, in a world hostile to art and love and even the idea of a woman making a choice.

The Boy with the Jade by Charles Bush (HTF Publishing, Sept. 16) tells the story of a boy growing up amidst the opulence, turmoil, and cruelty of a high aristocratic family in eighteen-century China, a tale inspired by the Chinese classic Dream of the Red Chamber.

In Hilary Llewellyn’s Right of Answer (Troubador, Sept. 28), Margaret de Badlesmere and her five young children are illegally imprisoned by her king in the Tower of London in 1321, which raises dramatic questions about whether Margaret—the first known woman to be imprisoned in the Tower—will be able to overcome the odds to save her children and regain her liberty.

Where In All the World (Bateman Books, Oct. 1) by Vanessa Croft is inspired by true events, and traces a young woman’s journey from colonial New Zealand to England and East Africa, where her marriage to an ambitious explorer forces her to reckon with love, empire, and the patriarchal systems that would silence her.

His Papa and little sister Rachel have been abducted, just because they are Huguenots, so will Gédéon be able to elude their pursuers and bring his family to safety? Read more in Greet Suzon for Me by Vince Rockston (Self-published, Oct. 25).

Susan Coventry’s Till Taught by Pain (Regal House Publishing, Nov. 4) explores the dawn of modern medicine in America while following the lives of a late 19th century Johns Hopkins surgeon with a devastating secret and the woman with the determination and devotion necessary to prevent his self-destruction.

Annie’s Day (Vine Leaves Press, Nov. 18) by Apple Gidley is a powerful story of love, loss, and the quiet courage needed to start again after facing the brutality of war in Singapore and New Guinea as an Australian Army nurse who, later, seeking a change, then finds herself embroiled in the Berlin Blockade.

In Are You Now or Have You Ever Been? (Northampton House Press, Dec. 2) by Amanda Cockrell, Elizabeth Sydney’s film career survives the Red Scare hunt for communists driven by the House Un-American Activities Committee and Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the blacklist that shatters lives, but that betrayal of friends by friends and by the country’s own government has a long reach.

In Who Cares? (a cynical shrug or a plea for dignity?) by Ann S. Epstein (Vine Leaves Press, Dec. 2), as the post-WW2 boom winds

down, a struggling Midwestern city entertains a developer’s proposal to convert a public home for the indigent elderly into an expensive private retirement residence, precipitating a battle between the have-nots and corporate greed.

Based on real events, Anneke Jans in the New World: A Novel (She Writes Press, Jan. 6, 2026) by Sandra Freels tells the riveting story of a young mother who faces the unknowns of seventeenth-century New Amsterdam after fleeing the Old World in search of a better life.

Lucy never wanted the ring on her finger or the baby in the crib, but in 1922 there wasn’t much she could do about; how far will she go to live her dream life, and at what cost to herself and those she loves? Read more in Abandoning the Script by Linda Rosen (Black Rose Writing, Mar. 4, 2026).

The Making of a Witch by Judy Molland (She Writes Press, June 9, 2026) is set in the tumultuous era of 17th century England at the time of the Civil Wars and follows the life of ten-year-old Alice Molland, who is forced to attend the execution of Goody Luscombe, her mentor in the healing arts, and then must navigate a male-dominated world suspicious of women with mysterious gifts.

NEW PUBLISHING DEALS

Sources include authors and publishers, Publishers Weekly, Publishers Marketplace, The Bookseller, and more. Email me at sljohnson2@eiu. edu to have your publishing deal included. You may also submit news via the Contact Us form on the HNS website.

The late Anne Perry and Victoria Zackheim’s Death Times Seven, seventh and final novel in the Daniel Pitt series, halfway written at Perry’s death and finished posthumously by her longtime editor and friend Zackheim, in which two violent crimes challenge the investigative skills of young Daniel Pitt and his wife Miriam, sold to Susanna Porter at Ballantine, for April 2026 publication, via by Darlene Chan at Linda Chester Literary Agency for Zackheim, and by Donald Maass at the Donald Maass Literary Agency and Meg Davis at Ki Agency for the Perry estate (world).

It Girl by Allison Pataki, inspired by the life of Evelyn Nesbit, the magnetic star who made the Gibson Girl a household name before taking center stage in the crime of the century; told with an imagined alternate ending, an exploration of a woman seizing the agency of her own story at the dawn of the 20th century, sold to Kara Cesare at Ballantine, by Lacy Lynch at Dupree Miller & Associates.

The Chinese Lady by Bo Wang, her debut novel based on the life of the first Chinese woman brought to the USA and called Afong Moy, spanning from 1820s Canton to Gold Rush-era San Francisco, where she became a powerful brothel madam, sold to Tara Parsons at HarperVia by Natalie Edwards at Trellis Literary Management, for 2026 publication.

“Sister Wives meets The Hacienda” is the description for Linda Hamilton’s The Fourth Wife, gothic fiction set in Utah territory in the late 19th century, following a young woman, her new husband, his three other wives, dark secrets, and a haunted house; it sold to Elizabeth Trout at Kensington by Rach Crawford at Wolf Literary Services.

The Lost Girl of Craven County by Emily Matchar (author of In the Shadow of the Greenbrier), described as a Southern historical mystery set amid the Jewish community of small-town North Carolina, sold to Kate Dresser at Putnam, for spring 2026 publication, by Allison

Hunter at Trellis Literary Management.

British author Julie Owen Moylan’s first US release, Elizabeth and Marilyn, centering on the meeting in 1956 between Queen Elizabeth and Marilyn Monroe, both world-famous women coping with celebrity in a man’s world, sold to Susanna Porter at Ballantine via Sarah Scarlett at Penguin Random House UK.

Maggie O’Farrell’s 10th novel, Land, a multigenerational epic of loss, hope, and survival, inspired by her family history, beginning in 1865 after the Great Hunger and featuring a father and son mapping Ireland for the Ordnance Survey, sold to Mary-Anne Harrington, publisher at Tinder Press, via Victoria Hobbs at AM Heath.

Hollywood actress Merle Oberon, who closely guarded the secret of her Indian ancestry, is the subject of Anushka Joshi’s biographical novel Merle of Mumbai, which sold to Lashanda Anakwah at Tiny Reparations Books via Nicole Aragi at Aragi Inc.

Michelle Lovric’s The Puffin, described as “a richly imagined tale of love, obsession, and resistance” set in Venice in 1817, featuring a plot to ransom a Habsburg princess, sold to Chris Hamilton-Emery at Salt Publishing via Catherine Pellegrino at Marjacq Scripts, for publication in October 2026.

Mrs. Benedict Arnold by literary agent Emma Parry, taking a new look at Peggy Shippen, society favorite and wife of the notorious American traitor, pitched at fans of Karen Joy Fowler’s Booth, sold to Molly Stern at Zando, with Nicole Otto and Sarah Goldstein editing, for publication in spring 2026, by Chad Luibl at Janklow & Nesbit.

John Scognamiglio at Kensington acquired Melanie Dobson’s latest novel The Sister Society, described as “inspired by true events about the lives of the women born into the secretive religious cult that launched the Oneida silverware empire in 1890s New York,” via agent Lindsay Guzzardo at Martin Literary Management.

Under the Ghost Moon by Lyn Liao Butler, a dual-narrative, multigenerational novel about a woman escaping Taiwan’s totalitarian government in the 1960s and her daughter, sold to Pippa White at Lake Union via Rachel Brooks at BookEnds.

OTHER NEW & FORTHCOMING TITLES

For forthcoming novels through mid-2026, please see our guides, compiled by Fiona Sheppard: https://historicalnovelsociety.org/ forthcoming-hf/

COMPILED BY SARAH JOHNSON

Sarah Johnson is Book Review Editor of HNR, a librarian, readers’ advisor, and author of reference books. She reviews for Booklist and CHOICE and blogs about historical novels at readingthepast.com. Her latest book is Historical Fiction II: A Guide to the Genre

NEW VOICES

Vanessa Croft, Janet Rich Edwards, Anna Fitzgerald Healy & Angela Shupe draw readers’ attention to the details of their characters’ lives, which are concealed in the shadows of past events.

The idea for In the Light of the Sun (WaterBrook, 2025) “bubbled inside” Angela Shupe, she says, “from the time I was a child listening to my mother and aunts’ stories about living in the Philippines and Italy during WWII.” At which point she became “acutely aware that, outside of my family, most people didn’t have an understanding of what occurred in the Philippines.”

She continues, “I watched as my beautiful mother, who grew up in a time and place culturally different from our suburban neighborhood, was often misunderstood. When she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 1999, I felt an urgency to understand more about her life. It became increasingly important to me to bring to light what happened in the Philippines to honor my her, her family, and the Filipino people, especially young Filipinas like the approximately 200,000 young women throughout Asia forced into systematic sexual slavery in the ‘comfort houses’ established by the Japanese military from 1932 through 1945.”

As Shupe points out, “Often, we speak of wars in history with no more thought than that given to making a run to the store for milk and eggs. But those affected were people just like us. They needed to make market runs for food. As children, they played tag and climbed trees with their siblings. They were called home for dinner from friends’ homes as the sun slipped lower in the sky, welcoming the evening hours. They argued with their brothers and sisters, laughed at spilled juice, and were the best of friends. And then, their world changed. Overnight.”

People in the US who lived during these times, as Shupe explains, are often called The Greatest Generation. “Though born outside the US, from what I witnessed with my mother and aunts, I agree. They overcame unimaginably horrible times. But they kept on—living lives

of strength, dignity, and joy. Full lives after great disappointment and tremendous loss. Though now gone, they continue to be examples to me. I hope this novel, inspired by their story, encourages readers that there is hope, even in the most difficult times, that bolsters them to keep seeking the good.”

It was “while comparing prices on tortilla chips at Target” that Anna Fitzgerald Healy, author of Etiquette for Lovers and Killers (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2025), “got this sudden, ineffable desire for something more. Munching inconsolably while sitting in gridlock traffic, I dreamed of romance. Of getting whisked away to a different place and time. I guess that’s the allure of escapism, right? So, I went home and started writing a 500-word postcard from my grandparents’ house in 1960s Eastport, Maine, with the intent of doing just that.”

It was about a month and 300 pages in, when it dawned on Healy “that this wasn’t a postcard,” she relates. “I hadn’t taken a peek at 1960s small-town life, but gotten so wound up in it that it would take me years to disentangle myself. I didn’t set out to write a historical novel; it wasn’t something I’d done before and was entirely outside of my comfort zone—but I was having too much fun to stop. In between blinks of the cursor, I excavated my ancestral home, unearthing the p’s and q’s of etiquette manuals passed down through my family for generations. Stepping inside the museum of my childhood was such a gift. I patched up crumbling downtown buildings, removed For Sale signs from empty windows, and mowed overgrown lawns. Writing historical fiction gives us the opportunity to become armchair anthropologists.”

However, she realised that “the joke” was on her, “because it’s the snack aisles and thoroughfares of a world that give it shape and depth. So, by attempting to evade the trivialities of the present day, I’d inserted myself into the minutiae of another decade. As I wrote in Etiquette for Lovers and Killers, it’s the small, seemingly insignificant details that tell the real story. Details, like the flames licking across a hayfield as a farmer burns his excess crops. Details, like the carved wooden bear outside the Pleasant Point General Store, holding up a sign that says Fly Fishing Only. Details, like the piece of yellow caution tape fluttering out of a trash bin at the Washington County train station.

“My historical mystery investigates a cryptic love letter and ensuing crime spree in mid-century Maine. Writing this taught me a wealth of useless information: e.g., that barricade tape was developed in the early ’60s, that Eastport’s train station closed in 1973, that in 1964, there were 15 murders in Maine (or 18, if you count the murders in my story), and that, apparently, writing a historical novel was in my comfort zone, after all.”

Canticle (Spiegel & Grau, 2025) by Janet Rich Edwards had its roots many years before it was written, when Edwards was “a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger, working as a nutritionist in a village maternal and infant clinic. This was the time of the ‘Ethiopian famine’ which, despite its name, affected the whole Sahelian region. We were losing children in the clinic. Even the lizards in my compound were dying due to drought.”

Says Edwards, “As a sheltered college grad who’d never witnessed death, I was at a loss how to fathom what was happening. My mother sent me an army duffel bag full of books, from which I unearthed The Religions of Man, by Huston Smith. It was just what I needed in that

moment. I found that many religions spoke to my questions, but I was most struck by the words of the medieval female mystics who wrote about joy in the midst of calamity. Curious about these mystics and their lives, I discovered that many lived as anchoresses (hermits enclosed for life in holds attached to churches) or as beguines, women who bonded together to create their own pious communities that refused the rule of the Church—which of course made the local bishops wary of these groups of unsupervised women.”

Once Edwards had “met the formidable women of the high Middle Ages,” she explains, “I was hooked – I knew I wanted to create a story of faith, determination, and daring to bring them to life. I set Canticle in Bruges in 1299, the height of the beguine movement. My protagonist, Aleys, a stubborn young woman prone to visions, flees an unwanted marriage to join the beguines.”

The story Edwards eventually wrote “involves mystery, secret translations of scripture, and threats from a corrupt church,” she states. “It means a lot to me to introduce readers to the beguines, arguably the first women’s movement. The women of Ten Wijngaard include the wise and the foolish, the timid and the bold, but they stand together when it comes to their survival.”

The husband of Vanessa Croft, author of Where in All the World (Bateman Books, New Zealand, 2025), once sent her “a text from high above Africa, en route to Mozambique,” she says. “It read: I found myself confronted by half a dozen gentlemen of anthropophagic proclivities on supper intent. For about thirty seconds I was thoroughly alarmed—until it was clarified that he wasn’t making a declaration, but quoting From the Cape to Cairo, by the erudite empiricist, Ewart S. Grogan, the self-styled Lion of Empire.”

She describes Grogan as being “everything an Edwardian adventurer was supposed to be: ex-soldier, university dropout, explorer, and brimming with imperialist bravado. He’s remembered most for his longitudinal traverse of Africa from the southern Cape to Cairo. It was a journey, so the story goes, undertaken to convince Gertrude Watt’s stepfather that Grogan was worthy of her hand. In his book about the expedition, Grogan paints scenes of swamps, wild animals, and so-called ‘cannibals’ with vivid detail. It is gushingly dedicated to Cecil Rhodes. But Gertrude, the lovely young New Zealander who inspired the journey, isn’t mentioned once.”

Croft was intrigued. “I explored further, and discovered a troubling portrait of a marriage that today would be recognised as emotionally and psychologically abusive. Gertrude, with her Hawke’s Bay generational wealth (direct descendant of Industrial Revolution

enabler, James Watt) and dowry, was as much a prize as a partner. Soon after their marriage, Grogan isolated her not only from her family and homeland, but from the advanced New Zealand legal protections that might have safeguarded her property. He went on to have multiple affairs and several illegitimate children.”

As a result, Croft became “fascinated by this imbalance: the myth of the great adventurer, set against the silence of a remarkable woman whose story ended at a proposal. What if Gertrude had a voice? What might her version of events have sounded like? If the law had been different, what might she have done? The more truths that were revealed by pulling on the thread, the more I was inspired to imagine what her version of events might have sounded like.”

From that question came the bones of Croft’s story of “explorers and romance, maps and compasses, wealth and marriage, all refracted through the eyes of a woman navigating a legally and sociopolitically constrained period. Where in All the World is a divergent history that grew out of Gertrude’s silence, and my determination to re-imagine her destiny.”

What might have been is the question which each of the debut authors have tried to answer. They have accomplished this by turning a spotlight on the times and challenges that their characters faced in the periods they have chosen as their historical backdrop.

WRITTEN BY MYFANWY COOK

Myfanwy Cook is an Associate University Fellow. She creates HF writing workshops and is currently engaged in highlighting the 200th anniversary of passenger rail transport in the UK. Contact (myfanwyc@btinternet.com) if you uncover debut novelists you would like to see showcased

HISTORY & FILM

The Spanish Armada in Film, Fiction, and Fact

‘Throw away the history books and behold the majesty.’ This was BBC Movies’ review of Shekhar Kapur’s epic: Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007).¹ The film was, by Kapur’s own admission: ‘…based on mythology. It is the story of a queen who became a myth.’² The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 has remained memorable for over four centuries partly for this reason: it helped create the legend of Elizabeth I as an icon. ‘Not an earthly queen at all’, to use the words of one of Elizabeth’s ladies at Tilbury in Elizabeth I: A Novel (2011) by Margaret George. In this perceptive fictionalised biography, when Elizabeth appears in silver armour over her white dress before making her famous speech to the troops, she muses: ‘The look on their faces showed me that I had utterly transformed myself from the woman, albeit Queen, they served every day into something higher…’ Kapur went a step further and saw her as on the path to divinity, The Golden Age coming after the critically-acclaimed Elizabeth (1998), in a projected series which would end with a third film in which: ‘Elizabeth truly becomes divine.’³

To reinforce the interpretation of Elizabeth as icon, she is often depicted as central to the success of the fleet in battle, much as she appears in the famous ‘Armada Portrait’ commissioned to celebrate the victory immediately afterwards. In fact, she took no part in either campaign or command, though she did deliver a morale boosting address to her land forces at Tilbury. The problem with the Tilbury speech as a dramatic pivot around which to hang the triumph of England’s admirals is that it occurred eleven days after the crucial sea battle of Gravelines, at a time when the fleet had only just begun returning from pursuing the Armada as far as Scotland, and news of the victory was still trickling in. No-one really knew whether the victory had been decisive; the Armada had not been sunk, and the Duke of Parma remained with his invasion force massed near Dunkirk. So, novelists and film directors have frequently succumbed to the temptation to shift the timing, and place the speech before the battle, or even have Elizabeth dictating the action.

In the movie Fire Over England (1937) (loosely based on the novel by A.E.W. Mason), the heroic Michael Ingolby (Laurence Olivier) returns from Spain to find the Queen at Tilbury where he reveals the names of Catholic conspirators. She knights him on the spot, the wouldbe traitors are shamed into declaring their allegiance to her and

accompanying Michael on a mission, masterminded by the Queen, to confront the Armada, then massing off the coast of England, and attack it with fireships. Of course, an attack with fireships really did occur and succeeded in breaking the Armada’s formation, but this happened the night before the battle of Gravelines, and off Calais, not the cliffs of Dover. It looks as if Kapur took his history from Fire Over England rather than the textbooks, because there’s a very similar but even more embellished scene in The Golden Age. Elizabeth (Cate Blanchett) appears in full armour astride a white charger to give her rousing speech to thousands of awe-struck soldiers who fall to their knees. Shortly afterwards, Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen) leads fireships to set the Armada galleons ablaze, which come to grief at the foot of the cliffs of Dover, in the midst of a thunderstorm, while Elizabeth looks on from the heights in her shift, transfigured in white light. The New York Times called the film: ‘A kitsch extravaganza aquiver with trembling bosoms, booming guns and wild energy…’⁴ Bethany Latham neatly summed up the film’s impact in her book Elizabeth I in Film and Television (2011)⁵: ‘This focus on spectacle worked for productions from Hollywood’s golden age, but it does not fit well with the pretension and rampant symbolism of Kapur’s idiom.’⁶

Somehow, the history became almost altogether forgotten in The Golden Age. Raleigh was nowhere near the action in the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and the rest of the screenplay follows Kapur’s preoccupation with myth over reality. Interestingly, Graham Greene writing for The Spectator in 1937 acknowledged that Fire Over England was ‘well-directed and lavish’, but criticised its lack of historical realism. The production has ‘strayed out of history’ he said, and certain scenes were ‘absurd and embarrassing’.⁷ But while Fire Over England was a phenomenal success at the box office, The Golden Age was not (despite its stirring music, superb sets, fantastic CGI and a strong performance from Blanchett). Why? Probably because the former was released as part of a drive to engender patriotic fervour when fascism was on the rise in Germany, and there was not the same appetite for history mash-ups and British triumphalist mythmaking in 2007.

This leads on to another aspect of the legend that has grown up around the Spanish Armada’s failure to invade England in 1588, and the mauling it received at the hands of the ragtag fleet commanded by Howard and Drake: that of the birth of Britannia’s rule over the waves. ‘For the Victorians, the Armada victory marked the start of the British Empire,’ said Lucy Worsley in her excellent myth-busting docudrama: The Spanish Armada (2020).⁸ In the nineteenth century, stirring stories involving Drake’s adventures were all the rage, such as Westward Ho! (1855) by Charles Kingsley. For Elizabeth, back in the sixteenth century, an empire was purely aspirational (based largely on Sir Walter Raleigh’s claim to Virginia in her name), but the defeat of the Armada did demonstrate that England had faster and more manoeuvrable ships than Spain and Portugal (then the global superpower, united under Philip II). It also showed that English guns and tactics were better, and it led to an appreciation that the navy was crucial to Britain’s survival and ambitions on the world stage.

From the success of the English fleet in battle (albeit defensive and without many of the Armada’s ships taken or destroyed in combat), there developed yet another legend: that of the triumph of freedom over tyranny. This was the message that underscored Fire Over England, and which was amplified in The Sea Hawk (1940)⁹ produced after the start of WWII. In the later film, Geoffrey Thorpe (Errol Flynn) is an English privateer on a secret mission to seize the

Spanish treasure fleet who is later captured, tried by the Inquisition, sentenced to labour on the galleys, escapes, rescues his true love (serving as a maid-of-honour to the Queen), unmasks a Spanish collaborator amongst the royal advisors, and reveals the Spanish plan to invade England in time for Elizabeth to order the building of a great defensive fleet. In a superb performance as Elizabeth, Flora Robson declares: ‘When the ambition of one man threatens to engulf the earth, it becomes the duty of all free men, wherever they may be, to affirm that the earth belongs not to any one man, but to all men…’

This idea of the fight against the Spanish Armada being a fight for freedom has been taken up many times. Indeed, the words: ‘Let tyrants fear’ appear in the most famous version of the speech which Elizabeth is reputed to have made at Tilbury. It is this version, the ‘heart and stomach of a king’ speech, that Elizabeth delivers inspirationally in Alison Weir’s novel The Marriage Game (2014).¹º The speech was made much of in The Golden Age, a film in which the fight against tyranny is a recurring theme, for example when Elizabeth says: ‘God forbid it [the Armada] succeeds, for there will be no more liberty in England of conscience or of thought.’ Kapur saw Philip II as: ‘a man committed to a sense of purity… a certain singularity… [which] can give rise to fundamentalism... Whereas Elizabeth… her idea of faith was that it can encompass all faiths… that’s what we need now…’¹¹ The ‘now’ when Kapur said this was 2009, in the post-9/11 years that saw a growing appreciation of the dangers of extreme fundamentalism.

As terrorist threats on the scale of 9/11 have receded from the headlines, and fear of invasion for most of the free world is no longer an immediate concern, what is the relevance now of stories relating to the defeat of the Spanish Armada? Is anyone still interested? Thankfully, yes. Such stories seem to have come of age, not concerned with recycling myths about Elizabeth as Gloriana, or Anglophone countries as bastions of freedom, but with presenting a balanced view of what actually happened through different perspectives — with telling truth through fiction.

The distinguished naval historian J.D. Davies has recently written a cracking good novel, satisfyingly based on the historical facts: Armada’s Wake (2021). I asked him whether there were any underlying themes he wished to explore, such as religious intolerance v freedom of faith; tyranny v self-determination; and the birth of British national identity. ‘All the above!’ was his answer. ‘But one thing I was determined to do from the outset was avoid the nationalistic triumphalism that characterizes many accounts of the Armada… hence having one of the central characters in Armada’s Wake as a galley slave in the Armada, allowing readers to view the campaign from the Spanish perspective.’ Davies shows a multitude of viewpoints in the novel; the events are seen through the eyes of different members of a family divided by faith, circumstance and prejudice. There’s even a Catholic widow formerly married to a Spaniard brought to trial accused of witchcraft. Another novel which offers a balanced perspective is John Stack’s action-packed Armada (2012) which follows the path of a secret Catholic who is a trusted officer in Drake’s fleet, as well as one of the Spanish commanders whose determination, at the end of the story, is to ‘take the fight back to the English, for God, his King, and Spain.’ In fact, the fight did continue — two more armadas were sent by Spain only to be scattered by storms, and there was an unsuccessful Counter Armada launched by the English; all have become buried in history.¹²

There’s one other docudrama worthy of note and that’s Dan Snow’s well-researched Armada: 12 Days to Save England (2015).¹³ The events and battles are followed day-by-day with the help of an army of eminent historians, though there’s a bit of sleight-of-hand to reinforce the drama of everything hanging on a knife-edge. (I’m sure

that Drake didn’t need to capture the Rosario in order to ‘discover’ that Spanish gun-carriages were designed for land warfare — he’d been attacking and seizing Spanish galleons and ordnance for years!).

Will the story of the Spanish Armada continue to be retold? I hope so; it’s thrilling and endlessly fascinating. As Lucy Worsley says: ‘It has a powerful legacy... [It] gives us the confidence to believe in ourselves.’

Notes:

¹ BBC Movies review, 2 November 2007

² Wild Films India interview with Shekhar Kapur, YouTube, uploaded 31 August 2024 (Translated from Hindi. Kapur went on to say ‘… like Ram and Sita’s story’)

³ Empire Magazine interview with Shekhar Kapur, YouTube, 14 September 2009

⁴ New York Times review, 12 October 2007

⁵ Bethany Latham, Elizabeth I in Film and Television - A Study of the Major Portrayals

⁶ Further evidence of Kapur’s fascination with Fire Over England is the curious fact that both films feature an assassination attempt upon Elizabeth with an unloaded pistol. This never actually happened. (For history nerds, John Somerville, a Catholic, did plan to kill Elizabeth with a pistol in 1583 but was arrested before he could attempt anything.)

⁷ The Spectator review, 5 March 1937

⁸ Royal History’s Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley, BBC TV Series 1:2, The Spanish Armada

⁹ The Sea Hawk took its name from an earlier popular novel by Rafael Sabatini to which it bore no resemblance.

¹º In Armada’s Wake by J. D. Davies there’s a very witty take on the speech in which the more famous version is delivered extempore by an actor, very few people being able to hear what the Queen actually said, and this version is written down by the Chaplain to Lord Essex who’d been called away from hearing the Queen’s oration by an urgent visit to the jakes!

¹¹ Empire Magazine - ibid

¹² A point made in Worsley’s docudrama, though she did allow Luis Gorrochategui Santos to bang on at length about the Counter Armada, someone who seems to be on a single-handed mission to promulgate a legend about that with as much zeal as the Elizabethans devoted to celebrating Flavit et Dissipati Sunt in 1588!

¹³ This excellent BBC mini-series is marred only by the appearance of Anita Dobson as Elizabeth wearing make-up applied with the expertise of a five-year-old and looking (at fifty-four) much older than her lady-in-waiting Blanche Parry (who would then have been at least eighty and going blind!)

WRITTEN BY JENNY

BARDEN

Jenny Barden is a historical novelist who has at various times been a farmer, artist and city solicitor. She is published by Ebury Press, and has just finished a psychological thriller set at the time of the Spanish Armada.

FREE HISTORY

How

to Ride the Waves of Time

Historians and historical novelists share a problem: a large proportion of the public won’t even pick up a book set in the past because, at school, they were put off history for life. In saying this I do not mean to criticise the legion of hard-working teachers who do so much to enhance their pupils’ understanding. The problem is not the way we teach the subject as the subject itself: the type of history we teach. As a society, we are convinced that the objective analysis of evidence is the only proper form of ‘the discipline’ of history. Anything else, we are told, is intellectually weak and ‘bad history’ – or second-rate, at best.

There is a sort of cultural imperialism at work here, a residue from the historical thinking of the 18th and 19th centuries. Scholars in those eras believed the past should be determined objectively, as it would have appeared to an all-seeing God. Their writing accordingly had to be neutral – as unexciting as possible. They generally were well-heeled gentlemen and deeply conservative members of the Establishment. Authoritative sources were to be trusted, especially if they were as dry as dust; more personal ones were to be doubted, especially if they were salacious or emotional.

These criticisms of traditional history, however, do not touch on its fundamental philosophical flaw. This whole ‘God’s eye view’ philosophy of history rested on the assumption that scholars were studying the past directly, as if past events themselves were facts. They believed that actual deeds were facts, that people’s emotional states were facts, and that motives were facts. However, this is not the case. If everything in the past is a fact just because it happened, then the name of the person who built Stonehenge is a fact. But we can never know it, because no records exist from that time. And if one source were miraculously to appear which suggested a name, we would never be able to confirm or verify it. It would remain forever doubtful. This is the very opposite of what we mean by the word ‘fact’. For something to be factual, we must be able to show how we know it to be true. Facts are thus pieces of information that we in the modern world establish. It follows that we cannot study the past directly but only indirectly. Consequently, we must write history with greater humility than our judgemental predecessors, admitting that much of our knowledge is incomplete, possibly wrong, and subject to our own biases.

It is not going too far to say that traditional history does for our ancestors what 19th-century lepidopterists did to butterflies: it pins them out, dead, in rows so they can be classified, studied and judged. But we all know that butterflies are best seen flying around, fluttering between the flowers. If we could ask the butterflies themselves, no doubt they would agree.

So how can history be done differently? Can we free history from the suffocating bell jar of the historian-as-lepidopterist? And can we do this without sacrificing historical accuracy?

The easiest place for me to begin is with my own series of Time Traveller’s Guides – to Medieval England, Elizabethan England, Restoration Britain and Regency Britain. These dismiss the need for historical objectivity and aim instead to present historical information in an ‘up close and personal way’. They are a guide around past centuries as if we could actually visit them – as if the past was literally ‘a foreign country’. Were you to find yourself in, say, the 14th century, what would you wear, where might you stay, what diseases might kill you – what doctors might kill you? They are unlike traditional history books in that they are written in the present tense and address the reader directly. They include many endnotes in order to anchor the statements I make in the evidence available to us. But at the same time there is a lot of my personality in the writing. For example, I include a fair bit of humour – partly because that is my style, partly to aid readability, and partly because humour is just a natural part of life. A history book without humour is like a city where no one smiles.

Traditionalists naturally dismiss such an approach as a gimmick. However, writing in the present tense is a powerful way of addressing the limitations of our collective knowledge of the past. It raises questions that traditional historians often fail to ask because it prioritises what readers want to know. We have hundreds of books on the Hundred Years’ War but very few on personal hygiene between 1340 and 1453. I put it to you that if you found yourself in England in these years, where to go to the loo and what to use as toilet paper would soon become much more pressing issues than whether the French were likely to invade. Writing in such an immediate way makes the meanings of the past relevant to the reader.

AUTHORITATIVE SOURCES were to be trusted, especially if they were as dry as dust; more personal ones were to be doubted, especially if they were salacious or emotional.

The key thing here is not simply the use of the present tense. It is rather the awareness that we are never in possession of all the information we want but are rather the grateful recipients of a few valuable insights into past ages, and that the highest calling of our profession is to find meaning in those insights for people in the modern world. Furthermore, expressing those meanings calls for the historian to be every bit as creative and inventive as a novelist.

What did the air smell like on the morning of the Battle of Agincourt, after all that rain? The traditional historian cannot even make a suggestion because he knows the supposed ‘fact’ of what it smelled like is unknowable. But making an educated guess may be the most evocative way to put people in the moment. Consequently, a looser approach allows us greater latitude in literary form, for we are free to suggest generalities on the basis of likelihood and context.

This is the point at which the creativity begins. We must be inventive and sympathetic. The one and only rule is that whatever we write, we must observe the framework of absolute facts – i.e., the mass of pieces of information that are defined in absolute terms and which are not open to doubt. We cannot do a ‘Braveheart’ and suggest William Wallace fathered Edward III, who was born seven years after Wallace was publicly executed. Such a suggestion is not even fiction; it is unhistorical nonsense.

This gives you an inkling of what I mean by ‘free history’. It is an engagement with historical evidence not for the sake of judging the dead, and still less for demonstrating academic excellence. Its purpose is to find meaning in our knowledge of the past for our present and future readers. And to that end, it is important to employ the most appropriate literary form to highlight that meaning – and to avoid the tediously neutral language of traditional history.

A few years ago I was inspired to write about how our small everyday actions can have the most massive consequences hundreds of years down the line – a bit like a butterfly-wingbeat causing a typhoon, as outlined in Chaos Theory. I chose to write it as a novel, The Outcasts of Time (2017) In this, two medieval brothers catch the plague in December 1348. They attempt to sell their souls to avoid dying, but they are told they have only six days left to live; they can either go home and die in their beds or they can come back and live each one of their last six days ninety-nine years after the previous one. Obviously, they choose the latter. So they come back for one day in December 1447, 1546, 1645, 1744, 1843 and 1942. They see what does and does not change in the locality, and they also see the effects that their tiny, ordinary decisions in the 14th century subsequently have on the world. Using fiction, I was able to write a historical story which had much greater power and meaning than a non-fiction version could have done. And that is the point. As I put it in my Time Traveller’s Guide to Regency Britain, ‘it is better to write approximations of the past that have profound meaning than exact accounts of it that have none’

This raises the question of the relationship between history and historical fiction. Where does the border lie? Fiction and nonfiction are not polar opposites; they are alternative ways of pursuing the same objectives. Every historical narrative has an element of creativity; every work of historical fiction has a degree of verisimilitude. The more important distinction is to be made between historical writing (including fiction) and non-historical writing –

something that patently has no relation to past reality, like the Braveheart falsehood mentioned above. But for me, there remains an important difference between fiction and non-fiction. Non-fiction persuades the reader to believe, whereas fiction requires the reader to suspend disbelief. Otherwise we are talking about equally valid ways of finding and expressing meaning in the past. Indeed, how many people are inspired to write history by a non-fiction history book as opposed to a historical novel? When this question was asked at a conference at the Institute of Historical Research in November 2011, almost everyone present said it was a novel that had set them on their career path, not a history book.

This is why it is such a sadness that we generally only introduce children to traditional history. They leave school thinking that it only concerns people they will never meet, whom they all have to judge in a tediously neutral, objective manner. The truth is that history is primarily about the wonderful world in which we live and the collective experiences of humanity seen through the prism of passing time. There is still a place for traditional objective analysis (as long as historians understand they are studying evidence, not the past itself). But let there also be free history – history that is free to explore the past and the human condition in new ways, and to rejoice in its discoveries, insights and revelations with each new generation.

REFERENCES

1. Ian Mortimer

Time Traveller's Guide to Regency Britain, (Bodley Head, 2020), p. 343

WRITTEN BY IAN MORTIMER

Dr Ian Mortimer is best known as the bestselling author of the four Time Traveller's Guides, four critically-acclaimed medieval biographies and four historical novels (one writing as Ian Mortimer, The Outcasts of Time, and The Clarenceux Trilogy, writing as James Forrester).

ONCE UPON A GOTHIC...

Four Authors Turning Publishing on Its Head (Literally)

Four classic novels. Four well-known historical novelists. A book format with an unfamiliar French name. Oh, and an alternative publishing and funding model. Who wouldn’t want to know more? This was certainly enough for me to have an abundance of questions for the authors involved in the Once Upon a Gothic Kickstarter project (see details below), starting with Kris Waldherr.

I first came across Waldherr when I picked up her excellent 2019 novel, The Lost History of Dreams, a twisty Victorian gothic novel featuring a photographer haunted by the ghost of his dead wife. I enjoyed it so much I jumped at the chance to review her next outing, Unnatural Creatures: A Novel of the Frankenstein Women (2022). Both were high-quality reads, but I noticed Waldherr had moved on in the intervening years, stepping away from traditional publishing and establishing her own boutique publishing house, Muse Publications, in 2021.

Muse, led by Waldherr, is now the driving force behind the Once Upon a Gothic series publishing this fall – a collection of four têtebêche books, each comprised of two linked novels, one a Gothic

classic, and the other a new retelling. In a tête-bêche format, the two stories are interwoven, allowing the reader to read one novel and then (literally) flip the book and read the second. Waldherr saw it as the chance to make ‘the other side of the story’ a physical reality, and so her contribution to the series pairs Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein with Unnatural Creatures. As I wrote in my review, you don’t need to have read Frankenstein to enjoy Waldherr’s book, but the pairing can only enhance the experience. “Frankenstein,” Waldherr says, “had long been one of my very favorite books, so writing a feminist retelling through the eyes of Victor Frankenstein’s mother, bride, and servant has been a long-time dream.” Now, it’s also an opportunity to produce something unique and different. “The books,” she explains, “will be personally designed by me with decorative elements reflecting the era in which the original novels were first published. The deluxe hardcover edition will be something really special! We’re planning printed fore-edges (that’s when the three sides of a book have a full-color design), full-color endpapers, autographed vellum inserts, and other special features.”

Realizing other gothic novels could benefit from this treatment, Waldherr invited author friends to contribute retellings. With her own experience in the publishing industry, and her background as a book designer, the production side of the project was established. What was missing was an editor. Enter Heather Webb. “I’d been looking for a way to involve Heather as an editor in Muse’s special book projects,” Waldherr explains. “Having Heather as editor-in-chief has enabled me to focus exclusively on book design and production. It’s been great having a partner to rely on. Heather is an incredibly gifted editor.”

She’s also a USA Today bestselling author, known for her standalone historical novels, most recently Queens of London, as well as collaborative work with Hazel Gaynor and others. In addition to her editorial expertise, Webb has contributed her own novel to the Once Upon a Gothic series. The Phantom’s Apprentice is paired with The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. Whether you know the Phantom of the Opera through the novel or the musical, Webb’s take on Christine Daaé’s backstory and character is not to be missed. “Why were the female characters of that era portrayed in a certain light?” Webb asked herself. “Why were they either haughty and demanding, or sweet and simpering?” In Leroux’s novel, the puzzle of what has happened at the opera house is pieced together from multiple perspectives. In The Phantom’s Apprentice, Christine Daaé takes center stage and is a much more complex and engaging character as a result.

While both Waldherr and Webb’s novels should find new readership via the Once Upon a Gothic venture, two brand new novels complete the quartet. It’s hard to think of Gothic literature without considering Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Paulette Kennedy, author of compelling and dark historicals including The Artist of Blackberry Grange and The Devil and Mrs. Davenport, has loved Gothic fiction since she was a teenager. “I read  Dracula for the first time in the ‘90s, shortly after seeing the Francis Ford Coppola adaptation,” Kennedy says. “The movie made me want to know more about Bram Stoker’s original story, which then led me to read Le Fanu’s Carmilla, one of Stoker’s biggest inspirations. Also, I think it’s interesting that both of these authors were Irish, which is the bulk of my own heritage, and so it seems like a fitting tribute to pay my respects to these literary greats!” Her novel for the series, The Last Bride, focuses on Ileana, the youngest (most recently

IN

A TÊTE-BÊCHE FORMAT, the two stories are interwoven, allowing the reader to read one novel and then (literally) flip the book and read the second.

made) of Dracula’s three nameless brides mentioned in Stoker’s original: “My retelling gives her agency, a backstory, and a forbidden romance. It contains elements of both  Dracula and  Carmilla, in that  The Last Bride is very sapphic and woman-centered. The story opens before Jonathan Harker ’s arrival at Castle Dracula and follows Ileana’s exploits in Transylvania during the period Dracula is abroad in England.”

For Kennedy, this project was a chance to diversify her publishing experience, and she jumped at the opportunity to get involved. “I admire how Kris has enhanced her publishing career with Kickstarter. I’ve always wanted to become a hybrid author, and I felt this project would be a good bridge.” And perhaps it goes without saying, but prospective readers can be assured that this non-traditional project doesn’t lack quality. For The Last Bride, Kennedy tells me, she hired “an expert cultural sensitivity reader from Romania to review the manuscript for language usage, historical and cultural accuracy, as well as story geography, and I’ve been very heartened by her feedback and enjoyment of the novel.”

In all three of these new treatments of a beloved classic, we have modern writers bringing a female lens and characterization to familiar stories originally written by men. Whether it’s Ileana’s unknown story, Victor Frankenstein’s mother, or a multi-dimensional Christine Daaé, readers can find new perspectives on a known story. Although each novel is original in style and substance, each builds on the ‘facts’ of the prior work – as if the classic story were a part of the historical record, a primary source, if you like. Nancy Bilyeau’s approach is subtly different. Last, but not least, in the Once Upon a Gothic quartet, is Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, paired with Bilyeau’s new novel, The Heiress of Northanger Abbey.

Northanger Abbey, published posthumously but written before her other novels, is not Jane Austen’s most popular work. It’s certainly the one I’ve returned to the least over the years, and so it was exciting to sit down and take on the tête-bêche experience by rereading Northanger Abbey and immediately following it with The Heiress. Austen’s story is known for its heavy use of authorial intrusion, pointing out the naïve foolishness of young Catherine Moreland. It’s an instant contrast, then, to open up Bilyeau’s book and meet Catherine, twenty years older, telling a new story in the first person.

Bilyeau, a lifelong Austen reader, found this an interesting challenge: “I’ve never written a character that I did not originate before. I read Northanger Abbey closely a number of times, and it offers itself up to many interpretations. In my sequel, I look at the subtle changes in women’s lives between 1798 and 1820 and how the rise of the Romantics, the Napoleonic War and the Industrial Revolution were creating new possibilities. And I dig into the marriage of Catherine and Henry Tilney, in some ways one of Jane Austen’s sweetest couples, but there are also some questions about their courtship that I attempt to answer.” Offering readers the chance to meet old friends and new, and to discover the next generation is as caught up in Gothic novels as the last one was, The Heiress of Northanger Abbey is a fitting sequel to Bilyeau’s chosen classic.

Beyond my interest in the novels themselves, however, I still had questions for Kris Waldherr about the publishing model, in this case, Kickstarter. “I think there’s a mistaken preconception that Kickstarter is about begging for money,” Waldherr says. “It’s not.

Kickstarter is just a way to buy books directly from the author, instead of a middleman corporation who will take the bulk of the profit. Kickstarter also enables us to offer readers extras that won’t be available anywhere else. In past Kickstarter initiatives, we’ve had special book bundles, Ask the Author Zooms, signed bookmarks, bonus chapters, digital prints, tarot readings, pencil drawings, and other exclusive swag [or merchandise] you’re not going to get from Amazon.” For the reader, as well as access to extras, purchasing through a Kickstarter allows you to pre-order titles which are then shipped as soon as they arrive from the printer. The books will be sold individually and in sets, with hardcover, softcover and eBook options.

In all my conversations with the authors involved in the project, there’s a clear excitement at being part of something novel and different. Due to the special book format, the Once Upon a Gothic tête-bêche titles will be limited in number and only available through Kickstarter for six months after the campaign ends. In Waldherr’s words, “No Amazon, no BN. Ever.” And while these four titles are due for release in October 2025, there is just a possibility of more to come. “In time we may publish other gothic novels as part of the series,” she says. “Jane Eyre, we’re looking at you!”

For further information, please visit https://www.kickstarter.com/ projects/musepublications/once-upon-a-gothic/

WRITTEN BY KATE BRAITHWAITE

Kate Braithwaite is the author of five novels including The Scandalous Life of Nancy Randolph (Joffe, 2024). She’s a Reviews Editor for HNR and publishes the Substack Sis-stories, all about sisters in fiction and history.

BORGIA OF BLYTHSWOOD

BY KAREN HOWLETT

Love and Other Poisons by Lesley McDowell

In 1857, at the High Court in Edinburgh, a young woman went on trial for the murder of her lover. The case caused a sensation, not just due to the nature of the alleged crime, but because of the social standing of the accused, and the conclusion to which the jury came; in the words of Sir Walter Scott, ‘Not Proven’ was “that bastard verdict”, a clear indication of a belief in the guilt of the accused but without sufficient evidence to convict. 1

Madeleine Smith, daughter of a prominent Glasgow architect, was an upper middle-class socialite. Despite her parents’ best efforts to introduce her to ‘suitable’ young men, Madeleine, then aged just 20, formed an association with Emile L’Angelier, a lowly clerk – several years her senior – at a city merchants’ house.

Their relationship developed over two years, with clandestine meetings in the grounds of the family’s country house and in the basement rooms of their home in smart Blythswood Square. When they couldn’t meet they corresponded, their letters increasingly revealing their passion and intimacy, which would scandalise the public when read out at the eventual trial.

When Madeleine became engaged to William Minnoch and sought to break from Emile, she asked for her letters to be returned to her, but L’Angelier threatened to expose their affair. Shortly afterwards he was found dead in his lodgings, the apparent cause arsenic poisoning. Madeleine was known to have purchased arsenic on several occasions, ostensibly for use as an aid to beauty and a rat poison, but could she have administered it to the deceased in the late-night cups of cocoa she made for him in the kitchen at Blythswood Square? While the defence claimed the poison was self-administered, L’Angelier’s having been a known ‘arsenic eater’, and having threatened suicide on the ending of an earlier affair, the prosecution impugned Madeleine’s character, her conduct as described in the trial shocking Victorian society.

In Love and Other Poisons (Wildfire, 2025), Lesley McDowell has written a compelling fictional version of Madeleine’s story, portraying her as a spirited young woman stifled and bored by the oppressions of home, family, and her stratum of society, susceptible to the wolfish charm of an exotic outsider.

As a Glasgow native, Lesley had long known of the case and had become more familiar with the details when reviewing a non-fiction account of it, but it was a friendship with the late novelist Emma Tennant which eventually resulted in her writing this novel. Emma had suggested she and Lesley write the book together, one of them handling the story of young Madeleine, the other depicting her in later life after she had emigrated to America. Sadly, Emma’s failing health meant that her contribution was limited, but Lesley has taken Emma’s theory on what actually happened and crafted a plausible and persuasive narrative, bringing an 1850s sensation vividly to life for a modern audience.

Lesley is an avowed café writer, spending several hours a day in a bustling environment. She concentrates best, she says, when she has

to actively shut out the noise and activity around her, and perhaps counter-intuitively, can ‘hear’ her main character’s voice in her head – an essential part of her creative process – even more clearly when working in a public setting. The older Madeleine’s voice came easily to her, but it wasn’t until her close reading of the letters to Emile led to a growing awareness of what she terms Madeleine’s ‘performative’ style that she started to get a feel for her character as a younger woman and to detect something of a ‘dark fairytale’ tone to her voice.

Through the letters, Lesley discerned a disconnect between the real Madeleine and “Mimi”, the woman she thinks Emile wants her to be, and she says it’s in the gap between the two that her vulnerability and complexity can be glimpsed. Was she a tragic heroine, “played like a fiddle” by a predatory man, or was she a fool? Lesley came to feel she was someone who valued her own desires but couldn’t distinguish them from her lover’s.

In her Author’s Note, Lesley addresses the hitherto unexplained issues in Madeleine’s story, such as the precise method by which she administered a large dose of poison, whether she acted entirely alone, and why she made a trip by boat to the family’s country house on the day of Emile’s funeral; she comments that “the biographer doesn’t have to provide an answer [to these questions], but the novelist does”. She reveals that it took until the final moment of writing for the pieces of the puzzle to come together, finding that quite often the book she sets out to write does not finish as she had planned, but she thinks that is just as it should be: “you should change your mind about things as you write, as you develop your main character more and more, and find them capable of more than you initially thought.”

Madeleine’s story remains a fascinating one, with books, articles, dramatisations continuing to be written and an audience avid for these retellings, whether factual or fictional. Lesley puts this interest down to Madeleine’s behaviour being so uncharacteristic for a young Victorian woman of her social class: “She had a clandestine affair that meant having sex with an older man, and she wasn’t ashamed of it. Her letters show a bohemian kind of spirit, […] and we want to understand how someone goes from being a socialite to killing a man. The ‘Not Proven’ verdict means that not only did a party-going Victorian girl kill someone, she got away with it, too. Murderesses are rare; murderesses who survive and thrive are even rarer. And one more thing. We only know about the affair she had with Emile because of the murder trial. Was Madeleine typical of her age and class at the time? Were lots of young women like her having clandestine affairs? Whether Madeleine was an anomaly, or typical of her class and generation, we just don’t know. And that’s another part of her allure – part of her will always remain mysterious to us, no matter how many of us produce answers.”

Reference:

1. Editorial note: The Scottish Parliament approved the removal of Scotland’s third verdict, “not proven”, in September 2025.

Karen Howlett can be found on Instagram @cornflowerbooks.

BY MARLIE PARKER WASSERMAN

Cleeton likens intersecting points of view to a Rubik’s Cube

In The Lost Story of Eva Fuentes (Berkley, 2025), Chanel Cleeton excels at trios. She transports her readers to the points of view of three women, to three settings, and to three periods of time. In Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1900, Eva Fuentes arrives from Cuba to study at Harvard for a summer. In London in 2024, Margo Reynolds works for a client seeking a lost book written by a Cuban woman. In Havana in 1966, Pilar Castillo fends off Fidel Castro’s vicious henchmen. We know early in the book that all three plots connect to a book that Eva Fuentes writes, but Cleeton unfolds the details of those connections with surprises, skill, and excellent pacing.

Cleeton’s readers will be familiar with her ability to juggle multiple timelines and multiple points of view. Most notably, she uses two timelines in Next Year in Havana and The House on Biscayne Bay, three interconnected stories in The Last Train to Key West and The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba, and two interconnected stories in The Cuban Heiress.

I have heard many authors of admirable dual timeline novels say they would never tackle such a challenge again. Not Cleeton, who favors those structures, successfully masking their underlying complexity from her readers. I asked Cleeton how she manages this feat. “One of my favorite parts of writing historical fiction,” she explains, “is the chance to weave together multiple timelines and POVs [points of view] because it’s fascinating to see how the past shapes the present and to highlight the connections between them. In writing The Lost Story of Eva Fuentes, I wanted to illustrate the impact that a book could have across centuries and continents; utilizing multiple timelines brought that to the forefront.”

Cleeton acknowledges that her first draft often needs work. She says she may need some distance to get it right. “While employing multiple timelines does offer a lot of storytelling possibilities, it can often feel as though you’re working with a Rubik’s Cube in terms of the shifting of scenes/POVs that occurs before you feel like you get it ‘just right.’ One of the biggest challenges is putting each POV/ timeline together so they fit like puzzle pieces. I typically don’t make those changes while I’m drafting, but they will come later during the revision process as I’m reading through the novel with fresh eyes, and also during the editorial process, when I share the book with my editor and we go back and forth on developmental rounds.”

Many readers avoid dual timeline novels because they find themselves immersed in one story and bored by the other. I think most readers

will find that all sections of The Lost Story of Eva Fuentes work well. I do have my favorite—Pilar’s chapters in Cuba when her husband has been detained by Fidel’s men and is likely dead. But the two other sections also hold my attention.

Cleeton shines a light on how she manages to take care with each of the stories within a novel. “I’m always conscientious of the fact that not only should each POV enhance the others, but they should also be able to stand alone as their own independent storylines. You want them to complement each other but not necessarily rely on each other so much that if you stripped away one of the POVs, the others would not have enough support to represent a full story arc. A lot of this comes down to trial and error, and that’s where the Rubik’s Cube comes in—it’s a lot of rearranging and shifting until you’re pleased with the finished product. It’s definitely something that gets easier with practice and time—all of my historical novels have either multiple POVs or multiple timelines, so it’s something I have grown more comfortable with as I’ve written each novel. In fact, I often will try to think of new ways to keep it fresh with each book so I’m changing things up a bit. I always draft in Scrivener, and I find the ability to easily move scenes around to be so helpful when I’m deciding on the novel’s order. I don’t write each POV separately as I find that they are so interconnected in the tapestry that they form within the story that often the events in one timeline/POV inform what happens when I switch to the next timeline/POV.”

Although readers who have finished Cleeton’s previous novels on Cuba will have a sense of the history of that country and its relations with the U.S., her new readers may need more background. Cleeton provides it, mostly layering in history as her stories move along, and sometimes providing longer passages. She explains how she weighs what to include and what to exclude. “This question of how much history to incorporate in a historical novel is often at the crux of what we do writing historical fiction. I have several guidelines I typically use—is the history central to the plot? Is there a historical fact that readers will need to know in order to understand the characters’ actions and motivations or to have broader context in terms of the novel’s setting? And is there a piece of history that is germane to the novel that I—and hopefully, by extension my readers—find interesting or was previously unknown to me? I often follow the axiom that if history inspires curiosity or interest in me as a writer then it will hold a similar appeal to my readers, and so far I have been fortunate that it holds true. As I go through revisions and edits, I’ll often look at the historical details I’ve incorporated with a more discerning eye, cutting in places where I have repetition or have perhaps gone into too much detail or augmenting spots where I need more explanation.”

Chanel Cleeton writes engaging novels, and equally important for those of us who love historical fiction, she thinks about the craft and generously shares her wisdom.

Marlie Parker Wasserman writes historical crime fiction, set between 1890 and 1930. Her next novel, First Daughter (February, 2026), imagines a summer of threats targeting Grover Cleveland’s oldest child.

PAINTING POWER

BY LUCINDA BYATT

Lucinda Byatt talks to Matthew Plampin about These Wicked Desires

Early modern Roman politics were murky and violent: abetted by external forces, families contended for power, above all in the Curia, where age-old ritual was subject to the pressure of contemporary geopolitical influences. Combine this with a Jubilee year when huge crowds of pilgrims thronged the Eternal City, in heightened religious frenzy, their presence an excuse for profiteering and every kind of impiety. Such is the background to Matthew Plampin’s These Wicked Desires (The Borough Press, 2025) set in 1650 when Pope Innocent X, from the Pamphili family, is the puppet of his domineering sisterin-law Donna Olimpia Maidalchini, and on the streets, among the pilgrims and outcasts, are two stray nuns, Sister Orsola and Sister Serafina. The third strand of this compelling story focuses on the Spanish embassy, where the court artist, Diego Velázquez and his enslaved assistant, Juan de Pareja, are unwittingly drawn into a plot to oust the French from their hold on papal politics.

I start by asking about the role of art in Plampin’s writing? Velázquez’s portraits of Juan de Pareja, Innocent X and even Donna Olimpia date from precisely this visit to Rome – have a look at them online, if you read the book. Plampin tells me he has “always been deeply inspired by art, particularly painting. It seems to me such a direct route to the past. Seventeenth-century portraiture feels especially evocative; these remarkable images immediately make me wonder about the conditions under which they might have been created, the reputations of the painter, the expectations of the sitter and so on. And I’ve been fascinated by Velázquez for as long as I can remember. His oeuvre is a lot smaller than those of his contemporaries – only a little over a hundred works – but the paintings have an incredible directness to them that seems immediately to wipe away all the intervening centuries and place a living person there before you, in all their complexity.

“As for Olimpia Maidalchini, that portrait was lost for many years and actually came back to light as I was researching my novel (it has since been sold and disappeared into a private collection). It’s not one of Velázquez’s best, in my opinion – which is in itself very interesting.”

For historical novelists, the documentary record is usually a constraint on plot and above all the characterisation of real-life figures; does this differ when the record is an artist’s impression? “I had reproductions of Innocent and Juan de Pareja’s portraits on the wall beside my desk throughout the writing process,” Plampin says, “and they certainly shaped how I thought of the two men, along with the portraits of Cardinal Astalli and Olimpia. I would say that these images affected the story as much as the characterisation. Velázquez’s portraits have

an unsparing veracity and psychological rawness to them, which is known to have earned some rather lukewarm responses from sitters expecting flattery or aggrandisement. From the outset, one of my central interests was to explore why he painted these particular people the way he did, what they (and the artist) were going through at the time of painting, and how they and others reacted to the likenesses he produced.”

No such record existed for the nuns. Plampin’s inspiration for Sister Serafina stems from his thinking “about neurodiversity throughout history, and that many of the people who were regarded as seers or visionaries may well have had conditions that could be diagnosed in the modern world.”

Plampin visited Rome early on, “to familiarise myself with the streets and buildings that had endured since 1650 – which turned out to be quite a lot of them! Whilst I was writing I pinned a huge contemporary map above my desk. I always try to get hold of a good map – it is extremely helpful when attempting to imagine a historical city.

“Baroque Rome was a place of sharp contrasts – of stinking, crooked alleys and towering marble palazzos, grand basilicas and sprawling ruins. Although it was the religious centre of much of Europe, it was also shockingly lawless. Corruption was commonplace, often on quite staggering levels, in both secular society and the Church. All of which made it a very rich and inspiring setting for a historical novel.”

The novel is structured into three voices (Sorores, Domina, Servus), so managing changing points of view is a crucial step.

“I love coming at a story from several angles and offering different views of the same events, people and places. In These Wicked Devices I wanted to make the three POV characters as distinctive as possible, with very different backgrounds, outlooks and degrees of familiarity with Rome. I also decided that their paths would cross only once or twice in the entire narrative, despite the significance they would have to one another.

“I knew more or less from the start that I wanted to write about Juan de Pareja and Olimpia; the nuns arrived a little later. The difficult part was working out the sequence of the different POV sections and how these were to be mapped onto the overall plot. As ever, this involved a long process of trial and error, writing and rewriting.”

Another intriguing character is Flaminia Triunfi, with whom Velázquez has a child – that much is on record. Talking about Flaminia, Plampin remarks: “She is a ghostly figure whose name survives only because she and Diego Velázquez had a son, Antonio, conceived during his second visit to Italy. The precise details of their relationship are unknown. An early eighteenth-century biography of Velázquez mentions that Flaminia was ‘an excellent painter’, but there are no existing works attributed to her.

“I think a novelist is drawn instinctively to these intriguing gaps in the historical record. It feels almost like a duty of historical fiction –to represent the experiences and the humanity of people who have largely been forgotten.”

Plampin ends by saying he “would love to write another Italianset novel,” but he has instead embarked on “a story that came to me about halfway through These Wicked Devices, which involves a teenage boy and his mother trying to survive in Nazi Vienna.” That will be something to look forward to.

Lucinda Byatt is Features editor of HNR and honorary lecturer of early modern history.

THE FICTION has to exist in its own right; if it’s used as a vehicle for advancing a social or political view, it can’t live.

A HAUNTED PAST

BY KRISTEN MCDERMOTT

Simon Tolkien's literary journey

If there’s one author with a personal knowledge of the weight of the past, it’s Simon Tolkien. Reflecting on the journey that has brought him to his latest novel, The Room of Lost Steps (Lake Union, 2025). Tolkien noted that he had already established a career as an author of crime procedurals by the time he made the choice to pivot toward literary historical fiction. “The great joy of my career as a novelist is that I started as someone who needed those props: courtroom drama, which gives you a language and a plot structure. I dropped that, and my characters could live their own lives. I know them, they’re real to me, and that’s what I most wanted to accomplish as a writer: to feel that my characters lived, and lived complicatedly as humans do.”

Tolkien’s The Room of Lost Steps is the second part of a duology that introduces Theo Sterling, born in New York in 1918. In the first volume, The Palace at the End of the Sea, the reader meets Theo as an ordinary eleven-year-old. After his father’s suicide and his mother’s remarriage, Theo must assimilate into a new world of British privilege, but his friendship with Esmond, a charismatic socialist schoolmate, makes Theo dissatisfied with the life his family wants for him. During a summer visit to his stepfather’s orange groves in Andalusia, Simon falls in love with the landscape and people of Spain, especially with Maria, a beautiful young anarchist.

In The Room of Lost Steps, Theo is drawn further into the chaos of the Spanish Civil War by both love and idealism. We experience along with him the 1936 Battle of Barcelona moment-by-moment and share his dismay at the viciousness and death on both sides. Afterwards, he makes the fateful decision to join the International Brigades and learns first-hand what it means to make a choice between personal and political loyalties.

The gorgeously rendered settings for his novel are a mixture of reality and Tolkien’s imagination. His descriptions of the bucolic village of Los Olivos in which Theo experiences Andalusia are mostly invented – such places no longer exist in modern Spain. At the same time, his familiarity with Barcelona, another important setting, was a great help because “the buildings from the 1930s are still there. And as I went down the streets, the history that had become so vivid to me in my reading and research was there but invisible. I felt a little like an archaeologist, depicting a city within a city.”

Following in Theo’s footsteps may remind readers of a similar epic coming-of-age journey written by Simon’s grandfather, J.R.R. Tolkien. Scholars have suggested that The Lord of the Rings is in many ways a World War I novel and that his experiences in that war made the fantasy epic such a powerful testament to resilience. Simon agrees: “It was as if he was narrating a history instead of inventing it, so that the book didn’t seem like fantasy at all.”

But history, not fantasy, is Simon Tolkien’s chosen genre. The title of the novel refers to the setting for Theo’s climactic confrontation with Esmond and with his own complicity in the violence of the war. The room is the centerpiece of a Barcelona landmark, the Palau Güell, designed by Antoni Gaudi in 1886. Tolkien visited the mansion while researching the novel in 2019, alerted by a surviving revolutionary to its use during the Civil War as a prison by the Communist resistance fighters. “I walked through the door and realized that I’d left Barcelona behind,” Tolkien recalls, referring to the fantastical ironwork decor and secret rooms of the palace. One particular room, with a looming coffered ceiling and “snake-like” ornamentation, was used as a waiting room originally, and as an interrogation room by the Communists. The “lost steps” referred to the hopeless pacing of the individual confined to the room awaiting their fate, an experience that Tolkien gives his protagonist at the climax of the novel. “The palace was magical, turned in on itself, alive and watchful, in a way I had never experienced in any building before – and I knew that this was where this book was going to end.”

The haunted room encapsulated everything about the tragic history of Spain for the author, “as if it had been waiting for me all the time.” As he was drafting the novel, “the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was happening, which felt to me the most enormous moment in history. We had come to assume that [totalitarianism] couldn’t happen again because we were all interconnected, but in fact that’s all an illusion. The same principles during the runup to World War II still apply; it was a rude reminder of global realpolitik.”

The challenge for the historical fiction author, Tolkien believes, is to create a narrative that reminds the reader that all stories are essentially personal ones. Despite the political parallels between the Europe of the 1930s and today, Tolkien notes, “I didn’t write the book in order to comment on the present world, but I do feel there is a strong relation between the two themes: intervention and totalitarianism. However, I’m very distrustful of fiction as vehicle or allegory. The fiction has to exist in its own right; if it’s used as a vehicle for advancing a social or political view, it can’t live.”

Researching and writing this huge story was a seven-year task. The project of creating an intimate portrait of a young man forced to choose between not only different identities but different nations, while at the same time doing justice to the long-lost landscapes and tragic history of Spain, and the incredibly complex political tides of its Civil War, resulted in a 300,000-word epic that Tolkien’s publisher, Amazon/Lake Union, decided must be split into two volumes. Tolkien has nothing but praise for his editors and hopes that his choice to make the shift from the big-name presses that published his earlier work to the more personalized, online model that Amazon represents will bring his novel to more readers than a traditional model in which print books have a limited time to be featured in stores. “I’ve invested all of me in it, it’s everything to me, and you want as many people to share that as you possibly can.”

Kristen McDermott is a Professor of English at Central Michigan University and a reviewer for HNR. Her in-progress novel, Stratford’s Will, was awarded Honorable Mention in the YA and Children’s Fiction category of the 2024 Historical Novel Society First Chapters Competition.

REVIEWS

ONLINE EXCLUSIVES

Due to an ever-increasing number of books for review and space constraints within HNR, selected fiction reviews and all nonfiction reviews are now published as online exclusives. To view these reviews and much more, please visit www. historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews

ANCIENT HISTORY

CIRCLE OF DAYS

Ken Follett, Grand Central, 2025, $40.00, hb, 704pp, 9781538772775 / Quercus, 2025, £25.00, hb, 608pp, 9781529442342

Follett brings his storytelling prowess to another epic about a marvel of human engineering, illustrating answers to the major questions (who, what, when, why, and how?) about the construction of Stonehenge. Circle of Days reflects his trademark style: easily digestible prose combined with a large cast of recognizable yet interesting characters. He keeps the plot spinning with the challenges that different groups face, from severe drought and famine to deep-rooted antagonism, though an immense cooperative effort is what gets the job done.

The time is around 2500 BCE. Seft, the inquisitive youngest son in a flint-mining family, has the ingenuity to put elaborate plans into action. His first goals involve extricating himself from his boorish, abusive father and brothers, and getting to know Neen, an attractive woman from the herder clan. Neen’s younger sister, Joia, has curiosity of her own, which leads her to spy on the priestesses who conduct the seasonal rites at the Monument. These events bring together everyone living around the Great Plain – herders, farmers, woodlanders, flint-miners – for holy purposes (sun-worshipping) and more secular ones (friendship, feasting, sex).

The priestesses hold knowledge about the calendar and mathematics, and they use the Monument and ancestral songs to track the days of the year. But, as Joia recognizes, the wooden circle of the Monument is susceptible to destruction, and so it proves. After becoming a priestess herself, this female visionary ponders her objective of rebuilding it in stone, with Seft as the brains behind the operation, but many obstacles lie ahead… ones that make even survival uncertain.

Follett emphasizes throughout how sophisticated the cultures of these long-ago peoples must have been, both technologically and in the customs of their daily lives. He also imparts a message, not intrusive but definitely

there, about how societies that treat women poorly will eventually face a reckoning.

Sarah Johnson

URUK: A Novel of the First City

James Zwerneman, Diversion, 2025, $18.99/£14.99, pb, 464pp, 9798895150542

In ancient Mesopotamia, a land dominated by warring tribes, Ta, Ki, Aya, and Rogg find each other in their most desperate hours. Together, they form a new tribe and work to create a new way of living, one where everyone has a say—even women and the disabled. One of the four was caught stealing food from their previous tribe. The punishment? The loss of his hand and a name marking his shame: Ta. Ki has an inventive mind, but she’s seen as a witch with dark magic by her nomadic tribe. Her talents, however, catch the eye of the brutal chieftain who kills her family and takes her captive. Aya left her tribe after her baby was born with a club foot, knowing he’d be killed if they stayed. Meanwhile, Rogg seeks the men who murdered his family and has been wandering the lands intent on revenge. Through hardships, these four will need to combine their unique skills to survive.

While set in an ancient world, the dialogue feels modern. Expressions/references like “peek-a-boo,” “booger,” “to sandwich foes,” even “Mesopotamia” (Greek in origin) mildly undermine other setting details. Additionally, key plot moments unfold slowly, so the tension ebbs and flows. That said, the author does a commendable job with character development. I wasn’t sure if I’d enjoy Ta carrying the storyline, but the growth Zwerneman gives not only Ta but also Ki and Aya and Rogg brought me deeper into their shared journey. Zwerneman delves deeply into the physical and mental aspects of his characters, presenting them with challenges that necessitate innovative thinking. The characters must also balance the necessary evils needed to achieve their dream while upholding their morals. Uruk is an intriguing exploration of survival, trust, and community in a world where only the strongest have survived. Until now…

J. Lynn Else

BIBLICAL

NOBLE: The Story of Maakah

Mesu Andrews, Bethany House, 2025, $18.99, pb, 384pp, 9780764242625

The second in Andrews’ series about the wives of King David, this entry presents the story of Maakah of Geshur, who has been promised in marriage to the man who will be the next king of Israel. Daughter of a king, spirited, lively and unafraid of speaking her mind, Princess Maakah is at first displeased

with David ben Jesse, whom she considers a lowly and uncouth shepherd. His strictness concerning the laws of Yahweh and his insistence that she give up her gods before they can marry, only make her more determined to escape the fate of being another of his wives. But as she becomes better acquainted with David and his wives, is taken into the family, and gradually accepts that Yahweh is the one true God, she realizes her duty is to help David become a “noble” king.

Although the narrative moves at times with a snail-like pace, author Andrews does a credible job of fleshing out her biblical characters: the unwilling Maakah, whose new-found faith and love for David become the foundation for her true destiny in Israel; David, who struggles with being both a righteous and just king and beloved by his people; and Abigail and Ahinoam, who must accept that it is part of Yahweh’s plan that their husband must take yet another wife. Andrews masterfully weaves an involving story of these characters living in turmoil, firmly setting them into the historical period in which they lived, with all its violence, intrigue, and political upheaval. For those readers who enjoy Biblical fiction.

Michael I. Shoop

THE ROYAL ARTISAN

Tessa Afshar, Bethany House, 2025, $18.99/ C$26.99, pb, 358pp, 9780764243707

This novel is a fresh retelling of the Book of Esther from a new viewpoint: the fictional Sazana, a master potter and inventor of a highly desirable blue glaze. When the pottery’s owner, Haman, discovers that Sazana is Jewish, he threatens her unless she works for him for nothing. And Haman has tricked King Xerxes into decreeing a law that condemns all Jews in the empire to death. But when Queen Esther reveals Haman’s treachery to the king, and that she herself is a Jew, he condemns Haman to death, and gives the pottery workshop to Esther. Here Esther and Sazana meet and become friends. However, the original law cannot be altered.

Esther and Sazana embark on a mission to save the Jews, and Esther tasks Sazana and Jadon, the man who once cancelled their betrothal and broke Sazana’s heart, with seeking a cylinder that carries the law the late king Cyrus decreed allowing the empire’s Jews to return to Jerusalem—which will help prove the Jews’ status with the king. But all copies of Cyrus’s law have vanished. Sazana and Jadon race against time to discover a copy, hindered by the hatred of Haman’s ten sons.

I noticed one anachronism: at one point Esther is opening and closing her folding fan. Folding fans didn’t exist at this time; they were first developed in the Far East sometime between the 6th and the 9th centuries CE. But the book is a pleasure to read, the setting is well-handled, and the characters are both likeable and unusual. Add in the quest for Cyrus’s cylinder and the race against time to save a condemned people, and you have a great story. It’s a fine addition to the many

novels based upon Queen Esther. Afshar has set other books in this well-realized world, and I look forward to reading them!

India Edghill

THE GOSPEL OF SALOME

Kaethe Schwehn, Wildhouse Fiction, 2025, $24.99, pb, 330pp, 9781961741225

This is a thought-provoking alternative origin story of Yeshua (Jesus). The majority of this book spans six days during riots against the Jews by the Greeks in Roman Alexandria in 38 CE. Each day also includes stories from the physician Salome (Lyra when in Greece) that span from 23 BCE- 3 CE in Rome, Nazareth, and Jerusalem.

The book opens in Greece, where we are introduced to Lyra’s childhood. She is soon orphaned, sold into slavery, sent to Rome, and bought into the house of Julia, Roman emperor Augustus’s daughter. Salome is allowed to study there, becomes a physician, and earns her freedom. She moves to Alexandria and starts a clinic in the home of Philo, a Jewish philosopher. It is here that she witnesses the riots caused when Flaccus, the Roman governor of Alexandria, has statues of Caligula put in Jewish temples. When John Mark, a first follower of Yeshua, learns that Salome was present with Mary at Yeshua’s crucifixion, he interviews her during the six days of the riot.

The story quickly drew me in and has two central parts: Salome as a physician providing medical care during that time, and Yeshua’s life as a child and adult. The story of Yeshua provided glimpses of his life and focused on the complicated relationship between Salome, Mary, and Joseph during his upbringing and again when brought back together during his crucifixion.

Through Salome’s work as a physician, we learn that ancient Alexandria was the site for the dawn of medical science, bringing together Greek and Egyptian medicine, including herbal remedies and specialized medical practices. This was well portrayed and brought a noteworthy perspective to the story.

This book is recommended to anyone interested in early Alexandria, medicine, alternative biblical fiction, and the early persecution of Jews.

Deborah

K. Mayer

CLASSICAL

SING TO ME

Jesse Browner, Little, Brown, 2025, $28.00, hb, 224pp, 9780316581233

Retellings of the Trojan War have become a veritable cottage industry, and my instinct is to dislike them. Do we really need another one? But we need Sing to Me, which begins with the same word as The Iliad and flowers into a small gem of timeless poetry.

As it opens, we encounter Hani, an elevenyear-old peasant boy from the Hittite interior,

who sets out with his donkey to find his little sister, last seen heading to the City with their father – a City that has dragged the whole countryside into a devastating war for the whole of the boy’s lifetime. Through a postapocalyptic landscape he searches, until he finds the City burned and gutted, filled with corpses. Only one person seems to have survived, an enemy soldier who cannot speak… but who can write. Hani befriends the man and eventually must confront some hard choices about the rest of his young life.

A dream-like tale in the wise and simple language of a child, a meditation on death and friendship and war and time and literacy. The author handles Hittite and Mycenaean well, and local colour is administered with a light touch. This is a story that could be set in the wake of any war. It’s an odd book that not everyone will like, but this reviewer gives it a “highly recommended.” I wanted it not to stop.

N. L. Holmes

NO FRIEND TO THIS HOUSE

Natalie Haynes, Mantle, 2025, £20.00, hb, 366pp, 9781529061543/ Harper, 2026, $27.99, hb, 384pp, 9780063258440

In her latest retelling of the Greek myths, Natalie Haynes turns to Jason & the Argonauts and the Medea story. The tale of the handsome hero who seizes the golden fleece, with help from the witch, Medea, is well-known, particularly to those of us brought up with the 1960s classic movie. The Medea story, as told by Greek playwright Euripides and first performed in 431 BC, is a staple of the stage even to this day, with various adaptations and audiences trying to make sense of why the protagonist murders her two sons.

Tying the two halves of the story together in the one novel was always going to be a challenge. The first half is a swashbuckling quest and the second is a dark tragedy. But who better to meld the two together than Haynes, a writer, broadcaster, classicist and comedian whose novels include Stone Blind (about Medusa) and A Thousand Ships, which sees the Trojan War from the perspective of the women involved.

No Friend to This House centres on the roles played by Jason and Medea – and the Greek gods as puppeteers – in seizing the golden fleece from the far eastern edge of the Black Sea and taking it to Colchis, encountering dreadful obstacles along the way. Medea’s magic enables them to get through their

ordeals. They end up in Corinth, married with children, and then Jason announces he is in love with Glauke, the princess, and is getting wed. Medea enacts a terrible revenge, but is it any wonder? She’s been deceived by her conniving husband. But killing her sons? How on earth can this be explained?

Haynes does so with aplomb – no spoilers here, but there is a final plot twist – in a nuanced and layered story, with multiple narrators and viewpoints. Highly recommended.

Margery Hookings

CIRCLE OF PEACE

Sophia Kouidou-Giles, She Writes, 2025, $17.99/£16.99, pb, 232pp, 9781647428488

Perse is the wife of Helios, the sun god. She wants to expand their palace to include a grand new hall to host a women’s circle devoted to bringing peace. Though they have a thousand-room home with a large hall, it is not grand enough for the gods who live on Mt. Olympus that Perse wants to collaborate with in order to make her dream a reality. Helios has a sister, Selene, the moon goddess. Helios will support his wife if Perse can solve the problem of Selene’s love affair with a mortal shepherd. Then there is her husband’s son who wants his turn on the chariot that brings the sun each day, her sister’s woes, and a daughter’s cool distance. There are tragic deaths and mortals at war. Working for peace is a goal that often seems out of reach.

This book is part of a series by KouidouGiles, retelling Greek myths. The gods have joy, tragedy, pathos, arguments, deceptions, the full range of human experience. You root for Perse, you marvel at her tolerance, and you grieve when great loss comes. The book brings emotions into full force. The characters are chiefly minor gods in the pantheon, which gives the author great scope to fill out their lives.

You expect philosophy from the gods who lived in the time of the greatest of thinkers in the Golden Age. Some may find that slows the pace, though it gives substance to Perse’s goals in and management of a complex world. Fans of Greek mythology will be enchanted; all readers will find an engaging story where you know some bits and learn much more. Recommended.

Catherine Mathis

APHRODITE

Phoenicia Rogerson, HQ, 2025, £16.99, hb, 469 pp, 9780008589905 / Hanover Square, 2025, $30.00, hb, 480pp, 9781335081421

The beginning. Dark, empty. Someone emerges. Washed up on a beach, she shelters in a cave. Alone. Alone for how long? A few visitors chance upon her. She listens. She learns. One day, she takes a decision. She goes to Zeus, King of the Gods, and claims a home amongst the Gods on Mount Olympus. So begins the story of Aphrodite, the ancient Greek Goddess of Love.

Hats off to Rogerson for weaving a chaos of myths and legends into a coherent

narrative. She does so by focussing on the life of Aphrodite, from beginning to end. She is mirrored by Zeus, both patron and enemy. But while supporters elevate Zeus to King of the Gods, Aphrodite is self-made, surviving by wits alone. Gods are created in the image of mankind and in this book, they are very, very human. Aphrodite is a woman alone, faking it to make it in a world where power is weighted heavily against her. Zeus, a spoiled child grown into monstrous tyrant, is dangerous because he is bored.

Readers hoping for lots of gratuitous sex will be disappointed. Aphrodite has her lovers, it’s true. But the sex scenes are not excessive and are sensitively written, considering emotions rather than mechanics. The warning for prudish readers is the language – it’s chatty, modern and robust. Most of the story is told in Aphrodite’s own words, with contributions from other characters. It enlivens the Ancient Gods, made in the image of mankind, and still –just like humanity – the same today. Aphrodite, a woman alone, both vulnerable and strong, comes through as a very modern goddess.

Helen Johnson

I AM CLEOPATRA

Natasha Solomons, Harper Perennial, 2025, $18.99/C$25.99, pb, 336pp, 9780063449756 / Manilla Press, 2025, £16.99, hb, 352pp, 9781786583536

This reimagining of Cleopatra’s life begins in her youth and ends with the aftermath of Julius Caesar’s death. From childhood, Cleopatra spends time in the massive collection of scrolls housed in her beloved Library of Alexandria. She and Charmian, her personal slave, grow up together and develop a special bond that is integral to Solomon’s story. In a court teeming with enemies and court intrigue, Cleopatra becomes wise in political strategy and the power struggles that will dominate her rule. Her intelligence and ambition serve her well.

Her father, Auletes, needs Roman legions to defend his throne from domestic unrest. Now Egypt is indefinitely trapped in their indebtedness to Rome. Upon Auletes’ death, he appoints Cleopatra and her eldest brother Ptolemy as co-rulers, which engenders hate and suspicion between them and a divided rule. Caesar is in Egypt, and Cleopatra, by seduction, hopes to have the advantage over Ptolemy, but he holds to the dual rule.

Told in two first-person narratives, Cleopatra and Servilia (also Caesar’s lover), we have a dimensional perspective of these two women’s inner lives and their complex interactions. The

novel’s focus is on Cleopatra as she strategizes and battles to uphold her throne and divinity, and her vulnerability shows in her personal relationships. Solomons’ prose surrounds the reader in the luxury and grandeur of this world. The sights are vivid and the smells visceral. Memorable is her opulent trip along the Nile – a display of power. Her ships are gilded and fashioned as swans and fish, “lit with a galaxy of candles… rival[ing] the moon and stars. The hundreds of boats become a thousand in reflection” with “purple sails shot through with silver thread.” Strong emotions are evoked when Solomons writes of the role of Brutus, Servilia’s son, in Caesar’s assassination, and the devastating aftermath that Cleopatra and Servilia experience. Solomon’s novel shines in an abundance of Cleopatra retellings.

Janice Ottersberg

THE DEATH AND LIFE OF IPHIGENIA

J. Susanne Wilson, Nine Muses Press, 2025, $18.99, pb, 356pp, 9798991439411

Under the guise of marriage, Iphigenia arrives at the shores of Aulis expecting to wed the warrior Achilles. However, on the night of her wedding, she’s met not by her groom but by her father wielding a knife. She is to be sacrificed. As the knife plunges towards her, Iphigenia loses consciousness. When she awakens, she finds herself in a strange land, surrounded by unfamiliar faces, and discovers she has lost her voice. Given a new name, she’s trained as a priestess of Artemis. Over time, sailors passing through the city share tales of her father’s siege of Troy. Could one of these sailors carry a message to Achilles that she is alive? And if she can reach Achilles, can she also get a message to her mother or beloved sister to send someone to bring her home?

Wilson has crafted a meticulously researched narrative, brimming with entrancing details and emotional depth. Iphigenia’s walk through life vividly depicts the hardships and savagery of the Bronze Age, especially the practice of sacrificial worship as told through the eyes of a character once on the receiving end of it by her own father’s hand. Iphigenia grapples with her new reality as questions arise about her survival and how she ended up on the island of Tauris. Can she accept this new life and find a place of belonging when reminders of her old one keep popping up? The prose captivates with its exquisite, indulgent detail; its evocative quality and the overarching poetic narration by the protagonist are reminiscent of works like Ithaca and Circe. A beautifully told and vividly

re-imagined coming-of-age tale set in ancient Greece.

J. Lynn Else

1ST CENTURY DAMNATIO MEMORIAE

S. P. Somtow, Diplodocus Press, 2025, $15.99, pb, 232pp, 9781940999920

Originally two books, Damnatio Memoriae is the last of a trilogy, first written for Amazon Vella, featuring the puer delicatus, Sporus, who relates the events of his life in his own words on the eve of his death. Beginning where Imperatrix left off, Nero has made Sporus his third wife (and empress) and ordered Sporus’s castration. Waking up in severe pain, he discovers he and Nero are on a ship bound for Corinth, Greece, where Sporus tests the bounds of his freedom along with his personal slave and friend, Hylas. Back in Rome, he relates Nero’s suicide, his contact with three of the ‘four emperors’ and his wait for his brutal death in the arena, which Somtow leaves open-ended.

Somtow’s accessible style portrays dayto-day life in Rome, the antithesis of a contemporary reader’s experience. Coloured illustrations, using models in period dress against Roman backgrounds, are an unusual touch and a welcome bonus. In our digitally visual age, these illustrations aid in acceptance of how a male child-slave can also be an empress, assisting in our understanding of the characters’ minds and actions in their world. Somtow captures the confusion of the child-slave/eunuch/woman/empress, and has done this, with masterful control, in the voice of a boy not yet twenty, forced into a maturity beyond his years. Slavery was a normal part of 1st-century Roman life, sex and violence were routine entertainment, slaves expected to be raped, and suicide was considered an honourable death. In Sporus’ case, we are shown a reciprocal love/hate relationship with his owners, particularly Nero. In his historical notes the author admits he writes books that he would like to read. If it were invented fiction, this trilogy (which would be marvelous published as one book) likely wouldn’t seem at all credible. It is poignant and heart-breaking, and it’s hard to avoid mourning the death of Somtow’s Sporus.

Fiona Alison

2ND CENTURY

LORD GUAN

Charles N. Li, Regan Arts, 2025, $29.99/ C$42.00/£26.99, hb, 336pp, 9781682452325

Guan Yu is a 2nd-century Chinese historical figure and folk hero who is still worshipped in his own country. A gifted fighter born into a poor rural family, Guan sets out to make his way in the world in the failing days of the Han Dynasty and falls in with several other men (and women) who are as outstanding in their own fields as he is. Together, they form the

Peach Garden Brotherhood, which aims to restore the Han kings to the throne. Gradually, as the corruption of the dynasty becomes apparent, their mission shifts, and in the end, they establish one of the Three Kingdoms that distinguishes most of the third century. A subset of the chapters details the rise of Guan‘s bride, a woman as extraordinary as himself. This book chronicles Guan’s life without much commentary or insertion of a plot. I noticed it was categorized on Amazon as folklore or fairy tale, and that seems appropriate.

Written in a dry tell-don’t-show style between that of a history text and a fairy tale, the book pits geniuses/saints/supermen against irredeemable villains. Aficionados of Chinese history will undoubtedly read this book with interest, thanks to the dense detail, obviously well researched. But those looking for any psychological insights or humanizing intimacy with people of the past won’t find it here.

N.

L. Holmes

9TH CENTURY

THE HOUSE OF WOLF

Tony Robinson, Sphere, 2025, £25.00, hb, 550pp, 9781408731536

Towards the end of his reign, King Wolf heads off on pilgrimage, leaving his kingdom in the care of his sons Bear and Hawk and daughter Swift. In his absence, the ungrateful offspring plot and scheme while the dreaded Men of the North gather for yet another devastating attack. That might sound like another episode of Game of Thrones but it is all based on real events. Wolf is Aethelwulf, king of the West Saxons (839-58 CE). Bear, Hawk and Swift are Aethelbald, Aethelberht and Aethelswyth. The proliferation of ‘Aethels’ is a potential nightmare for readers, so Tony Robinson is wise to have renamed these characters. He ensures that the action skips along unimpeded by archaic words and fussy period detail.

All this makes for readability, but something is lost along the way: there is often little sense of time and place, especially when the action strays further afield. Robinson’s Rome has the feel not of the embattled and impoverished city of the 9th century but that of the Renaissance with opulent and unscrupulous cardinals dining off Chinese plates. Charles the Bald is described as an emperor who ruled the largest empire since the days of imperial Rome. In fact, he was only king of part of what is now France and was not crowned emperor until 875. The name thing is taken much too far. Why is the bishop of Winchester called ‘Humbert’ when his real name was Swithun (of weatherforecasting fame)? So The House of Wolf is not for those who love strict historical accuracy. On the other hand, it is a light, engaging and entertaining read, where graphic violence is tempered by an all-pervading humour, ranging from dry to slapstick.

Jonathan Harris

CATAN: The Order of the Ravens

Klaus Teuber, trans. Lisa Reinhardt, Blackstone, 2025, $29.99, hb, 418pp, 9798212644945

Set eighteen years after the events of Catan, Klaus Teuber returns to the Island of the Sun to explore the next generation of settlers. The Viking Jarl Thorolf rules the settlement of Woodhaven according to Norse tradition, but a local Christian priest has begun to influence the townspeople, stirring unrest around the ownership of slaves. When Thorolf’s headstrong daughter, Jora, falls in love with a thrall and joins a plot for freedom, the fragile balance of the settlement begins to unravel.

Catan: The Order of the Ravens is an imaginative and compelling novel that stands on its own, even for readers unfamiliar with the earlier book or the board game that inspired the series. The plot is exciting, and the characters are engaging and dynamic. Fans of the Settlers of Catan board game will appreciate how the story weaves in familiar gameplay elements, including settlementbuilding, trade, road networks, and even the desert and the robber, in a way that brings new life to an old favorite.

Teuber grounds his narrative in plausible historical parallels supported by emerging archaeological theories and presents an imaginative exploration of what might have happened if the Vikings had found themselves on an island in the Azores. This is an interesting read that blends speculative history and creative world-building.

S. Taylor

10TH CENTURY

FAR SIDE OF REVENGE

Anne L. Dean, GladEye Press, 2025, $21.95, pb, 378pp, 9781951289225

The epic tale begins in 976 CE when Mac Liag, the scribe and poet for King Mahon, dreads he could be branded as a traitor for writing the accounts of Prince Brian Boru. The youngest of twelve brothers, Brian is the least likely heir of their father’s throne in Munster, Ireland. However, warfare among the various clans and foreign raiders have decimated the male heirs, leaving Mahon in power. Brian’s lifelong recollections refute accolades heaped on his brother, King Mahon, in poems penned by Mac Liag.

Far Side of Revenge is a coming-of-age story of an unlikely hero who transforms from a naïve boy to a formidable warrior and strategist. As a young man, Brian often confronts Mahon head-on regarding war tactics but later becomes his brother’s most trusted military advisor. Brian learns how to outmaneuver his political enemies and treacherous brother with Machiavellian cunning and deception with the goal of uniting Ireland and driving out Viking invaders. Author Dean takes a unique approach whereby the poet who praises King Mahon in epic poems also writes about Brian’s lifelong trials and triumphs. Like modern-day

propagandists, the medieval storytellers spread lies to create legends of those in power. The straightforward narrative and dialogue stay true to Brian’s mindset and reflect 10thcentury political turmoil in Ireland. This is an additive and poignant story detailing Brian’s rise from misfortunes, warfare, and family treachery, ultimately preparing him to rule as High King of Ireland.

I highly recommend Far Side of Revenge for its engaging storytelling and compelling insight of a complex Irish hero who unites revenge-seeking clans in Southern Ireland to drive off foreign invaders.

Linnea Tanner

11TH CENTURY

THE WAYFINDER

Adam Johnson, MCD, 2025, $30.00/C$42.00, hb, 736pp, 9780374619572

This lush epic, set in the Polynesian islands during the pre-colonial Tu’i Tonga Empire, moves between myth and memory, drawing on the region’s rich oral storytelling legacy. Its protagonist, Kōrero—whose name means “to speak”—is a young island woman whose people face starvation and the threat of extinction. While scavenging among gravesites, she discovers a necklace with a fishhook pendant. Soon after, two Tongan princes arrive on her island, castaways fleeing their uncle’s violent regime. Curious about navigation and desperate to help her people, Kōrero joins them in their search for a lifesustaining island just beyond the horizon.

The Wayfinder is steeped in mythology and magic, dizzyingly shifting between historical fact and fantasy. Talking corpses, wise parrots, and an abiding sea, both hostile and life-giving, populate the narrative. There are graphic public executions and mutilations and a fantastic place where every extinct species of animal and plant lives. Like oral storytelling itself, the prose is layered, moving between points of view and time periods. This can make the book challenging, but also wholly immersive and unputdownable.

Part of Johnson’s genius lies in how he shapes Kōrero, who comes to realize her civilization is dying and the past, present, and future lie in the stars. The firmament above becomes both a map to a new island and a guide to her people’s place in the universe. This is a story about the past, but also the future: about the unyielding power of empire and the violence of domination, but also the enduring drive of individuals to claim their own destinies, even against all odds.

Suzanne Uttaro Samuels

SPOILS OF WAR

J. G. Lewis, Stoneheart Press, 2025, $21.99, hb, 252pp, 9781939941862

It’s 1066, and Queen Margaret of Scotland has it all. Just months ago, she was made a refugee by the Norman invasion, but now she’s happily married to Malcolm, King of

Scotland, and well into a healthy pregnancy. To the Scots she’s an outsider, her Gaelic still rusty, but her mother and sister are at court with her, and Malcolm has just finished building a new fortified tower for them to live in greater security. As they celebrate the tower’s completion, a hooded woman approaches the queen and asks for her help to find her daughter, abducted by one of the King’s mormaers (regional leader). Relying on her strong support system, Margaret finds the daughter, but then daughter and mother are accused of murdering the mormaer’s wife and flee. Margaret now has to justify what looks like her aiding and abetting two murderers to her husband and his mormaer, even as she works behind the scenes to find the escaped women before the warriors bent on revenge get to them. At the same time, she works to find the real killer so she can prove their innocence.

This is the start of a new series for J. G. Lewis, who has written ten volumes in the Ela of Salisbury medieval mystery series. Lewis has done her research and does a wonderful job of conveying delightful historical minutiae from Margaret’s religious zeal (she eventually became St. Margaret) to meals and bedroom manners, while still maintaining a fast pace. The next book in the series, The Raven’s Price, will be out in February of 2026.

Alison McMahan

THE PRICE OF LOYALTY

Malve Von Hassell, Historium, 2025, $27.99, pb, 376pp, 9781964700250

This medieval historical novel, set in Normandy and the Holy Lands from the late 1070s to the 1130s, recounts the adventures of the fictional Cerdic of Wessex, loyal knight to Adela of Blois, and the difficulties this devotion brings him. After attracting the notice of King William the Conqueror, Cerdic travels from England to Normandy, meets the king’s family, and becomes enmeshed in their conflicts. Saved from a grim fate by Adela, he is sent to serve the powerful Count Stephen-Henry of Blois. Along the way he encounters Gisele, the wilful daughter of an ailing knight. When Adela marries Stephen-Henry and assumes her influential role, Cerdic falls hopelessly in love with her in the tradition of courtly romance. Despite this, he remains loyal to the count and is rewarded with his own manor and marriage to Gisele, thereby saving her from a cruel match. When the pope calls the nobility to crusade in the Holy Land, Adela and Gisele remain behind to manage their estates and children.

The author evokes the turbulence of late 11thcentury France, Normandy, and the Crusader experience through multiple perspectives, chiefly those of Cerdic, Adela, and Gisele. The interplay of Cerdic’s fictional story with Adela’s historical world blends the upheaval with the human struggles it provoked.

Keira Morgan

13TH CENTURY

A BROTHERLY DEVOTION

Jill Bray, Holand Press, 2025, £9.99, ebook, 314pp, 9798291940679

A Brotherly Devotion is Jill Bray’s debut novel –two stories rolled into one, and both well-told. It is 1224, and Brother Clement is savagely murdered as he returns at night to the Abbey of St Mary. Simon de Hale, Sheriff of Yorkshire, is charged with investigating the crime. At first, he has little evidence to go on, but suspects and motivations start to emerge as the investigation progresses. An attack on the abbey shows that there is deep resentment amongst a starving population against the privileged, well-fed life of the monks, another possible motivation.

Simon is also arranging the betrothal of his youngest daughter, unaware that she is already engaged in a romantic liaison with a local knight. When the betrothal is given royal sanction by the king, Simon’s spirited daughter resists with all her might.

On top of everything, Simon must also prepare for the forthcoming Assizes, chaired by the Royal Justice, Sir Robert de Lexington, and try to keep the peace during this time of political unrest. Bray does well to hold this all together with admirable skill, and the narrative is interesting and convincing. Characters are generally well-developed and Simon de Hale, as our central investigator, is likeable and sympathetic. The medieval world is convincingly presented while Bray casts a modern eye on many of the topics raised: the freedom of women to choose their own marriage partner; and a world starting to question the wealth and privilege of the religious houses.

The final reveal of the murderer is satisfying and believable – although I would have welcomed hearing more from that character before they were consigned to a relatively rapid punishment and exited the stage. Overall, though, this is an enjoyable and entertaining read, and I hope we hear more from Simon de Hale.

Adele Wills

CANTICLE

Janet Rich Edwards, Spiegel & Grau, 2025, $30.00, hb, 368pp, 9781966302056

In her debut, set in late 13th-century Flanders, Edwards brings to glowing life the story of a young woman consumed with desire for God and knowledge, a most unorthodox obsession. Aleys, “thirteen years old and powerfully odd,” is the daughter of a wool producer in Damme, which sits near the trading center of Brugge (Bruges). She grows up enraptured by her mother’s illuminated psalter. After her Mama’s tragic death in childbirth, Aleys learns to read Dutch to help with the family business, but Aleys yearns to know Latin, the language of scripture. Through her friendship with Finn, a dyer’s son, she achieves this, and her education and Catholic fervor attract the attention of a Franciscan preacher, Friar Lukas, who wants a woman to establish a new order. When her father forces her betrothal to a wealthy

merchant to save their fortunes, Aleys runs away to Lukas. During her novitiate, he settles her with the Beguines, a group of lay religious women rumored to be wanton. Aleys’ vow of obedience chafes, since her soul yearns to fly.

The prologue foretells a devastating end for Aleys, drawing curiosity about what led her there. It takes talent to write accessibly about religious ecstasy and the impact of faith while preserving their mysteries, and Edwards achieves this through many gorgeously written passages, beginning with the opening scene. Though slow in parts, the novel evokes a littledepicted yet decisive time, when people sought closeness to God through unauthorized translations, wandering Franciscans sought new recruits, and religious women—Beguine communities, mystics, and anchoresses—were carefully watched by church authorities. Aleys’ journey from prideful teenager to visionary is powerfully moving as she discovers the rules of men are too narrow to admit her abilities. Fans of Mary Sharratt’s literary historical fiction about women and faith will especially welcome Edwards’ new novel.

Sarah Johnson

14TH CENTURY

WORLD BETWEEN WORLDS

Jenny duBay, En Route Books & Media, 2025, $23.95, pb, 505pp, 9798888702727

The spiritual and temporal story of Caterina, a mystic in the Tuscan city of Siena in the late 14th century, who was later canonized as a Roman Catholic saint, unfolds in this entrancing novel of her early life. It is set against the dramatic backdrop of the chaotic and turbulent years of infighting among the Italian states, the moving of the Papacy from Avignon back to Rome, the wider European repercussions of the Hundred Years’ War, and a time of plague and pestilence. Caterina’s years as the daughter of a middle-class dye maker in a large family are filled with both sorrow and joy. Her burgeoning spiritual awareness, however, sets her apart from many in her community and her family, who hold particular expectations as to how young women should live their lives. As Caterina grows and matures in her devotional understanding, she defies many of these expectations. How she handles these circumstances is both very human and truly inspirational. She works to ease the physical suffering of others but also offers them spiritual nourishment, and she educates the more educated with her words on the power of love.

Written in gorgeous, luminous prose that reflects Caterina’s journey from darkness to light, this novel is a pleasure to read on many levels. It is informative, entertaining, and enlightening. It provokes feelings of pity, despair, and disgust at the foibles of humans, yet it also inculcates respect and awe for one human’s experience of the divine. Highly recommended for readers interested in exploring and imaging the role of women

and religious life in medieval Italian history through the narrative power of fiction.

Karen Bordonaro

THE ARROWS OF FEALTY

Jill MacLean, OC Publishing, 2025, $19.99, pb, 382pp, 9781989833544

This book is a stand-alone follow-up to The Arrows of Mercy. It follows Haukyn, the son of a scarred, bitter war veteran, as he faces his own trials in both war and its tumultuous aftermath. The book is written in three parts, starting with Haukyn’s own harrowing experiences as an archer in the Hundred Years’ War. Through a series of chevauchées, brutal battle scenes, and scorched-earth warfare, all he wants is to return to his village. But he has tasted freedom and yearns for more than his life as a serf can provide. He’s unable to settle into his constricted life and has immense sympathy for others in similar straits, particularly the plight of an emotionally damaged woman, Ilotte. Finally, he is caught up in the peasant uprisings leading to the Great Revolt of 1381.

This structure shows off deep research into the times and an understanding of serf life and a knowledge of the politics at the time. After the dynamic and action-packed first act, the village scenes feel like they drag, almost a separate novel, until MacLean picks up momentum in the final act. Haukyn, Edmund and Ilotte are well-written characters whose trauma defines their lives. Many of the villagers are less interesting, and a lot of time is spent with them. While The Arrows of Fealty feels a little long, it is a tale worth reading and an impressive piece of historical research turned into compelling fiction.

Wayne Turmel

INÊS

Catherine Mathis, Histria, 2025, $19.99, pb, 360pp, 9781592116027

History tells us that Inês de Castro (13251355) was probably a lady-in-waiting to Constance of Castile, who married Prince Pedro of Portugal (later Pedro I). Pedro had a passionate affair with Inês, despite the efforts of his father, King Afonso, and his advisors, Gonçalves and Pacheco. After Queen Constance died of postpartum complications, King Pedro lived openly with Inês. He legitimized their children so they could inherit the throne. Inês was illegitimate herself so wasn’t seen as suitable queen material. King Afonso and the advisors tried banishing her, and when that did not work, Afonso sent the advisors to behead her, which they did in front of her young children. Pedro, bereft, killed two of the plotters by ripping their hearts out. Legend says he crowned Inês’ corpse and forced the rest of his court to pay homage to her as his queen.

This history, often dramatized in music and art, is the basis for the novel. It’s clear Mathis has done thorough research. But it’s hard to know who the novel wants us to identify with; we never really settle into any of the important

characters’ perspectives. Gonçalves is the one character who is present throughout, at least until Pedro rips his heart out, but we don’t really get to feel the unrequited passion that might have led him to kill Inês; rather, he’s depicted as someone who did it out of wounded pride.

The narrative keeps us at arms’ length, robbing us of the opportunity to experience Pedro and Inês’ forbidden passion and their struggle to legitimize their love. We are left with the image of Pedro and Inês’ side-byside tombs inscribed with “until the end of the world,” when they will be reunited.

Alison McMahan

THE HIDDEN MIRROR OF LA PORETE

Susan Shooter, Hurlestone Books, 2025, $34.99, hb, 270pp, 9781068433924

Marguerite Porete has walked a dark path and came out with a new understanding of the Far-Near One. She writes and shares her beliefs about God’s love with others. However, this gains the wrong attention from church leaders, who forbid women from teaching. In 1308, when she’s called by the Inquisitor of France to answer the charges of heresy, Marguerite’s words about God’s love will be on trial against the laws and words of men. Shooter’s prose immerses readers into the period. References, turns of phrase, and the structure of her sentences all work to enliven the historical setting. The style is lyrically packed with insight and emotion. The narratives start by weaving gently through time. At first, it’s effective in introducing us to Marguerite and the suffering she is fighting to overcome. However, as the novel progresses, the timejumps grow chaotic. It quickly becomes not only difficult but also frustrating to follow plot direction and character growth. Chapter after chapter, we’re given the result of something without knowing what it is, where it begins, or why it’s significant. Many readers won’t come into this story with much advance knowledge of the main character, so a linear plot structure would more effectively convey the life of this intriguing figure and help readers understand the weight of her journey. The cast is dense, and their relationship to Marguerite equally difficult to keep straight. A glossary and/or a character list would be appreciated.

The story is strongly researched, which is a delight. Marguerite’s faithful words and actions are the heartbeat of the novel. Regretfully, there isn’t a foundation for readers to build on as the author continuously puts the cart before the horse.

J. Lynn Else

Gutenberg dreams of creating the first moveable type printing press. But his path isn’t easy. He faces financial uncertainty as he raises the funds for his project, fights to stop people stealing his ideas and struggles to decide whether to pursue a relationship with his sweetheart or focus solely on his dream.

This is an energetic novel exploring the life of the man whose revolutionary invention led to the mass production of books and increased literacy and spread the ideas of the Reformation. Johann is a flawed genius with charisma and his fair share of imperfections, making him an authentic character. Despite his arrogance and a tendency to let his vices get the better of him, he is likeable and determined, and someone with whom the reader empathises. The construction of the printing press is captured through engaging and detailed narrative that doesn’t overload the reader with information. The language is simple and clear, at times veering more towards the factual than descriptive, but the tone works overall in lending the story momentum.

Brown creates an immersive insight into medieval Mainz and Strasbourg, including architectural details of the town houses and cultural traditions such as the Dance of Death. He weaves the events of Johann’s life into the fascinating wider political and social contexts of the 1400s, such as the 100 Years’ War and the Mainz-Diocesan Feud.

This is enjoyable historical fiction that brings a new and engaging identity to the historical figure of Johann Gutenburg, and the turbulent journey of his revolutionary printing press.

Maddy McGlynn

QUEST OF THE FLORENTINE ORDER

Steven F. Freeman, Independently published, 2025, $17.99, pb, 521pp, 9798305695618

In 1488, Niccolo Corsini and a select band of followers are tasked with a quest by the powerful Lorenzo de’ Medici, effective ruler of Florence. They must not only recover a holy painting stolen by the dastardly French; they must also locate and liberate Medici’s agent at the French court, Lady Elena Borseli.

15TH CENTURY

THE PASSIONS OF JOHANN GUTENBERG

Michael Brown, Independently published, 2025, $16.95, pb, 361pp, 9798315887058

In 15th-century Germany, Johann

An interesting premise coupled with a colourful set of characters and a twisting plot makes for a fun and engaging read. Mr Freeman takes his readers on quite the adventurous journey, but I find myself repeatedly yanked out of the story by all the anachronisms. There was no bottled wine in the 15th century, there was no snuff, no grandfather clocks, no pianofortes, no croissants. Paris was a walled and gated city, making sneaking out of it hard, especially with the king’s men after you; the port town of Le Havre—the destination for our audacious heroes as they flee their French pursuers—was built decades later.

Mr Freeman expresses that his ambition is to deliver a swashbuckling and rollicking tale. That he most certainly does, even if

the historical inaccuracies to some extent disqualify Quest of the Florentine Order as historical fiction. Having said that, this is an entertaining, well-written read with a likeable cast of protagonists. Recommended for all those who enjoy a good dose of escapist adventuring!

Anna Belfrage

ARTIMON

Leigh Grant, Cartellino Publications, 2024, $17.95, pb, 298pp, 9798218427986

The second book in The Montenegrin series takes place in 1495 during the endless wars between France and the various Italian states. It picks up immediately after the first book, Mask of Dreams. A Montenegrin mercenary named Rade has just married the Venetian heiress Caterina. The story travels between two different storylines to tell the tale of a marriage strained to the breaking point by war and deception.

Rade possesses a mask that hides his facial disfiguration and goes to war where he plans to come back a scarred veteran and live his life unmasked. He sets out with a cantankerous horse (Artimon) and two friends with a load of grain to sell the French army, but things quickly go wrong. He is separated from his troops and is wounded. He survives months in the Apennine Mountains, returning just in time to be caught up in the bloody Battle of Fornovo.

Caterina, left to fend for herself, shows determination and increasing independence by growing silkworms, a massive undertaking especially for a woman in that time. Her fears for her fortune and the powerlessness of women in this time are borne out when her friend Ginevra enters a nunnery to save the honor of her family. All the while Caterina worries about the fate of her new husband.

At times it can be confusing to follow the machinations of the Italian city states and who is fighting whom, and the plot feels like a long series of incidents rather than a cohesive whole. Too much of the background occurs in dialog, but the set pieces are well-written and the main characters easy to root for.

Wayne Turmel

A HIGHLANDER’S HEALER

Heide Middlebrook, Passion Leaf, 2025, $12.99, pb, 364pp, 9798992181210

The tumultuous time of clan warfare in early 15th-century Scotland is the dramatic backdrop for this captivating tale of an herbalist and a mercenary. Greer McGray is a healer following in the footsteps of her mother and grandmother in harnessing nature for medicinal cures to treat the wounded and ill around her. As the story opens, she is in a perilous situation without any family left to protect her from the advances of a loathed fighter. Her world changes at this same time, however, when Rory MacKearsin, a mercenary soldier fighting on the opposing side, enters her space unexpectedly, wounded but still alive after a battle. Their meeting, their bonding, and their subsequent adventures fill

the pages of this book to bursting. Greer finds herself allied to former enemies, but acting in a saving capacity that makes the most use of her prodigious medical talents that defy accepted medical tradition. She looks to nature for herbs and natural remedies and further incorporates wellness techniques unknown to the contemporary medical practitioners. Rory, for his part, puts his tremendous physical strength and martial training in her service as he vows to protect her from ongoing threats from the fighter still pursuing her.

Greer and Rory’s love and passion for each other grow quickly throughout a series of rapidly occurring predicaments which are interwoven with the weight of encounters past and present. Their personal story hurtles headlong towards potential revenge alongside the coming clash of enemies on the field. With empathetic characters and a uniquely distinct setting, this novel will appeal to anyone interested in a romantic adventure bristling with Scottish feistiness and charm.

Karen Bordonaro

ISABELA’S WAY

Barbara Stark-Nemon, She Writes, 2025, $17.99, pb, 296pp, 9781647429645

Following the Edict of Expulsion in 1492, tens of thousands of Jews fled from the kingdoms of Spain to Portugal, where they endured further persecution. Notwithstanding the coerced baptisms of Jews and Muslims, an expanded Inquisition sought to root out and punish secret “heresies” among New (converted) Christians, while appropriating their collective wealth.

Isabela’s Way imagines an underground railroad—a network of guides and safe houses that might have helped New Christians in the early 17th century escape through Spain and France to places of relative safety such as Hamburg or Venice. To help them navigate this passage safely, communications are sent via a language of symbols—embroidered onto clothing or other portable textiles—that signal whether a hiding place is secure or compromised. Fourteen-year-old Isabela, gifted at needlework, is unknowingly recruited by the network, even as she flees danger and searches for her father.

The central love story is a little wooden, and some of the other character relationships lack dynamism. But what Isabela’s Way wants in character tension, it more than makes up for in plot. As it weaves together three stories of flight, the narrative moves from scene to scene with the momentum of a thriller. It is also laced with Gothic touches, including a villainous priest, a secret passageway, and numerous dagger-wielding strangers. Perhaps more than anything, this is a coming-of-age story in which a young woman discovers her identity and her agency through her craft. Stark-Nemon’s novel is a historical tale for our own times—one that dramatizes an era of violent disenfranchisement, expulsion and imprisonment through the terrors and dreams

of those who seek only to live, work, and worship in safety alongside those they love.

Anna Neill

16TH CENTURY CARNIVAL OF LIES

D.V. Bishop, Macmillan, 2025, £18.99, hb, 384pp, 9781035041947

February 1539. When Cesare Aldo is engaged to foil a plot to assassinate Duke Cosimo de’ Medici, he is not expecting to be drawn into an additional quest – to recover Cosimo’s stolen journal, which could threaten the safety of the whole of Florence if it fell into the wrong hands. The trail leads back to Venice – a city Aldo has sworn never to return to, but where his lack of allies forces him into a dangerous collaboration with ruthless femme fatale and spymaster Contessa Valentine Coltello, who could betray him at any moment to save her own skin.

The fifth Cesare Aldo novel follows on more or less directly from the previous novel A Divine Fury, but that shouldn’t deter readers new to the series. The characters leap off the page, and Bishop is adept at filling in just enough detail of past events to explain how everyone is linked. The sights, sounds and smells of Florence and Venice (and the road between the two) are vividly evoked, and there’s also the opportunity to learn some naughty words in Italian.

Unlike the previous novel, which follows the conventional murder(s)-investigation-solution template of traditional crime novels, this is more of a thriller – one man on a dangerous mission, aware that there are few, if any, people he can trust to aid him. The reader is told early on what becomes of the journal: the question is how Aldo will be able to retrieve it (or destroy it) and get out alive, when so many odds are stacked against him.

For long-term fans, there are some new insights into the formative experiences that made Aldo who he is and clear signposts at the end that a sixth book is planned. I can’t wait.

Jasmina Svenne

THE BRUEGEL BOY

Emma Darwin, Holland House, 2025, £14.99, hb, 400pp, 9781739104771

The Bruegel Boy is an engrossing read set during the religious conflicts, the Beeldenstorm, in Flanders and Holland during the mid-1560s, and featuring nineteen-year-old Gillis Vervloet, model and muse to artist Pieter Bruegel. The novel is structured so that sixty years later, Gillis wants

to achieve his original goal of priesthood and enter the Benedictine monastery of St Bartolomëus in the Saarland forest. To do so, he must make an account of his life, in particular during the religious conflicts, with a clear conscience. He is also presented with a quest by the abbot to recover a statue once possessed by the abbey: a life-sized Archangel Michael casting Lucifer from Heaven. This quest is dramatically and movingly intertwined with Gil’s life story.

Characters inhabiting The Bruegel Boy are exquisitely drawn and complex. Bruegel is portrayed as a respected painter with his own dangerous secrets. We see his home life, his relationship with his wife and servants. The novel is gripping from the early scene when Gil first meets Bruegel. Forthcoming scenes, some comic, are set vividly in Brussels and Antwerp. Emma Darwin draws us into a world where, like Gil, we quake equally at the evangelicals’ destruction of churches and at the Inquisition’s response. Through Gil’s eyes, we observe how the master’s paintings during this period reflect everyday life in the city. Gil is human. He has love to conquer and much jeopardy to face. This is a novel scribed in beautiful prose as finely tuned as one of Bruegel’s paintings. The novel is a profound exploration of humanity, love, brotherhood, vocation, loss and reconciliation. It is undoubtedly an astounding achievement.

Carol McGrath

THE MARCHESA

Sarah Dunant, Whitefox, 2025, £24.99, hb, 366pp, 9781917523080

On an unspecified day in the present, Isabella D’Este waits in the shadows of the Mantua Reading Room for her newest scholar to access the archive. A chill runs down the scholar’s neck as a puff of wind sends a paper spiraling to the floor. Isabella has successfully manipulated another discovery about herself. Thus, Dunant sets the stage: her protagonist, here in modern times, acts as first-hand guide to 1500s Italy. This ingenious narrative trope steers us unerringly through the novel. As Dunant has mused, what was it like to be an intelligent, educated Renaissance woman? Why is every known Renaissance artistic genius male? Did some higher power assign a gender to creative talent?

Isabella’s marriage to Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, who is always away fighting, proves the perfect landscape upon which to showcase her skills. She shrewdly directs her husband, her marriage,

disagreeable bedchamber duties, and the provision of an heir. A renowned art collector in her own right, Isabella’s relationship with the brusque Mantegna and the sensual Guilio Romano are expertly drawn. Regent during Francesco’s absences, and during the minority of the heir, Federico, Isabella is a distinguished aristocrat with a foot in many worlds. Turbulent politics, skittish artists, magnificent art and influential people: Isabella deals with it all with flair, and a determination to preserve beauty for posterity.

Our one-on-one journey with Isabella, from her Ferrara childhood to her status as Marchesa of Mantua, through her sister’s tragedies, Italy’s warring states, and the 1527 sack of Rome, reveals a remarkable breadth of personality and ability. She revels in the sublime (Romano’s recreation of her studiolo) and laughs at the ridiculous (poxriddled Francesco’s demands for his conjugal rights) with equal fervour. An intellectually brilliant woman who avails herself of every opportunity—yet the sense at the denouement is that there is still more to discover about the remarkable Isabella D’Este.

Fiona Alison

HER WICKED ROOTS

Tanya Pell, Gallery Books, 2025, $29.00/ C$41.00, hb, 352pp, 9781668087299

Her Wicked Roots unfurls like belladonna at midnight in this dramatic retelling of Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter.” It is the kind of Gothic novel that draws you in, keeps you wandering its paths, and reminds you that you, too, want to have a creepy, all-women manor house with vast poison gardens. At its center is Cordelia “Cordi” Beecher, who escapes an abusive charity school in search of her older brother, who had vanished two years previously. She arrives by chance at Edenfield, a sprawling estate ruled by the formidable Lady Evangeline. Despite its idyllic name, Cordi soon learns that every hallway and garden path of Edenfield are full of dark, dangerous secrets.

This is a fast read with excellent atmosphere, as well as some characters you love to hate. I appreciated Cordi’s relationship with Briar, one of Evangeline’s daughters. Pell portrays their bond with the intensity of one’s first love. It is the kind of love story that carries real risk, not because it is doomed, but because it is so open to a multitude of vulnerabilities. Pell writes it, and the whole novel, as a story about desire and power that feels very present and modern.

That said, the descriptions of Edenfield and especially the gardens left me wanting greater detail. I wanted more poisonous blooms, folklore about deadly plants, or facts about botany that could have made Edenfield itself more of a character. The atmosphere is there, but I felt it lacked some of the finer details that would have elevated it further.

Still, Her Wicked Roots is a lovely sapphic Gothic tale that proves the genre still has plenty of relevance to modern society. I

recommend it for readers who enjoy Gothic stories, especially those who like love and menace tangled together.

Kristen McQuinn

THE WAR WITHIN ME

Tracy Ryan, Transit Lounge, 2025, A$34.99, pb, 356pp, 9781923023390 / $12.99, ebook, 356pp, B0F9JN9L1L

The French Wars of Religion (1562-98) are an endlessly fascinating period, not the least because the actions of female rulers were so instrumental in the years of death and destruction they involved. Ryan is in the process of a trilogy that examines three of these figures: Marguerite de Navarre in The Queen’s Apprenticeship (2023), her daughter Jeanne D’Albret in The War Within Me (2025), and (to come) Jeanne’s daughter, Catherine de Bourbon. D’Albret is particularly compelling as a character because her marriage to Antoine de Bourbon in the chaotic years of the end of the Valois dynasty produced the first Bourbon king, Henry IV. She, a fervent Calvinist and the powerful queen in her own right of the wealthy region of Navarre, was also one of the main sources of support for the Huguenot rebellion – and her friendship with her sister-queen Elizabeth I yielded significant financial resources for the rebels as well.

Ryan narrates these events from Jeanne’s point of view exclusively, which is challenging because her heroine’s extreme piety makes her an extremely narrow-minded and grim character. Ryan’s attention to detail is more meticulous than dramatic, with dialogue that reads like transcripts from the formal letters of the characters and little internal conflict on Jeanne’s part. This very long novel follows Jeanne back and forth across France as she tries to mediate between Catherine de Médicis and the treacherous French nobility, and the desperate plots of her own Protestant allies. The plot covers much the same ground as the popular TV series The Serpent Queen, but fans of the show hoping for a similarly entertaining treatment of the sexual and political intrigues of the time will be disappointed. Those interested in historical accuracy, however, will appreciate this novel’s careful research.

Kristen McDermott

THE CYGNET PRINCE

G. J. Williams, Legend Press, 2025, £9.99, pb, 320pp, 9781917163484

The Cygnet Prince is the third book in G. J. Williams’ Tudor Rose Murders Series. Jasper, a young German prince, arrives in England claiming to be the son of Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves, and therefore the rightful king of England. William Cecil, Queen Elizabeth I’s most trusted adviser, employs the Queen’s astrologer, John Dee, to disprove Jasper’s claims.

John Dee proclaims himself to be one of the sharpest minds in the land, but, in truth, it is Margaretta, his lowly assistant and scribe,

who solves his cases, for she can read minds as well as Dee’s forbidden Tarot cards.

While Dee conducts interviews, Margaretta, quill in hand, whispers guidance to him in their native Welsh. To avoid suspicion, Dee dismisses her as a mumbling simpleton who just happens to be adept at taking notes. These scenes are a delight, and their complex relationship brings the book alive. Margaretta veers from loathing Dee for taking all the credit, to feeling grateful for his rare acts of kindness towards her.

Surprisingly, Williams’ scene-setting passages are somewhat perfunctory, and consequently the book is dialogue-heavy. Nevertheless, the plot is multi-layered: as well as Jasper, the young pretender, there is a poisoner at large within Elizabeth’s court; a heinous attempt to disinherit Margaretta’s beloved brother; and a terrible betrayal. There are no high-stakes action sequences; instead, the book focuses on diligent detective work, and a large cast of well-drawn, engaging characters who leap off the page.

I haven’t read the first two books in the series, but it didn’t spoil my enjoyment of this fast-moving tale.

Penny Ingham

17TH CENTURY

THE BAILIFF’S WIFE

Maren Halvorsen, Cuidono Press, 2025, $18.00, pb, 280pp, 9781944453282

17th century. Sarah Kidd is on a mission. When this Londoner arrives in a small English village looking for the body of her husband and the fortune he was carrying with him, she is ignored, despite her railing at the villagers night and day. But when one priest decides to help her, she begins to make headway. Frances Bright, a Quaker, is also a widow, and she is attempting to hold onto her home for her daughters, although a male relative is trying to make a claim to it. When Frances is told by another woman that she may have heard the murder of Sarah Kidd’s husband, she begins to look into the situation. Meanwhile, a murderer lurks among them.

This is an intriguing, multi-layered mystery. The treatment of women, the daily lives of the Quakers, the superstitions and prejudices of the time, and a murder mystery are all woven together very well. The founder of the Quakers, George Fox, is a minor character. The determination of both Sarah and Frances to get to the bottom of things during an era when women did not have a lot of pull is commendable and kept me cheering for them. In many different ways, we are shown how women had to break the rules in order to get any kind of fair treatment. The villain in this story is frightening indeed, and the ending is quite a surprise. Recommended.

Bonnie DeMoss

REMBRANDT’S PROMISE

Barbara Leahy, Bonnier Books Eriu, 2025, £16.99, hb, 360pp, 9781804186381

This beautifully composed debut by Irish writer Leahy plunges readers into the world of Geertje Dircx, a nursemaid in Rembrandt’s household who became his lover after his wife’s death and challenged him in court after he abandoned his pledge to marry her. Geertje was treated poorly by her male contemporaries, her reputation tarnished while Rembrandt’s continued to rise. With richly textured detail, Leahy re-creates Geertje’s life and milieu, revealing her perspective and handling her story with the utmost respect.

It’s March 1642 when Geertje’s brother, Pieter, delivers her, a poor widow in her early thirties, to the wealthy artist’s Amsterdam home to tend to his infant son, Titus. She settles well into her new life, loving Titus as she might have loved her own son had he lived, and establishing a rapport with other servants. She also cares for her pretty, highborn mistress, who suffers from ill health. Geertje admires her talented master from a distance, but after Rembrandt’s wife dies from tuberculosis three months later, she succumbs to the pull of connection and begins an affair with him, against her family’s warnings. She remains his secret mistress for years, believing his word that he’ll make her his wife, until a new maid, Hendrickje Stoffels, supplants her in his affections.

Notably, for a novel with a celebrated painter as a major figure, Rembrandt’s work isn’t centered. However, Geertje observes her surroundings with her own artistic eye. We feel the prickliness of her straw-filled bed tick, see the bustling trade along the canal, hear the regular chimes from the Zuiderkerk. She’s outwardly a reserved woman, making her heartbreak over the failed affair more profound. Her female friends, including her outspoken, take-charge cousin Trijn, a wonderful character, provide moral support following all the betrayals she endures. Despite everything, Geertje remains determined to fight for what she’s owed. A transfixing read.

Sarah Johnson

THE PEPYS CONSPIRACY

James Long, Simon & Schuster, 2025, £22.00, hb, 416pp, 9781471182952

Most of us probably know of Samuel Pepys, the 17th-century diarist and all-round gossip who gave great social and political insights into the reign of Charles II and events including the Plague and Fire of London. However, author James Long has chosen to focus his novel on the 1679 event in Pepys’ life when he was accused of treason for allegedly selling state secrets to the French.

Long, and his son Ben, wrote a 2008 nonfiction book, The Plot Against Pepys, which analysed the incident. However, Long says his work left him puzzled over the ingratitude

shown to the man who helped save Pepys from execution – his brother-in-law Balthasar St Michel. So Long turned to fiction and has come up with an interesting exploration of the case. Balty, as Balthasar is known, is the naval muster-master in Deal and reports to Pepys, the Navy chief. When Pepys is charged, Balty investigates and is joined by his 11-year-old twins Sam and Betty. They land in France to try to expose Pepys’ accuser Colonel John Scott. The whodunnit is already known, so the reader just needs to follow the unravelling of the how-dunnit and interesting court politics of the day. The plot made me want to go and read Long’s non-fiction. In this novel, unfortunately, Pepys didn’t appear until over 100 pages in, which was too long a wait for me. The plot jumps around in time, slowing down the narrative. But Balty is well drawn, and the children are a good foil to their father, bringing moments of amusement. One for Pepys fans.

Kate Pettigrew

A FIRE IN THEIR HEARTS

Philip Paris, Black & White, 2025, £16.99, hb, 400pp, 9781785307744

1679, and loving couple Samuel and Violet Colville are trapped in the hold of a sinking ship off the coast of Orkney. It’s a prologue, and we swiftly cut to seventeen years earlier, when, then 13 years old and having escaped the grown-ups onto a heather moor in Scotland, they have an unlikely conversation about a pending civil war. It delivers the background information as to why, when Samuel returns home, he discovers soldiers evicting his father, a minister of the Scottish Kirk.

And so begins a tale of Covenanters, people who believed that the head of the Scottish Kirk should be Jesus Christ, and not the King in faraway London. Feelings ran high, and for decades, so too did the violence. Samuel and Violet, fictional characters, are committed Covenanters, and are present at recorded historical events in the struggle. As they cling to their beliefs, the King’s men become increasingly brutal in their war against Covenanters.

Samuel’s and Violet’s lives are subsumed by their Covenanter beliefs. As the couple are sentenced to be transported to Barbados, the story becomes a study of how far human beings will go to exert power over others. King, Kirk, plantation owner: all enforce their will with shocking cruelty, leaving behind a trail of broken bodies and souls. How can a person survive such horror? Or can they not?

This is historical fiction as education: a useful primer for those not familiar with the Covenanters, a significant part of Scotland’s history as a nation independent of, and different to, England. Recommended for those interested in Scottish history—and as a study of how far people will go in order to exert power over others.

Helen Johnson

I AM YOU

Victoria Redel, SJP Lit, 2025, $28.00, hb, 304pp, 9781638932062 / Firefinch, 2026, £16.99, hb, 356pp, 9781918107005

Historical fiction detailing the poorly documented life of women artists is in vogue now, and this novel presents a rich and sensual narrative of the life and work of Maria van Oosterwijck, the Dutch Golden Age painter whose floral still lifes were considered among the greatest of the 17th century. Maria’s story is not her own, however; we witness her genius through the eyes of her servant-turned-partner, Gerta Pieters, an unforgettable, chameleonic character who transforms from an illiterate servant (dressed as a boy by her family to place her in the van Oosterwijck household), to Maria’s indispensable paint preparer and assistant, to a brilliant painter in her own right and Maria’s life partner, from the 1650s through the 1690s.

Redel, a poet and fiction writer, excels in bringing Gerta’s complex identity and voice to life, and also lends a lyrical tone to Gerta’s descriptions of Maria’s and her own paintings. The paintings themselves are the only record we have of who Gerta was, but in her latest novel, Redel creates a life from the detailed records we have of other 17thcentury painters’ lives. Amsterdam then (as now) was a paradise for the arts, and Redel vividly describes both the narrowness of the male-dominated arts community and the overwhelming sensory delights of the exotic goods pouring into the wealthy city. The relationship between Maria and Gerta is both loving and competitive, complicated by their unequal social class and by Maria’s own refusal to let Gerta publicly claim her own genius. The compromises Gerta makes in the name of love are the heart of her story, but her own wit, talent, and passion – however much they are Redel’s invention – create an unforgettable, honest portrait. This is a novel that contains moments of both hilarity and tragedy, but always feels absolutely like real life.

Kristen McDermott

18TH CENTURY

A CRUEL CORPSE

Ben Bergonzi, Holand Press, 2025, £9.99/$11.99, pb, 350pp, 9798290168883

Carlisle, September 1747. Two years after the ’45 Rebellion, and a sergeant has been murdered. He was widely disliked, but Hayden Gray has more cause than most to

seek revenge and lacks an alibi. Or at least none she is willing to reveal, for her real name is Grace Hayden, and she has been masquerading as a soldier with the aid of her good friend Jasper Greatheed, black-skinned drummer and medical orderly. Nor is that the only secret they wish to conceal. To deflect suspicion, they set out to find the real culprit, but as the body count of murdered soldiers grows, will they themselves become the next victims?

As might be expected in mysteries where criminals seek to conceal their identity, the disparity between appearance and reality is crucial to the plot, but its wider social impact is established from the outset by the stark contrast between Jasper’s respectful words to Major Mottershead and his actual thoughts at the time.

The characterization is convincing and the mystery satisfying, but though the many reversals of fortune emphasize the insecurity of life as well as build suspense, the pattern does become repetitive. The strength of the novel, however, lies in its convincing recreation of life in the 18th century, with all its hardships and injustices, prejudices and social inequities, intolerance and abuse of power, especially within the military, unsurprisingly. Amidst such conditions, the bonds of loyalty and friendship and the courage to strive for a fairer and more compassionate world are all the more admirable. Highly recommended.

Ray Thompson

AN AMBUSH OF TIGERS

Colin Falconer, Skyview, 2025, $25.00, hb, 351pp, 9781764163163

As the French and British fight for control of the lucrative spoils of Carnatic India in the mid-18th century, Lachlan McKenzie is in a quandary. He has no desire to return to the battlefield where he made a heroic mark, becoming known as the Tiger of Karimkot. His wife, Catia, fears for the future and longs to return to her home in Africa. Although there is a brief truce, the Mughal Empire is foundering; princes and nawabs are settling their own scores while watching to see which European power will be victorious. Lachlan must make a decision, and it is only a personal tragedy that forces his hand. Ahead of him lies the deadly experience in what was later to be known as the Black Hole of Calcutta and the history-changing Battle of Plassey.

This vividly described and rip-roaring adventure stands well enough on its own, but readers acquainted with Lachlan’s history via the prequel Fever Coast will have the benefit of greater insight into his motivations

and reasons for being in India in the first place and will also recognize many of the individuals with whom he is involved. There are plenty of exciting double-crosses and underhanded dealings, especially when a new unscrupulous figure takes the stage in the person of mercenary and arms dealer, Gerard Kilcannon, who joins forces with the sinister Adelaide Gagnon in her ambitions.

Characterisation often comes second to adventure in such novels, but there are stand-outs, including the tempestuous and irascible real-life Robert Clive, and Adelaide, the ethereal psychopath. The robust dialogue between Lachlan and his adjutant Tommy is also highly entertaining. For anyone unfamiliar with the background to Britain’s triumph over the French in India, this novel is an excellent introduction.

Marina Maxwell

THE PORCELAIN MENAGERIE

Jillian Forsberg, History through Fiction, 2025, $18.95, pb, 258pp, 9781963452181

The fine art of porcelain making and its early development in Europe serve as a rich historical landscape for this compelling novel set in early 18thcentury Saxony, a kingdom in eastern Germany. It follows the story of Johann Kändler from his modest beginnings in Dresden to his new life in Albrechtsburg, an old castle in Meissen that is now being used as a porcelain factory. In Albrechtsburg, Kändler is both an artist and a prisoner to the whims of King Augustus II, who measures his status and power in porcelain, women, and animals. That Augustus exerts tyrannical control over women becomes abundantly clear through the intertwined story of his mistress, Fatima, who like Johann, is also a valued prisoner. And that Augustus uses animals to further flaunt his sovereignty becomes apparent from the obvious glee he displays when deciding whether they will live or die. In this maelstrom of abusive power, Fatima builds a menagerie of exotic animals she tries to protect, and Johann creates beautiful porcelain animals inside the hellish factory as a way to establish his own artistic legacy.

A cautionary tale of unbridled power, presumed wealth, and perceived status emerges from this novel, while it also poses complicated questions about how valuable art is created, treasured, and preserved for future generations to savor. Highly recommended for its portrayals of authentic historical figures in a narrative that forces readers to consider

what type of an environment these artists lived in, survived, and overcame in their efforts to create lasting beauty.

Karen Bordonaro

RULES OF THE HEART

Janice Hadlow, Mantle, 2025, £18.99, hb, 480pp, 9781509841974 / Henry Holt, 2026, $29.99, hb, 480pp, 9781250129468

Based on her 17-year love story, Harriet (Spencer) Ponsonby, sister to Georgiana (Spencer) Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, relates her experience in her own words.

Harriet was young when she married the Duke of Devonshire’s cousin, Lord Bessborough, whose initial years of open abuse she tolerated because there was no other choice. In Naples, 1793, she fell deeply, madly in love with Lord Granville LevesonGower. Raised to suppress emotion and desire, Harriet did not succumb lightly to a tryst with the dashing Granville, because her most ardent wish was to experience the emotional connection of true love with a kindred spirit, at least once in her life.

The women of the Spencer family seem over-burdened with extreme emotion when it came to love. Georgiana, widely known for her political leanings, is perhaps less well known for her affair and her daughter, born out of wedlock. Caroline Lamb, Harriet’s daughter, was fixated to distraction on Lord Byron; and fate must have hit Harriet hard when Granville entered into a successful union with Georgiana’s daughter Harryo, although Granville clearly reciprocated Harriet’s love and mourned her death (1821) deeply.

Hadlow draws a vivid 18th-century social landscape, as seen through Harriet’s narration, which is felt to be a sincere and fair telling from several angles. Many years her junior, Granville pushed hard for her to leave her marriage, but Harriet never intended to do so, although she trod a perilous path during several previous affairs. Through deteriorating health, Georgiana’s death in 1806 and overwhelming loneliness, Harriet’s telling is evocative but not sentimental. Hadlow draws attention to rigid societal norms and restrictions, responsibility within a marital union which lacks love, and female agency where there is none. Compelling, immersive, informative, and sympathetically written, Hadlow’s novel is an astoundingly good read.

Fiona Alison

RAVENGLASS

Carolyn Kirby, Northodox Press, 2025, £12.99, pb, 438pp, 9781915179715

The Ravenglass family live in Whitehaven, Cumberland, where the father is a shipowner. Resolve transports ivory and slaves from The Gambia and Guinea to Barbados, bringing molasses back home: a despicable but lucrative trade.

Mystery surrounds the mother. There are two children, Fliss and her brother Kit, who knows from a very young age that he should be a girl. He is ridiculed at school, and at Lammas Fair he is forced into a plan to abuse a girl. They choose his cousin, Hannah Salkeld. Kit cannot bring himself to help her, and she is rescued by his father.

The boys, including Kit, are sent to sea, but his naval career is calamitous, and he returns to work in his father’s business. The family slides into disaster. Kit escapes to live as ‘Stella’ with her Black friend Joshy, who abandons her in Newcastle. She makes her way to Edinburgh where for two years she works as a seamstress. But with the coming of the Jacobite Rebellion, Stella and Kit must decide who they really are.

This is quite a long novel, and there is much more to tell. It is not ‘preachy’ in its handling of the central character’s sexuality nor in describing the horrors of the slave trade, but it does not shy away from either. The research has been thorough, whether into ladies’ fashions or life aboard ship. But its great strength is its characterisation, particularly of Kit and his family. The descriptions of the towns and of the surrounding countryside and scenery evoke a sense of place and time.

It will appeal to anyone interested in 18th-century history, the slave trade and the fitting out of the ships, the Jacobite Rebellion, attitudes towards sexuality or anyone enjoying an adventure story. I would recommend it highly.

David Northover

HOUSE OF SPLINTERS

Laura Purcell, Raven Books, 2025, £16.99, hb, 361pp, 9781526627247 / Blackstone, 2026, $19.99, pb, 350pp, 9798228647138

When Belinda Bainbridge becomes mistress of her husband’s country seat, the timing is all wrong. His father has died unexpectedly, and she is heavily pregnant. Belinda is nouveau riche, from her late father’s maritime trade, which explains her marriage to Wilfred, a broke aristocrat. The marriage is a happy one as they set off for his ancestral home, The Bridge, with their son, Freddy, and Sawyer, Belinda’s servant who feels so much more than a servant. They find a great house in disrepair and an uneasy atmosphere, intensified by a group of painted wooden figures, ‘silent companions’ integral to the house, inexplicably mobile with eyes which seem to watch Belinda and communicate with her children.

Questions regarding the circumstances of Wilfred’s father’s death hang over Belinda as she negotiates her new life. Wilfred tries to do the right thing by his disgruntled tenants

as the new lord of an impoverished manor. The sudden arrival of Wilfred’s charismatic brother disrupts things further. He brings with him more unsettling mysteries, revealing other unexplained deaths in the house during the brothers’ childhood.

Laura Purcell’s award-winning calibre is in evidence here, with everything a reader could desire of the Gothic form: uncanny artefacts, mullioned windows and creaking hinges in a run-down manorial home. This is a well-researched novel where historical detail is embedded in story. Through character experience, the reader encounters a smelly 18th century, its fashion, its childcare and maternity practices, such as what happens in a breech birth or if one needs to urinate in a carriage. I would have liked to have been more scared by the artefacts, which at times struggle to convince, but the twists are genuinely surprising. Overall, readers who enjoy gothic tropes will certainly become immersed in this combination of ghostly thriller and whodunnit.

Louise Tree

THE IRISH YANKEE

Regan Walker, Patriotic Books, 2025, $13.99, pb, 322pp, 9781735438184

In June 1775, two months after the first battle of the Revolutionary War, Irish Yankee Jeremiah O’Brien gives up his lumber business and takes to the sea as commander of the Unity. His first order of business? Capture a schooner off the coast of Maine that’s loaded with supplies for the British. When news of his naval success reaches the Continental Congress, he’s granted a letter of marque to operate as a privateer. This allows him to seize British merchant ships, and keep some of the booty for himself and crew, the rest going to support colonial forces. In defiance of the British Navy, he plies coastal waters taking one prize after another, only returning to his hometown in Machias to deliver muchneeded provisions. That, and court Elizabeth Fitzpatrick, a Yankee rebel whose independent spirit is as fierce as his own. All the while, wellarmed English adversaries threaten everything he holds dear as his missions grow increasing dangerous.

First in a series, The Irish Yankee takes a remarkably fresh look at the war for American independence in the New England colonies. Although numerous battles take place at sea with O’Brien at the helm, they are not the primary plot drivers. Rather, this is a wellresearched exploration of what it means to be part of a struggle to forge the destiny of a newly emerging nation. Scenes of farmers

going into battle armed only with pitchforks, and womenfolk melting down iron pots to cast musket balls, are reminders of the desperate conditions. But there are also weddings, shipboard camaraderie, romance and family get-togethers amidst the war effort. The result is a fascinating, informative and thoroughly engaging look at characters drawn from history. The author’s notes are particularly interesting.

Deborah Cay Wilding

19TH CENTURY

THE RETURN OF MORIARTY

Jack Anderson, Crooked Lane, 2025, $29.99, hb, 352pp, 9798892421010

There are three parts to this book: first Moriarty’s recovery in the immediate aftermath of falling down Reichenbach Falls, and a second multi-voice narrative as we are introduced to the setting of the major part of the book, Schloss Alber. The third part is the narration of events by Clara Mendel, a past resident and current visitor of Schloss Alber. This division is a clever device to show the disturbed nature of Moriarty’s mind as he recovers from such a traumatic event as falling down the falls—equally, it offers him an opportunity to dramatically break from the past.

He doesn’t take advantage of this until later in the book. Consequently, the initial section is episodic, showcasing Moriarty’s villainy as well as his brilliance. The second section introduces additional voices via firstperson narratives. This diffuses the focus of the book, which picks up speed again as events unfold at Schloss Alber, an aging town and property where heirlooms go missing and bodies/mysteries start piling up.

Clara’s discovery of Moriarty’s nature is the main theme of the third part. As events progress, this discovery runs parallel to the task of finding the missing heirlooms and resolving the future of those living at Schloss Alber. The juggling of these narratives offers a refreshing perspective as we see Moriarty pausing to consider alternate courses of action. At the same time, each of the characters comes to life, making this an absorbing read.

Clues are generously sprinkled throughout, though there are some things one cannot guess, especially towards the end. Overall, the book captures the spirit of Conan Doyle and the late 19th century but presents it in a different style. I look forward to reading Clara’s further adventures, including meetings with Holmes (perhaps) and, definitely, Moriarty. Highly recommended.

Kishore Krishna

NIGHT COMES DOWN

Richard Aronowitz, Guernica, 2025, $21.95/ C$25.00, pb, 250pp, 9781771839785

The 1841 insular world of Much Purlock, Herefordshire, is being invaded by the railway.

In this place that Grace has only known, nature is her essence. So, with news that construction will begin, she must speak out against it. Sean lives in County Sligo, Ireland; the farm is struggling, and the family is left with heavy debts upon the father’s death. He goes to England to earn money where he joins the other navvies working on the Much Purlock railway line. As the noisy destruction continues, trees and woods, rooks and blackbirds play an important role in the novel.

In alternating views, Sean and Grace tell their stories – his loneliness and displacement common among the Irish diaspora, her battle of nature versus progress, and their friendship and bonding. Grace’s father, a doctor, favors the speed that the railway brings, cutting days of travel to hours. This angers Grace and adds to her many grievances against him; she will teach him a lesson. So, in her skewed logic, she begins a campaign to use nature against him. Sporadically, she adds dried, powdered mushrooms to her father’s snuff. His hallucinations followed by mental disturbance mystify him. She says the speed of the train is disturbing his mind and enjoys her power over him as he obsessively searches for the cause. Intermittently, we check in on Grace at the Hereford Insane Asylum in 1849, always returning to 1841-42 as Grace’s actions become more sinister towards her father, while conducting a normal relationship with Sean.

Aronowitz is also a poet, and his narrative echoes that in the rich, descriptive nature writing. The novel is propulsive and puzzling. How far will Grace go in her twisted campaign against her father? How does she end up in the asylum? Where does this take her relationship with Sean? A wonderfully immersive read.

Janice Ottersberg

VENETIAN VESPERS

John Banville, Faber, 2025, £16.99, hb, 368pp, 9780571386635 / Knopf, 2025, $30.00/ C$39.99, hb, 320pp, 9780593801161

Venice, 1899: Evelyn Dolman and Laura Rensselaer, daughter of an American oil tycoon, travel to Venice for their lengthy but delayed honeymoon.

In the months leading up to their journey, Evelyn has a disturbing

recurring dream that he associates with the lagoon city he is yet to see. Evelyn in his own words is a ‘Grub Street hack’; he has been commercially successful with a series of county guides but wanted to be in the league of Henry James or Joseph Conrad – if not Tolstoy.

This chip on his shoulder follows him into his marriage; why does Laura want to marry

him, he wonders, and not some English noble, no matter how impoverished? The two set out from a London reminiscent of a John Atkinson Grimshaw night scene for the dank, almost empty chambers of the decaying Palazzo Dioscuri. Here Evelyn encounters a cast of sinister eccentrics: his flamboyant but seedy landlord the Count Barbarigo, a grotesque maggiordomo and a pert and knowing chambermaid. Stumbling out to Florian’s, he is latched onto by a wheedling con man who claims an acquaintance from schooldays but whom Evelyn cannot remember at all, and the con man’s beautiful, cloying sister, with whom he rapidly becomes infatuated. But how is it that these strangers know so much about him? Then Laura disappears and Evelyn increasingly believes that he is being gulled, though he doesn’t quite know how, much less (until considerably later) why.

This tour de force of a novel has all the creeping menace of The Turn of the Screw and also has echoes of My Cousin Rachel but is most remarkable for the consistency of its first-person voice, reading not only as though it is set in 1899 but as if it was written then.

Katherine Mezzacappa

SENSE & SUITABILITY

Pepper Basham, Thomas Nelson, 2025, $17.99, pb, 368pp, 9780840717061

Pepper Basham’s Austen-inspired Sense & Suitability shares more with Persuasion than Sense and Sensibility, in that a socially unequal engagement between heroine Emmeline Lockhart and love object Simon Reeves was ended several years before the time of the novel. Simon appears to be a libertine, though the Austen- (or Bridgerton-) trained reader will know to expect that his reputation outruns his reality. Basham explicitly makes the outspoken Emmeline an Austen fan and more, an Austen-inspired novelist herself. Her potential for financial independence, despite the social stain of professional authorship, allows Emmeline to ignore some social restrictions, diluting the power imbalance that otherwise rules Austenian relationships. As Aunt Albina ruthlessly shepherds Emmeline toward practical matches and Simon miserably pursues wealthy women to save his failing estate and clutch of orphaned younger siblings, the two seek to redefine a “suitable” marriage partner.

Basham’s novel is published under an imprint of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, which is apparent only in Emmeline’s handsome cousin, Thomas, a minister. Ministers abound in Austen, of course, good-hearted ones like Edmund Bertram and Catherine Moreland’s father, as well as selfish and vain ones like Mr. Elton and Mr. Collins. But Thomas is utterly without flaw, without a single quirk, and, like Elizabeth Bennet, I cannot laugh at it. His advice is sound, his preaching persuasive, and his social steps always sure and correct, if pedantic.

In Austen, of course, the hero’s heart is generally as much a mystery to the reader as

it is to the heroine. Here, because the narrative alternates between Emmeline’s perspective and Simon’s, the reader never doubts the conclusion and never distrusts Simon’s character. Having said that, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, as much because I knew what was coming as despite it. It is entertaining and delightful, a sweet nod to the world Austen created.

Melissa Bissonette

THE FREEDOM TO LOVE

Jeza Belle, Resource Publications, 2025, $19.00, pb, 188pp, 9798385239603

In antebellum Kentucky, Arthur Buchanan, nine-year-old heir to Lanark Plantation, enjoys playing with one of the enslaved children, Samson. But his parents send him away to boarding school in Virginia, saying that he needs an education so he will be able to take charge of the plantation someday. Arthur is exposed to different points of view on slavery while in school, and when he returns home ten years later, after his father’s death, he shows compassion to erring slaves, which angers his mother, Anna. She believes that only cruelty works to keep enslaved people in line. Anna is keen on marrying Arthur off to the daughter of a neighboring planter, but Arthur’s interactions with the now-grown Samson spark mutual sexual feelings in both men. When one of the enslaved house workers and Anna catch the two in bed together, Anna declares she will force Arthur to marry, and make Samson’s execution the climax of the wedding celebrations.

A novel set in this period and place would find it difficult to sidestep the inhumanities of slavery, so readers might wish to be forewarned about some of the scenes depicting atrocities. My main negative about the plot is Anna’s over-the-top villainy, making her a onedimensional character. And I didn’t believe her reasons, revealed at the climax, for turning against Arthur, which happened long before her discovery that he is gay. On the plus side, romance fans will enjoy the poignant historical gay love story, and will empathize with Arthur and Samson. The story concludes in 1860, with a note of hope for the survivors’ futures.

B.J. Sedlock

BENBECULA

Graeme Macrae Burnet, Polygon, 2025, £12.00, hb, 152pp, 9781846977312 / Biblioasis, 2025, $17.95/C$22.95, pb, 176pp, 9781771967020

In Benbecula, Graeme Macrae Burnet presents a grim but compellingly written novella. It is part of Polygon’s acclaimed Darkland Tales series, in which Scottish authors delve into the nation’s history.

Burnet, whose earlier novel, His Bloody Project, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, takes on another true case as inspiration in this book, in which labourer Angus MacPhee, from the island of Benbecula, murdered his father, mother, and aunt in July 1857. Burnet came across the story that became Benbecula when researching His Bloody Project. MacPhee was

put on trial in Inverness, found to be criminally insane, and then shut up in the Criminal Lunatic Department of Perth Prison. He died at 68 in another asylum, having spent most of his life in confinement.

The narrator of Benbecula is Malcolm, Angus’s older brother, who looks back on the events that led up to the murders some years on. He has been effectively ostracised by the island community, with just a few exceptions, and tries to make sense of what has happened. But he is an unreliable narrator: Burnet builds a sense of uncertainty and shifting culpability in this immersive read, lightened by a bleak humour.

Burnet is a skilful writer who interweaves notions of doubt, justice and guilt into this slim book, and at the same time presents the aching poverty in which many Scottish islanders at that time lived, controlled by powerful figures in the community: landowners, the church. He leavens that loss of power with a sense of the resentment people no doubt felt, and shows how some chafed against restrictions, using what power they had. This is an accomplished novella, and left this reader thinking hard about how the criminal justice system, even today, is weighted against the poor and the powerless.

Katharine Quarmby

THE SKELETON IN THE ROSE BED

Alys Clare, Severn House, 2025, £21.99/$29.95, hb, 256pp, 9781448313020

The Skeleton in the Rose Bed is the fifth instalment in Alys Clare’s A World’s End Bureau Mystery series. I haven’t read the earlier instalments, but this did not hinder me from thoroughly enjoying this intelligently plotted mystery thriller.

It is 1882 and Lily Raynor’s private investigation agency, The World’s End Bureau, has an established reputation in London. The Prologue introduces the novel’s antagonist – a chilling serial killer known as The Barrow Man. From the outset, we know this will be no cosy mystery, and an atmosphere of dread is established, the setting enhancing this (Tower Hill, the site of many brutal executions in English history).

The novel itself follows two interconnected storylines. The first involves the discovery of a skeleton in the garden of three elderly siblings – the Fetterplaces. The skeleton appears to be of a delicate female who has been beheaded. The Fetterplaces want to find out more about their discovery.

However, the Fetterplaces have also been unnerved by night-time lights near to the grave and fear that someone may be trying to steal their find. When Lily’s partner, Felix, makes a nocturnal visit to the site, he is attacked and nearly killed. So, a second investigation begins.

The storyline is really engaging, and I was entranced from the beginning to the exciting conclusion. Given the gravity of the crimes, my only minor quibble in a novel that otherwise put not a foot wrong was why the police were not

involved. To be fair, Clare is aware of this, and, through Marmaduke, Lily is urged on several occasions to involve the law. However, this can be forgiven as the story leads to an exhilarating conclusion. The ending is very clever and points us forward to a possible sequel which, if this one is anything to go by, is going to be a corker. Highly recommended.

Adele Wills

REVENGE, SERVED ROYAL

Celeste Connally, Minotaur, 2025, $28.00/ C$41.00, hb, 336pp, 9781250387394

The third Lady Petra Forsyth novel takes place over a week in 1815. Queen Charlotte has summoned bakers from ten estates to compete for the title of England’s best. Not only is Lady Petra invited as one of the judges, her estate’s baker is a contestant. Other festivities open to the public will take place during that week on the massive grounds and rooms of Windsor Castle.

Early that first morning, another contest judge, Sir Rufus Pomeroy—the former royal chef—lies strangled in a small library. Widely admired, Rufus was not only a great chef but authored highly regarded recipe books. His valet, Oliver, hovers over his body and is arrested, though he claims innocence. Petra’s devoted maid, Annie, is Oliver’s sister, giving Petra added motivation to investigate and save Oliver from a quick hanging. Petra’s snooping reveals that on the fateful morning many people roamed the hallways near the library. She also learns more about Rufus: deeply in debt, he planned to publish a tell-all memoir that would expose treason and rampant scandals among Britain’s high society.

Enhanced by an illustration of Windsor Castle’s layout, the novel expertly transports readers to that time and place. Queen Charlotte, her spoiled oldest son, assorted nobles, their lovers, and servants all come alive on the page. Many have reason to kill Rufus, yet courageous Petra journeys down convoluted paths for justice most women of her era would shy away from. She must fend off threats to herself while following sometimes improbable leads right through to the rousing finale. The five pastries the contestants must prepare provide a flavorful counterbalance to the sinister main plot. Recommended as a blend of the ugly lives of British lords and ladies, a fun bake-off, and murder mystery.

G. J. Berger

SHARPE’S STORM

Bernard Cornwell, HarperCollins, 2025, £22.00, hb, 368pp, 9780008496821 / Harper, 2025, $32.00, hb, 368pp, 9780063219434

A benchmark of quality in military historical fiction, the long-running Sharpe series already takes the eponymous hard-fighting rifleman from 1799 to the 1820s, but Cornwell has been shoehorning further adventures in within the sequence. Here, we are in the final winter of the Peninsular war, 1813-14. Through driving rain, British soldiers have pushed the French back from Spain into the south of their own

country. Major Sharpe is here given a series of independent commands, firstly to ford a stream at night, then to escort naval officers into the battle area so that they can advise on bridging a strategic river.

One of these is Joel Chase (a captain in Sharpe’s Trafalgar, but by now an admiral) who is always careless of his own safety; the spectacle of Sharpe having to urge caution on anyone else is an amusing feature of this book.

There are two full-dress battle scenes bookended by two scenes of stealthy nighttime assaults. The cast of characters includes such favourites as Sergeant Patrick Harper and Rifleman Dan Hagman, along with Lord Wellington, a harsh leader but always aware that Sharpe has earlier saved his life. A vain and cowardly officer, named, remarkably, Peacock, turns out according to Cornwell’s Author’s Note to have been a real man. At times our knowledge of the later series enables us to second-guess the characters in a rather fascinating way – for example, here Sharpe spends much time fondly pursuing his errant wife Jane (if we have read Sharpe’s Waterloo we will know how that relationship will end).

This story is always good value, with endless superbly described action scenes in which the tough, brave and loyal characters vividly leap off the page. Cornwell hints that this may be the last Sharpe novel. If so, the series has ended in triumph.

Ben Bergonzi

TILL TAUGHT BY PAIN

Susan Coventry, Regal House, 2025, $20.95, pb, 310pp, 9781646036325

William Stewart Halsted (1852-1922) pioneered life-saving surgical procedures and invented the use of local pain blockers in surgery. Author Coventry, a medical doctor, tells half of his story through William’s point of view and the other half through that of Caroline Hampton, a young South Carolina belle. She leaves home for nursing school in New York and later becomes William’s wife. William advances to Chief Surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital. However, he has learned the dosages and effects of morphine and cocaine by injecting himself. He, Caroline, and one longtime friend struggle to manage, and often hide, the clutches of his addiction so it does not derail his career, marriage, and friendships.

This fact-based novel vividly shows William’s medical genius in dealing with many ailments from tiny growths that might be malignant to massive goiters and ugly intestinal blockages. Immensely skilled as a

surgeon, William calmly focuses on what is needed in chaos. A natural leader, he misses nothing in the OR setting. He plans every step and insists on cleanliness. However, his halting and bumbling courtship of Caroline fits the time and place when relationships between doctors and nurses were grounds for termination. Caroline’s love, devotion, and appreciation for what they manage and build together often make her the heroine of this story.

Each of the 58 chapters begins with one or more epigrams taken from contemporaneous letters, news accounts, and medical books and journals. These add real context to Halsted’s and Caroline’s journeys. Coventry describes medical procedures using medical terms (“resection” instead of removal, “incise” instead of cut); layman’s terms might have worked better for more readers. Recommended as a mesmerizing account of two people who helped ease the pain and suffering of many at that time and in later decades.

G. J. Berger

THE MAN IN THE STONE COTTAGE

Stephanie Cowell, Regal House, 2025, $19.95/ C$26.95, pb, 266pp, 9781646036240

Many fictional imaginings and retellings of the Brontë siblings’ lives have been published, attesting to readers’ endless fascination with them. The Man in the Stone Cottage is a standout. We join the Brontës in the summer of 1831. Emily is twelve years old, and in her wanderings on the moor, she has come across an old, abandoned stone cottage. This cottage becomes her hideaway, but with time it becomes a forgotten part of her childhood. We move forward to 1843 and the main part of the narrative, with the four siblings –Charlotte, Emily, Anne, and Branwell: Emily is in her mid-twenties, taking care of house and home while walking the moors with her dog, Keeper. The narrative continues following the family’s daily lives and struggles – the father’s declining health and fears for their future without him, Branwell’s inability to follow through with any career and his substance abuse, the girls carrying the financial burdens, and their struggles with publishing their works. The novel ends just before Charlotte’s death. Emily has two sides: the mystic with a special connection to nature who roams the moors, and the domestic who is grounded in home and caring for her father. On one of her walks, she meets a shepherd who takes

her to that stone cottage of her youth for tea. He has restored the cottage and made it his home. As Cowell explores the boundaries between reality and imagination, we wonder if this secret man is real or a figment of Emily’s imagination.

The author’s prose is beautiful and profound. Of Wuthering Heights she writes, “[Emily] took the dull brown of the moor in winter and the endless loneliness of the exiled and dead and blended them in ink and paper.” Her storytelling flows effortlessly as her rich nature writing and her rendering of the dayto-day existence of the Brontës draw the reader into their lives.

Janice Ottersberg

THE BEST-KEPT SECRETS

Sarah M. Eden, Covenant, 2025, $17.99/£11.99, pb, 315pp, 9781524428044

The Best Kept Secrets (Book 3 of The Huntresses) delivers a warm, heartfelt story wrapped in Regency holiday charm and unexpected depth. Set against chilly country inns, estates in financial trouble, and the promises of Christmas gatherings, Eve O’Doyle is caught between survival and vulnerability, and between keeping her family afloat and risking her heart with the quiet, noble Duke Seymour.

Eden excels at weaving celebration with crisis. We’re not just enjoying society balls and festive teas; we’re navigating hard choices, impossible silence, and the sting of disappointment. The Huntresses and the Pack feel like returning friends, and Duke isn’t just romantic, he’s steady and kind, a balm to Eve’s restlessness.

Eve is deeply human: ever kind, ever hopeful, even when the world tells her not to be. Her optimism feels like resistance. And when Eve and Duke are forced to shelter due to a winter storm, their confinement becomes more than necessity. It becomes a moment where trust quietly turns to something more, peeling back layers neither Eve nor Duke expected.

And prepare yourself, because you will gasp aloud at the hurt words inflicted upon— and from—those called family. The emotional fallout hits hard, and Eden doesn’t offer easy resolutions. She shows how healing, when it comes, asks something real in return.

The Best Kept Secrets isn’t just a holiday romance. It’s a quiet, tender story about finding where you belong. In a family that doesn’t always feel safe. In a friendship that holds steady. In a love that meets you right where you are. If you love a slow burn that earns every step and emotions that don’t tie up neatly, this one stays with you. Highly recommended.

Williamaye Jones

A TIGER IN THE GARDEN

India Edghill, Talitho Press, 2025, $16.95, pb, 736pp, 9798282629828

This long, epic saga takes place in India over two years, 1878 to 1880. Impossible to pigeonhole, it is part love story, part

coming-of-age, part exchanged identity, part political thriller, and part Indian history. The throughline tells the story of Lily Shawcross, a sixteen-year-old English orphan travelling to India to live with relatives. She is kidnapped and ends up in the harem of a rajah, Sherdil, in the fictitious northern valley kingdom of Sherabagh. He wants to marry her and have her produce an heir, but Lily, immature and selfish at this point, continues to refuse all his blandishments and attempts at seduction. The story of Lily and Sherdil goes on and on, while the villains who had originally kidnapped her are off-stage for most of the book. There are side sections that go into different periods of Indian history, which some may find jarring. All the seemingly disparate parts do come together through the last hundred pages or so, in a satisfying and sometimes surprising tie-up of the multiple threads.

This book took me a long time to read because of the sheer length. I loved the immersion into this complicated tale of an exotic, romantic, sometimes treacherous land. The extensive appendices and bibliography show how knowledgeable Edghill is about her material. I thought Sherdil and Lily’s story stretched out a bit too much, and the many varying historical periods and stories packed in between the love story could be distracting. At the end, however, it all came together in a glorious whole, like a patchwork quilt or an intricate, oriental carpet. Highly recommended.

Elizabeth Knowles

THE JOURNEY BEGINS

Cynthia Elder, Holand Press, 2025, £9.99, pb, 285pp, 9798282101140

THE DRUMBEATS OF WAR

Cynthia Elder, Holand Press, 2025, £11.99, pb, 367pp, 9798282100938

Both these books are described as novels on their covers and in the author’s introductions, but neither are what one would normally expect of a novel. They had their origin in a cache of about 150 letters, written between 1830 and 1870, which the author discovered when clearing out her late mother-in-law’s house in West Barnstable, Massachusetts. West Barnstable was a seafaring town where the menfolk commonly spent the first half of their working lives as long-distance sailors in the big wooden sailing ships voyaging to the Far East, Australia, and elsewhere. Voyages often lasted two years or more, and the letters found by the younger Mrs Elder were mostly letters to home from distant sons and husbands.

Elder reproduces many of the original letters, only lightly edited, and they are fascinating. She has done a service in bringing them to a wider public. But, of course, they are only one side of the correspondence. To give us the other side, Elder interleaves the original letters with snippets of imagined news from West Barnstable narrated in the third person but set out like letters. It is these pieces of creative writing that presumably qualify the books as novels.

The books are beautifully written, both

the modern and the 19th-century pieces, but the pace is very slow. The outward voyage to Australia could take six months, and one day was very like another. The central character is Captain James Jenkins who, unusually for the era, takes his wife and daughter aboard ship on his voyages. This leavens the correspondence somewhat as Ruth is more loquacious than her husband but even this cannot make Book Two a page turner. Read both books for their insights into the last great days of sail.

Edward James

THE AUSTENS

Sarah Emsley, Pottersfield Press, 2025, $22.95/ C$24.95, pb, 286pp, 9781990770876

In 1802, aspiring novelist Jane Austen, lured by the prospect of financial security and a settled home in the country, accepts a proposal from the lumpish Harris Bigg-Wither, only to retract her answer in the morning. Meanwhile, young Frances Fitzwilliam Palmer, daughter of the Attorney General of Bermuda, frets over her family’s impending move to London. As it turns out, she will soon find love in Bermuda— with Captain Charles Austen, one of Jane’s many brothers.

Narrated in the first person by Jane and Frances, who as sisters-in-law also exchange letters throughout the book, The Austens is a story of two women who make very different choices in life, in a world where women had few to make. While Jane’s life story will be familiar to many readers, Frances’s will be far less so, and it is clear that the author has researched her story thoroughly. The shifting relationship between the two narrators, and the warm one between Jane and her sister, Cassandra, are skillfully depicted.

Nonetheless, I didn’t enjoy The Austens as much as I had hoped. Perhaps due to the author’s determination to keep us mindful of the hardships women faced at the time, a certain gloom hangs over the novel from beginning to end. And while Jane Austen’s firstperson narrative has occasional touches of wit, one still wishes that the narrator sounded a little more like, well—Jane Austen. Still, while no one could call this novel “too light & bright & sparkling,” it is an interesting and informative read.

Susan Higginbotham

THE HIDDEN CITY

Charles Finch, Minotaur, 2025, $29.00/ C$41.00, hb, 288pp, 9781250767165

In 2007, Charles Finch introduced the Victorian gentleman-detective Charles Lenox, a character as endearing as a reader could desire. Not as well-versed as Lord Peter Wimsey, Lenox shares a profile with Dorothy Sayers’s much-loved, self-styled detective: second son of titled gentry who does not need to work but studies crime detection, has an exceptional assistant in a man servant at his side, an older brother as lord of the family

estate, and a woman he faithfully loves and eventually marries.

Lenox lives to solve mysteries in London while reading history, visiting Parliament, and probing into its affairs. Finch portrays London with a progressive-minded tip of the hat to the social morality of Charles Dickens, while engaging readers who prefer intimate circles, even as his detective is solving gruesome, diabolical murders or taking down the aristocracy just a tad.

The previous novel, An Extravagant Death (2021), returned to the series main timeline (following three prequels) with Lenox’s trip to post-Civil War America ending in a near-fatal injury.

In The Hidden City, Lenox is still recovering from the brutal stabbing and is oppressed by it. Nevertheless, he takes on his former housekeeper’s request to solve a cold case murder, which baffles him. At the same time, he welcomes a cousin from India, struggles to accept his wife’s embrace of the women’s suffrage movement, mentors his detective agency, and steers his physician friend toward sobriety.

Finch’s plotting and character studies are driving forces, set off by tangential history and etymology lessons. Recurring cups of tea, a book before a bright hearth, quotidian details of life, and a rainy English climate compose a chorus of refrains. A crime detective pure of heart and sound in his integrity is almost a luxury, and it lingers in the mind, anticipating the next turn of a decade.

Christina

Nellas Acosta

SEASONS OF DESTINY

Howard Glassroth, Holand Press, 2025, £9.99, pb, 226pp, 9798313330617

The Feder family lives in the village of Izbica. The patriarch, David, runs a candle-making business, but with improving road and rail links to the village he decides to build an inn. The new venture is a success, and he eventually hands it over to his son, Usher, and his wife, Leah. The business continues doing well, and they expand to take in paying guests. They suffer a setback when the inn is vandalised due to a misunderstanding, an augur of things to come. They have two daughters, with the oldest, Anna, being central to the action.

Pesach Chenowicz is a hardworking musician living in a Jewish suburb of Warsaw. He has three sons. Jakov, the youngest, marries Anna and moves to Izbica. Avram is a trainee doctor, and Libum is involved in the struggle for Polish independence from Russia. As World War I breaks out and the Germans advance, the retreating Russians cause widespread damage. With the German advance comes the promise of Polish independence, which is ironic in view of future events.

The action runs from 1892 to 1916. Both families are Jewish, which in 1892 caused only minor inconveniences. Small instances of antiSemitism can be shrugged off or ignored, but as time goes on the hatred becomes more open. Businesses are boycotted, students

excluded from courses and doctors unable to find positions commensurate with their qualifications.

The major themes are Polish nationhood, the importance of family and the ever-present spectre of anti-Semitism. The characters are well-developed, and the action moves at a satisfying pace. There is a large cast of characters and, at times, it is difficult to remember who is who.

This is the opening part of a trilogy but stands perfectly well on its own though there is clearly more to come. Excellent.

David Northover

THE CASSATT SISTERS

Lisa Groen, Black Rose Writing, 2025, $21.95, pb, 270pp, 9781685136598

Mary Cassatt, the American Impressionist artist, is a figure well worth getting to know. Born in 1844, Mary spent much of her adult life in Paris, and that’s where Lisa Groen sets her novel about Mary and her sister Lydia. Aged thirty-seven when the novel opens, Mary is at an inflexion point in her career. Her work has been turned down by the Paris Salon for the first time in seven years, and it’s only the arrival of her parents and her dear sister that have kept her spirits up. But Mary is about to meet Edgar Degas, a painter who will shape her work and turn her ordered world upside down when they begin a clandestine relationship.

The Cassatt Sisters paints an intimate, domestic picture of Mary Cassatt’s day-today life in Paris. Her sister is her best friend and frequent model, but the pair don’t see eye to eye over Mary’s relationship with Degas, and Mary’s drive to succeed sometimes stops her from seeing the needs of others around her. While the relationship with Degas portrayed here is largely fictional, Groen tells a story that is possibly true, at the same time as developing a well-worked portrait of two very different, but loving, sisters. The novel has the added benefit of an array of famous secondary characters including Berthe Morisot and the charming Camille Pissarro, whose character is particularly enjoyable. The text includes over twenty reproductions of artworks by Cassett and Degas, which make sense contextually in the story but disappointingly these are not titled or numbered, although they are listed at the end of the book.

Kate Braithwaite

PORTRAIT OF AN UNSEEN WOMAN

Roberta Harold, Rootstock Publishing, 2025, $19.99, pb, 432pp, 9781578691944

Widowed during the American Civil War when her gallant young husband, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, led a heroic regiment of Black troops to their doom at Fort Wagner, Annie Shaw has spent much of the ensuing years living quietly in Paris’s insular American colony. That begins to change in 1892, when 56-year-old Annie, finally on her own after the death of her mother, decides that she

wants more from Parisian life. Spurred on by a chance encounter with her husband’s worldly aunt, Annie makes her way into the artistic circles of Paris, and to a richer—and more complicated—existence.

Harold’s writing is lively, especially her dialogue (“The Sapphists don’t bite, as a rule,” a character advises Annie), and her portrait of Belle Époque Paris is vivid. While I found the romantic entanglements of Annie’s new friends rather exhausting, lovers of shows like The Gilded Age will likely differ. It’s also refreshing to see an older heroine in a genre that often relegates those past middle age to the sidelines.

According to Harold, little is known about Annie Shaw’s postwar life. This novel is a plausible and engaging imagining of what might have been.

Susan Higginbotham

THE HUNTERS CLUB

Alis Hawkins, Canelo, 2025, £18.99, hb, 384pp, 9781804366851

‘Everyone’s dying to join,’ it says on the cover of this third story in the Oxford Mystery series, a succinct description of a complex plot, fizzing with questions about the roles of men and women, the class system and the conflict between Town and Gown.

It is 1883 in Oxford. In the early morning the proctors find a young man, bound, gagged and hooded at the door of his college. Other young men are forced to endure the same mistreatment – and worse. It culminates in murder. The proctors arrest a young shopgirl. She is taken before the University Vice Chancellor’s court and sentenced to be imprisoned.

Originally from Wales, Non Vaughan, a would-be academic and fledging reporter, criss-crosses the town on her ‘contraption’ in defence of the arrested shopgirl and in pursuit of the murderer of a young man. She joins forces with her friend Basil Rice, a fellow of Jesus College. They co-operate in searching through the layers of Oxford society and recount their findings to the reader in alternating chapters. It is so skilfully written you will not confuse the male and the female voice,

The Hunters Club is a complex detective story, and many other things. It paints a convincing picture of the Oxford of that time, its customs and its prohibitions, highlighting how it has changed—for the better. There is also a low-key love story. Love blossoms in an unexpected place. Those readers who know Oxford well will delight in following the characters through the streets and alleyways, catching glimpses of the beautiful buildings which are still there.

Jane Stubbs

nobody knows the truth of it. Forced by the convention of Victorian London to hide in the shadows, she writes medical articles for The Lancet, and her father takes full credit. As medical training is unavailable to a woman, Annabelle is reduced to conducting a secret autopsy in the root cellar as she pursues her dreams. In addition, her mother insists that she marry, and Annabelle weighs her choices and her place in society. Meanwhile, her father denies her wish that she be credited for the work she’s done. Eventually Annabelle finds herself in an unconventional marriage while she desperately tries to pursue a career that is forbidden to her.

This is a character-driven novel centered around Annabelle’s quest to become a doctor, despite the laws at the time forbidding this. Her loves, losses, and heartbreaks are also part of the story, as are her unique intelligence and personality. She is unusual for the time, as she wishes for freedom and brazenly breaks the rules of high society, but still wants to be tied to it in some ways. Sarah, Annabelle’s not-so-trustworthy ladies’ maid, is cleverly written, and her part in the story is important and unexpected. The entire cast of characters is strong, especially Annabelle’s despicable father-in-law and her husband, Thomas, who has secrets of his own. The pace moves slowly at times, but this is a compelling novel about a gifted woman who fights to live out her passions. Recommended.

Bonnie DeMoss

THE GUN MAN JACKSON SWAGGER

Stephen Hunter, Atria, 2025, $30.00, hb, 303pp, 9781668030394

In 1897, the temperature in the Arizona territory—always hot—is even worse in the midst of a bitterly arid drought. When a gaunt and wizened old man shows up at a wealthy ranch looking for a job, the cowboys are amazed. But when “Jack” shows them his prowess with a rifle, the rich owner is impressed enough to hire him for his shooting skills. Not only is the sun broiling but everywhere there is crime, violence, and skullduggery, making a highly skilled marksman an invaluable asset to his employer.

However, Jack is more than he seems: he is on a covert mission to right a wrong. As he goes about his job, simultaneously earning both admiration and suspicion from his boss and coworkers, he clandestinely investigates the root of the corruption and how it might be related to the expanding railroad system.

EVE’S RIB

Nora Hill, Three Little Sisters, 2024, $25.00, pb, 342pp, 9781959350514

Annabelle is a brilliant woman, but almost

This is a Western espionage novel filled with unlikely twists and turns. There are unexpected and unholy alliances among odd and competing factions including (surprisingly to me) early communists. The U.S.-Mexican border was as dangerous and filled with illicit activity then as it is today, giving any who are willing to risk it a chance to become unimaginably rich. The story is action-packed and provides an all-too refreshing, raw, and honest historical perspective of the times

depicted. There are moments of humor, such as a comically salacious description of a gulp of whiskey. In contrast, the hideous treatment given to the barroom girls is portrayed far more tragically than in the old TV westerns. The climax is tremendously explosive and gives credence to the term “Gun Man” in the title. A superb and engrossing book by an awardwinning author and highly recommended.

Thomas J. Howley

THE MYSTERIES OF PENDOWAR HALL

Syrie James, Dragonblade, 2025, $14.99, pb, 328pp, 9798307796771

Diana Taylor, the eldest of three sisters all one year apart in age, takes center stage in the first of a new romantic historical mystery series from Syrie James. Economic difficulties mean Diana, in her late twenties, needs employment, and in mid-Victorian England, that means becoming a governess. She takes up her new role with a dual purpose, however. Diana’s much-loved godmother has recently lost her brother in an apparent suicide and his surviving daughter, fifteen years old and illiterate despite the efforts of many teachers, requires a governess. Can Diana help the girl and find out what really happened to her godmother’s brother?

The novel opens with Diana taking up her new post at Pendowar Hall, and Jane Eyre-like, encountering her handsome new employer on the road to his remote, gothic home. Brontë references and gothic elements abound, including forbidden areas of the Hall, mysterious footsteps at night, ghostly mermaid lore, and dangerous cliff paths. Through it all, Diana proves a resourceful and likable heroine. Readers will enjoy the mystery unfolding, along with the ups and downs of a budding romance between Diana and her cantankerous employer, and a high-stakes climactic ending that doesn’t disappoint.

Kate Braithwaite

FRONTIER

Nicholas Kane, Holand Press, 2025, £8.99, pb, 220pp, 9798309550029

In 1804, President Thomas Jefferson commissioned an expedition to explore his new western territories and navigate a secure route to the Pacific Northwest. The expedition was led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, and comprised a select group of US Army and civilian volunteers. The expedition took over two years and, along the way, the group encountered various Native American tribes with a clear brief to foster friendly relations where possible while asserting American rights to land ownership.

Although the expedition was judged a success, Lewis died in 1809 of a gunshot wound, either murder or suicide. He was about to publish the journal that he kept during the expedition in the hope of alleviating his financial difficulties. Nicholas Kane has taken this historical record as the starting point for

his engaging and exciting novel. He speculates on Lewis’s death and has suggested some ingenious answers.

The early part of the novel is a largely historical account of the expedition’s preparations and the journey over the Great Plains. The third person narrative moves between Clark and Lewis with extracts from Lewis’s journal, now in Clark’s possession. The descriptions of the American landscape are beautiful and the narrative well-paced.

However, at the Lemhi Pass in the Rocky Mountains, the atmosphere changes. There is a sinister sense of being watched and sleep is interrupted by eerie howls in the night. The genre here feels more like a horror novel –although an expertly written one – and the suspense had me turning the pages at a rapid pace.

This is an unusual and utterly engaging novel. It can be enjoyed on many levels: as historical fiction, as a disturbing horror story but also as a thoughtful and original discussion of the consequences of American expansionism and the politics of manifest destiny. Highly recommended.

Adele Wills

LORD FREDERICK’S RETURN

Catherine Kullmann, Willow Books, 2025, $17.75/£12.99, pb, 269pp, 9798899657405

1816. After the death of his Indian bibi (mistress) in childbirth, Lord Frederick finds ‘India had lost its savour’ and decides to take their daughter home to England. But how will he adjust to conditions there after so long an absence? And how will his precocious four-year-old daughter be received? Despite the traumatic experience of attending the sensational trial at which his younger brother is found guilty of murder only to die of a heart attack in the dock, and the social stigma it attaches to his family, Frederick adapts pretty well, thanks in no small measure to the kindness and support he is fortunate to receive from newmade friends and some family members; and he finds love again with Susannah Ponsonby, whose mother was Indian. Aristocratic males have definite advantages, especially since ‘sufficient funds may compensate for all manner of deficiencies.’

But while the more open-minded are charmed by his daughter’s outspokenness, sticklers for convention consider it a sign of ill breeding. At the vicarage sewing circle, ‘where ladies from both sets traded polite barbs while plying their needles for the benefit of the poor,’ Mrs. Lowe declares, what else can one expect of those who are not only half-castes but illegitimate? This is a thoughtful and involving exploration of the challenges that faced expats and their children after an extended absence abroad, and the incisive satire against the snobbery, prejudice, and double standards which threaten progress towards the happy ending is a delight. Highly recommended.

Ray Thompson

LOVE, SEX, AND FRANKENSTEIN

Caroline Lea, Pegasus, 2025, $27.95/C$31.99, hb, 400pp, 9781639369690 / Michael Joseph, 2025, £18.99, hb, 400pp, 9780241493014

In 1816, Mary Shelley famously visited Lake Geneva with Percy Bysshe Shelley, their baby William, Mary’s stepsister Claire, Lord Byron, and Lord Byron’s doctor John Polidori, who was also a writer. It was an uncommonly stormy summer, and the group decided each person would write a ghost story. Mary Shelley’s contribution, of course, was what became Frankenstein.

This isn’t the first novel that has been written about this gathering—an earlier one, Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein, by Anne Eekhout, was reviewed in this publication—but it may be the best. The Mary Shelley of this novel is a silently raging, deeply feeling, imperfect heroine whose actions in the novel are not predictable, despite this being a well-known part of her life. In the novel, Mary has ignored her innate instincts in order to placate her fickle lover, Percy Shelley, who is also sleeping with Mary’s stepsister Claire. Mary’s first baby has died, Percy has behaved horribly to her, her father has abandoned her, and she feels powerless about it all. As she develops her ideas for her ghost story, however, she reconsiders her memories and comes to a greater understanding of herself.

The novel unfolds revelation after revelation, in a gripping progression that feels completely authentic. Fans of Mary Shelley will clearly find this a worthwhile read, but it also finds a place in the canon of feminist stories about women forging their way in difficult circumstances.

Elizabeth Crachiolo

ALICE, OR THE WILD GIRL

Michael Robert Liska, Heresy Press, 2025, $29.95/C$39.95/£22.00, hb, 408pp, 9781949846720

Liska’s three-part novel begins in the French Polynesian South Pacific in 1856. Lieutenant Henry Bird commands Fredonia; he isn’t a captain by rank but is top of the hierarchical naval order aboard ship. On a small, deserted island (let’s call it Bird Island), Bird and crew come across a number of murdered men, and Bird catches occasional glimpses of a child. When his men find her, he orders her taken aboard Fredonia, where, fearing she is mad, he keeps her locked up, even when challenged by First Officer Rand. The girl does not speak and prefers to be unclothed, and, after praying with/for her, Rand coaxes out the single word

‘Alice’. This insubordination of rank earns Rand dangerous payback from Bird. The journey to Chesapeake Bay is reminiscent of many naval stories, and once docked in Portsmouth waters, a hearing takes place. Bird is given guardianship and leave to take Alice home.

The second part of the novel comprises Bird’s self-promoted speaking tours, after which they head for San Francisco, where an enterprising theatre manager has a play about the ‘wild child’ enacted to packed houses. None of these events involve Alice’s participation. This is where the narrative truly shone for me. Liska’s writing vividly conveys the action, and events felt so real that I went looking for more information. Alice’s long solitary island existence comes to light slowly, and while she retains some agency through odd choices, she keeps to the physical space Bird allows her—an engaging mix of submissiveness and defiance. At a loss as to how to control her, Bird frequently relies on laudanum. Stark reminders of the Bounty mutineers, beforehand and on Pitcairn, crop up in Alice’s and the omniscient telling, including the choice of William Christensen for one of Bird Island’s dead. This poignant tale is one that definitely grows on you.

Fiona Alison

THE DERBYSHIRE DANCE

Roseanne E. Lortz, Madison Street, 2025, $12.99/C$17.99, pb, 302pp, 9781961708068 1810, and a new vicar has arrived in Derbyshire. Nor is he the only new bachelor to move into the neighbourhood, for rusticating nearby is Nigel Lymington, the Duke of Warrenton. Nigel is a rake, hiding from the violent criminal to whom he owes money, but when Belinda Morrison comes looking for her cat, he finds himself unexpectedly fascinated by this perceptive gentlewoman who is more interested in farming than the fashions and flirtations of high society. ‘Her cool indifference annoyed him. And intrigued him.’

Thus begins an unlikely, but entertaining, courtship between two very different personalities. But perhaps they are not so different after all? Nigel is gradually realizing that he is unsuited for life as a spendthrift rake, and despite her practicality, Belinda is a romantic at heart. Can he reform? Can she trust him? Can they find their way to a happy resolution despite the machinations of various villains, male and female both? Perhaps, but it will take patience, fortitude, and a willingness to learn from past mistakes. Still, Nigel’s growing interest in new farming techniques is a promising development. Recommended.

Ray Thompson

THE SECRET BOOK SOCIETY

Madeline Martin, Hanover Square, 2025, $18.99/C$25.99, pb, 331pp, 9780369762412

This delightful novel captures the restrictive

lives of four Victorian women and one woman’s determination to free them. The Countess of Duxbury, who has buried three husbands, invites carefully chosen society women to join her for tea: a “perfect English woman,” who shows bruises from her husband’s beatings; a rich American who is not considered by her husband’s family as appropriate to be the wife of an earl; and a young noblewoman who is threatened with incarceration in an asylum for her “hysterical” outbursts. The countess proposes that each one choose books from her library and that they meet to talk about them. In vivid and life-changing ways, these book discussions create problems in each woman’s family and lead to excruciating problems for them all.

In this latest historical fiction from Madeline Martin, she continues her fascination with books and libraries but shifts from her earlier focus on World War II. Her descriptions of Victorian clothing, parties and balls, and the women’s fledgling expressions of opinions on books perfectly represent the late 1800’s and serve to entice the reader into the character’s elegant homes and repressed emotional lives. The introduction of such minor characters as a butler who was a prize boxer and a young messenger with a missing front tooth adds a touch of mystery—how did these people become part of the lives of rich women—and also brings the reality of life on the streets of London into clear focus. An excellent read, with a touch of tongue-in-cheek humor.

Lorelei R. Brush

THE MARRIAGE METHOD

Mimi Matthews, Berkley, 2025, $19.00/ C$25.99, pb, 416pp, 9780593639313

In 1864, Penelope “Nell” Trewlove loves her position as deputy headmistress at Miss Corvus’s Benevolent Academy for the Betterment of Young Ladies, a charity school that trains orphaned young ladies to bring down men who have wronged women. Miles Quincey is editorin-chief of the Courant, a struggling London newspaper kept afloat by its scintillating gossip column. Hoping to break a major story, Miles is so intrigued by Miss Corvus’s school that Miss Corvus sends Nell to London to throw him off the scent. When Nell and Miles are hilariously caught in an accidental compromising position, they have to marry to preserve both their reputations and those of the Courant and the school. Meanwhile, Miles

learns that his missing gossip columnist has been murdered, and Nell suspects the murder is connected to the disappearance of a young lady who was on her way to Miss Corvus’s. Together, the strangers-turned-newlyweds set out to solve both mysteries while slowly falling for each other.

The novel is a masterclass in the slow-burn romance, with deep character development, compassionate disability representation, and just a touch of (non-graphic) spice. Even the kissing-only scenes will leave readers hot under the collar. Highly recommended.

Sarah Hendess

SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE REAL THING

Nicholas Meyer, Mysterious Press, 2025, $26.95/C$35.95, hb, 264pp, 9781613166567

Nicholas Meyer has not lost his gift since he wrote The Seven-Per-Cent Solution in 1974. If this novel can be considered evidence, he has only improved his narrative skills— and in an area where Sherlock has not ventured before.

Sherlock Holmes and The Real Thing focuses on the art world in London at the end of the 19th century. The plot is cleverly written and thickens slowly and carefully to examine these questions: What is an original Renaissance masterpiece? What is a copy? And even more seriously, when does a copy become a forgery? What does intention matter when painting copies? Holmes delights in exploring the moral philosophy of creating and distributing art against a background of suspicious characters.

This complicated plot is full of intriguing characters like a landlady who seeks Holmes’s help to find her artist tenant who has suddenly disappeared. Art dealers seem to have secret, second lives. And what about the lovely Juliet Packwood, an art authority who captures Watson’s heart? Who are the victims? Who are the perpetrators? What’s hidden in the closet? Of course, the plot includes dead bodies, and our detective must find the villain who has perpetrated the crimes of both forgery and murder. The sensible and practical Dr. Watson once again serves as his companion and narrator, and, occasionally, a voice of clarity. (Having lost his wife, the doctor now shares the detective’s quarters in Baker Street. Oh, those malodorous chemical experiments in the apartment!)

Readers should plan to read this novel in one sitting! And then re-read it!

Joanne Vickers

NEEDLE AND BONE

Tonya Mitchell, Bloodhound, 2025, $16.99/£10.99, pb, 338pp, 9781917705288

In this accomplished thriller set in Philadelphia in 1841, 17-year-old Annis Hargrave flees New York when she witnesses the brutal murder of a young woman by a psychopath.

However, Annis and her younger brother, Ben, discover opportunities for two orphans are limited. And when Ben breaks his leg and loses his job as a stagehand, the pair face the grim choice between a quick death by starvation or a slower death working in the mills. But what seems to be a devastating blow turns out to be a stroke of good luck, for the brilliant Dr. Thomas Mütter takes Ben’s case and offers Annis work as a medical illustrator at the nascent Pennsylvania School of Medicine. However, this fragile promise of happiness is still threatened by the madman, who continues to stalk Annis. She is also stalked by the ghost of the girl whose murder she witnessed. But does the unlaid spirit want to warn Annis or is she out for revenge?

The suspenseful chase plays out across an impeccably researched picture of the early days of the Jefferson Medical College, the first medical school in the United States, and the founder of its Mütter Museum, Dr. Thomas Mütter, a pioneer in the field of reconstructive surgery, as well as the first surgeon in Philadelphia to use ether. Highly recommended.

Erica Obey

A GAMBLE ON LIBERTY

Robert W. Smith, Meryton Press, 2025, $14.99, pb, 277pp, 9781681311135

Civil wars are the most brutal wars, with families split and former friends viciously set against each other, especially in border areas where loyalties are divided. Robert Smith illustrates that dynamic in his novel, set in eastern Tennessee during the American Civil War.

Smith bases his book on his ancestors, Robert and Permelia Gamble. Robert enlists in the Union cavalry, leaving Permelia on their Tennessee farm, along with their baby daughter, two enslaved people, Robert’s teenage sister Attie, and Permelia’s teenage brother Charles. While Robert fights for the Union, his family fights off a predatory banker and defends the farm against raids by deserters, bushwhackers and a Confederatesympathizing local government that doesn’t

mind robbing Union sympathizers to feed the Confederate army.

This book starts off a little wobbly. In the interest, I suspect, of fidelity to what he knows of his ancestors’ true story, Smith introduces too many characters in the first chapter without fleshing them out, and sometimes provides too much distracting expository information, at the expense of focusing on his main characters and developing the reader’s sympathy for them early on.

But the story grows on you as you read, because Robert and Permelia are such admirable characters, facing separation, brutal losses and hard decisions with courage and resourcefulness.

I especially liked the development of Robert and Permelia’s relationship with the enslaved characters, Nero and Bessie. Early in the story, the Gambles have held the other couple as slaves for years without knowing much about them. As Robert leaves to fight, he must trust Nero and Bessie to help defend his family. To trust them, he and Permelia must get to know them better. The growing respectful relationship between the enslavers and the enslaved is very well done.

Kathryn

Bashaar

HAWTHORN

Elaine Thomson, Sphere, 2025, £16.99, hb, 320pp, 9781408724637

Hawthorn by Elaine Thomson is the first in a planned quartet of ghost stories, all set in Scotland. This introduction to the series is set in the autumn of 1871 in the weeks leading up to the Gaelic festival Samhain – 31st October. It is a time when the barrier between the living and the dead is at its thinnest, allowing spirits to return briefly to the mortal realm.

The narrative purports to be The True Account of Robert Sutherland concerning the Haunting of Leask House in the County of Caithness. Our narrator is in the Inverness District Asylum, where he writes his story looking back. He is a surveyor and has accepted an assignment helping to chart one of Scotland’s most remote north-easterly counties. After an accident, he is taken to the neighbouring Leask House, home of the Sinclairs, to recuperate.

This is a beautifully written recreation of Victorian Gothic, akin to Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black. The setting is eerie, bleak and atmospheric. There is nothing more fearinducing than being cut off from civilisation by a hostile landscape. Sutherland is an interesting narrator. As a scientist, he takes a rational perspective – but comes to learn that ‘there are more things in heaven and earth’.

Many features come straight from Victorian sensationalist fiction: secrets, madness, murder, ghosts. Sutherland is a working man, educated at the University and employed to chart the world according to the strictures of science. The Sinclairs, alternatively, have had easy access to privilege, wealth and servants –but a mix of unwise investments and decadent over-spending by the male family members

has eroded this. As the two worlds collide, an exciting story emerges.

Overall, this is a very entertaining read: well-written, engaging and suspenseful. Lovers of Victorian Gothic, of ghost stories on a dark winter’s evening or of creepy folklore will thoroughly enjoy it.

Adele Wills

20TH CENTURY

UNSPOKEN

Jann Alexander, Black Rose Writing, 2025, $19.95, pb, 369pp, 9781685136222

Ruby Lee Becker’s silence is louder than any storm. Born into the swirling dust of the Panhandle in 1935, she loses so much so young— home, innocence, family—and much of the rest of her life becomes a struggle to name what broke her.

Alexander’s writing hits that dust in your lungs. The novel shifts between Ruby’s experiences in Waco, the children’s home, and later adulthood, along with her mother Willa Mae’s parallel world behind the asylum walls. Sometimes those interludes slow the forward drive, but each one carves more of Ruby’s shape. They tell us why she can’t stay silent, why she pushes for voice, reclamation, even when speaking costs her everything.

I felt tethered to Ruby in a way that pulled me forward. Her longing to rescue her mother, her repeated failures, her grit—they felt like my own lungs filling with dust. The side characters— Ida Rose, Josef Richter, Will Becker—don’t just orbit Ruby, they reflect parts of what family can be, beyond blood.

The Texas Panhandle in Unspoken is tough country—storms, drought, loss—but Ruby meets it head-on, rebuilding her life and her land with quiet determination. There’s grit and grace here. Ruby survives and creates something lasting, something that feels like home.

This novel is for folks who want historical fiction that grabs your heart and doesn’t let go. Unspoken will stick around in your mind, because legacy isn’t just what’s passed down. It’s what you refuse to let slip away.

Williamaye Jones

SHIP OF DREAMS

Donna Jones Alward, One More Chapter, 2025, £9.99/$18.99/C$25.99, pb, 368pp, 9780008701543

This novel approaches the familiar tragedy of the Titanic not with melodrama but with the poise of carefully crafted historical fiction. It is less concerned with the spectacle of catastrophe than with the textures of early

20th-century lives, and the social pressures before the iceberg was struck. The novel follows Hannah Martin, a woman intent on repairing her faltering marriage, and Louisa Phillips, still single, but fleeing an oppressive family arrangement. Their contrasting stories, woven against the backdrop of Edwardian transatlantic travel, allow Alward to explore the period’s class distinctions and gendered expectations with nuance. Dinner tables gleam with excess, but behind the polished silver lurk anxieties about money, marriage, and social reputation.

The writer demonstrates a keen eye for historical atmosphere. Details of shipboard routine—the regimented elegance of firstclass dining and the mingling of optimism and unease among passengers—anchor the narrative in time and place without becoming just documentary fiction. At times the dialogue feels overly modern for 1912, briefly breaking the spell of the period. Some conversations following the disaster feel premature, with characters speaking as if they knew details that only emerged months or even years later.

It is the inner lives of women negotiating a society in which their choices are narrowly circumscribed that drive the narrative. When catastrophe finally intrudes, it intensifies the novel’s central questions: what must be surrendered, and what must be preserved, when survival itself is uncertain? In rendering private drama against the sweep of public disaster, Alward restores lived experience to an event now ossified by familiarity.

Ship of Dreams is not simply another retelling of Titanic lore; it is a finely judged exploration of women’s resilience within the constraints and the possibilities of their time.

Douglas Kemp

WATCHING OVER HER

Jean-Baptiste Andrea, trans. Frank Wynne, Atlantic, 2025, £14.99, pb, 544pp, 9781805462736 / Simon & Schuster, 2026, $29.00/C$41.00, hb, 368pp, 9781668221969

Jean-Baptiste Andrea’s immense, powerful novel – Watching over Her – won the Prix Goncourt when it was first published in French in 2023, a well-deserved accolade. Its English translation by Frank Wynne was published in August 2025. This novel is so many things: it is an unusual love story; it is a historical epic exploring 20th-century Italian history and the rise of fascism; it is a disquisition on art, religion and politics; and it is a sprawling family saga documenting a time of huge social change.

The first-person narrative centres on Mimo Vitaliani, a sculptor living in the Sacra di St

Michel near Turin. The story opens in 1986 when Mimo is dying. The novel then shifts back in time for Mimo to tell his story from his birth in 1904. En route, Mimo strikes an unlikely friendship with the aristocratic Viola Orsini.

The writing is superb, and the narrative time shifts are deftly handled. Suspense is exceptionally masterful, outcomes of key events often tantalisingly denied until later. The writing is always beautiful. Stone is a repeated image, from the Romanesque monastery columns to the ‘faded pink’ stone of the landscape to the monumental architecture of fascism. Characterisation is detailed and believable, with characters revealed in all their complexity and contradictions.

The blending of the storyline and historical events is skilfully done. The characters are caught up in wider issues and their responses are key to the way the story develops. The world is also often seen in terms of art: the frantic Futurist vibrancy of Turin; the hazy pointillist landscape of Liguria. This culminates in the central image of the Pietà, both Michelangelo’s and Mimo’s.

The story gripped me from start to finish. The cataclysmic ending is unexpected, poignant and deeply satisfying. This is writing of the first order.

Adele Wills

THE RIGHTEOUS

Ronald H. Balson, St. Martin’s, 2025, $30.00/ C$42.00, hb, 304pp, 9781250373083

In 1943, Western allies either did not know, did not want to know, or did not believe that Adolf Hitler was killing every European of Jewish ancestry. The Righteous follows two former college friends as they discover and combat the genocide.

Balson exposes the ignorance and prejudices of many Americans to the unfolding extermination and how a courageous few discover and combat the horror. Julie and Theresa serve as everyday observers of the ignorance and inertia on both sides of the Atlantic. They prowl the intersections of American government departmental conflicts and coverups, international diplomacy and relief, and the resistance inside the Budapest Jewish community as fellow Jews disappear from the Hungarian countryside enroute to the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Along the way they meet and assist many historic heroes.

Such a serious topic merits Balson’s somber approach; however, speeches masquerading as dialogue, background data dumps, and repetition bogs down the narrative’s pace. For example, the statistic that 12,000 Jews a day were being shipped north is repeated a dozen times—often in conversations among the same people. Likewise, Ira Hirschmann’s previous rescue of Jews from Hungary is belabored. Many “as you know, Bob” conversations repeat known data. In 1943, regular telephone calls from Budapest to Bern, Switzerland and

Stockholm, let alone Washington, DC, would not have been so easy.

The book brings the past to life through the eyes of sympathetic participants employing excellent history with an overlay of fiction.

Ron Andrea

THE MAN ON THE ENDLESS STAIR

Chris Barkley, Polygon, 2025, £14.99, hb, 294pp, 9781846976896

In the 1950s, young author Euan is summoned to a remote Scottish island by his famous mentor, Malcolm Furnivall. The older man is later found dead in suspicious circumstances, and it falls to Euan to investigate. He is also given responsibility for completing the celebrated novelist’s final book, but where is the manuscript? As this murder mystery unfolds, everyone in the Furnivall family and their extended household seem to have secrets and ulterior motives, not least Euan himself. False leads abound, and the threat of further violence stalks the crumbling mansion’s maze of corridors, while the surrounding landscape becomes imbued with a sense of foreboding. Events take on an increasingly uncanny aspect as Euan’s grasp on reality weakens and we slide headlong towards a weird and unsettling conclusion.

Barkley’s debut novel is a potent brew of classic tropes and modern psychodrama. His characters are vividly drawn, and he succeeds in creating a claustrophobic atmosphere that envelops both them and us until it feels like we all have a tainted past that cannot be shirked. I suspect the denouement will divide opinion, and each reader must decide for themselves whether to take it literally or not. Those who relish the likes of Poe, Dunsany and Borges will take this in their stride. While for those who prefer crime fiction not to stray beyond the bounds of realism, I believe they will nevertheless be amply rewarded by the twists and turns of the plot before the truth is finally revealed, even if the conclusion itself is not entirely to their satisfaction.

Nigel Willits

THE TWO ROBERTS

Damian Barr, Canongate, 2025, £18.99, hb, 299pp, 9781805301547

The Two Roberts follows the lives of artists Bobby MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun. It begins in September 1933 at Bobby and Robert’s first day at the Glasgow School of Art. Both from working class families with scholarships, they are drawn to each other; neither fitting in with their middle- and upperclass peers, but both supremely talented. The novel charts the development of their relationship from friends to lovers (at a time when homosexuality was illegal), as well as their journey through art school and their burgeoning careers as artists afterwards.

The novel is beautifully written, with evocative period depictions especially of Glasgow during the 1930s Depression.

The point of view flits between Bobby and Robert, as well as other secondary characters at times, and the reader gets a good sense of the contrasting natures of Bobby and Robert. Bobby, garrulous and outgoing, and Robert, who is quieter and more reserved. The secondary characters generally feel shadowy and less well drawn (especially the multitude of new characters introduced when the Roberts move to London), but this serves to emphasise the all-consuming nature of the relationship between Bobby and Robert, and their art, which persisted through the highs and lows of their careers.

Overall, this is a fictionalised biography of two artists who, as Barr says in his afterword, are not as celebrated now as they deserve to be. Well worth reading.

Serena Heath

A BITTER WIND

James R. Benn, Soho Crime, 2025, $28.95/ C$38.95, hb, 384pp, 9781641296465

This is the twentieth installment of James R. Benn’s fictional yet factual Billy Boyle World War II Mystery series. This one immerses U.S. Army Captain Billy Boyle in top-secret electronic warfare, then involving radios, radar, signal jamming, secret scientific breakthroughs, and cutting-edge hardware, plus human intelligence.

On Christmas Day, 1944, Billy celebrates a brief reunion with his English girlfriend, Captain Diana Seaton, by walking along the White Cliffs of Dover. In a top-notch cliffhanger opening, Billy and Diana manage to recover a body dumped over the edge, and this exciting mystery/military thriller starts with a bang. Likeable, superheroic Billy, a former Boston cop, is attached to SCEAF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) under General Eisenhower. Diana is deep in Royal Air Force hush-hush radio work. Their previous war adventures have filled many earlier installments of this swashbuckling series. When the body turns out to be a murdered RAF officer, Billy swings into action. Soon there’s another victim, and it’s clear that dark deeds—possibly including espionage— are roiling the U.S.-British intelligence base where Diana works. Billy’s crusade to solve the mystery carries him to “a strange and faraway land shrouded in secrets,” or what is now, approximately, Serbia, then being hotly fought over by various factions. Pages fly by at a breathless pace as the novel—and Billy—race from close call to close call, with a plentiful body count and well-integrated World War II history along the way.

Characters recur from earlier installments of Benn’s saga, which is skillfully narrated, featuring moments of genuine heroism and pathos, excellent descriptive passages, bloody battle scenes, and unrelenting suspense. Highly recommended for World War II buffs and aficionados of historical thrillers, spy novels, and military fiction.

Susan Lowell

L.A. WOMEN

Ella Berman, Berkley, 2025, $30.00/C$39.99, hb, 416pp, 9780593639153 / Aria, 2025, £14.99, pb, 448pp, 9781035920471

It’s 1975, and Lane Warren is an L.A. fixture, a legendary writer and journalist and now a mother of twins. But it’s clear all is not quite as it seems in Lane’s life, or in the life of her sometime friend, Gala, who appears to have gone missing. Lane is writing a book, loosely based on her missing friend, and as the novel switches back and forth between 1975 and ten years earlier when the two women first meet, a tantalizing portrait of a friendship and a writing rivalry gradually emerges.

Los Angeles almost feels like a character in this book, one that is vividly and affectionately portrayed, warts and all. Berman’s characters have their ‘warts’ too. The central figure, Lane, is a complex character – ambitious, driven, self-important, and emotionally trapped by the demons of a difficult childhood. Gala, on the other hand, suffers in her own way from the happiness of her childhood, finding her parents’ perfect marriage is a hard standard to live up to. Much less inhibited than Lane, Gala’s openness to drugs and experimentation have harsh consequences, while Lane, struggling with her career, secretly sticks the knife in Gala’s budding writing career.

While I avidly turned the pages, keen to find the answers to Gala’s disappearance, the relationship between the women, on which so much of the story hangs, didn’t always ring true for me. They’re drawn to each other despite their dissimilarities and are able to understand each other at a deep level with apparent ease, while spending very little time in each other’s company. Like R. F. Kuang’s Yellowface, L.A. Women tackles competition and betrayal in the writing world, and for a woman in the 1970s there’s no doubt success was hard to attain and retain. Lane is a hard character to warm to, however.

Kate Braithwaite

IN THE ABSENCE OF MEN

Philippe Besson, trans. Frank Wynne, Scribner, 2025 (c2002), $16.99/C$22.99, pb, 176pp, 9781668089828

In the summer of 1916, Europe is in the throes of war. As more men march out of Paris to face the Germans on the front lines, sixteenyear-old Vincent de L’Etoile, aristocratic son of wealthy Parisians, is too young to join the fight. Left mostly on his own, he becomes acquainted with middle-aged Marcel P., a famous novelist, and the two begin a kind of friend/mentor relationship. Meanwhile, Arthur Vales, the 21-year-old schoolmaster/soldier son of Vincent’s governess, arrives home on a week’s leave, and the two young men enter into an explosive affair of pleasure and discovery. For Arthur, their intimacy helps to blot out the horrors of war; for Vincent, it is an emotional revelation.

Constructed in three parts, Besson’s novel portrays three men whose lives become intertwined over the course of one week, with

lasting consequences for each of them. The middle section, “Separation,” is depicted in letters between Vincent and each of his intimates, who are at first unknown to each other, and describes each character’s background of secret desires, love, trust, family, and the emotional pain. As the layers are peeled back and more is revealed, Vincent realizes his true feelings concerning both Marcel and Arthur. When tragedy occurs, it is left to Arthur’s mother, Blanche, to offer Vincent solace, understanding, and the final truth about her son.

Apart from the somewhat confusing way he writes dialogue, Besson has crafted a sensitive and sympathetic story of three men who manage to connect with and influence each other during a time of dreadful chaos, terrible destruction, and an uncertain future. Marcel’s thoughtful rumination on love being the root of unhappiness alone is worth the read.

Michael I. Shoop

HUGUETTE

Cara Black, Soho Crime, 2025, $29.95/C$39.95, hb, 336pp, 9781641294492

Cara Black, author of the Aimée Leduc mystery series, has written a fast-paced, gritty thriller about a young woman’s fight to survive in the last days of World War II in France. Huguette finds herself orphaned and pregnant after being raped by a Nazi. Her father, who traded with the Germans on the black market, is murdered after the liberation of Paris. Accused of theft, Huguette goes on the run to avoid jail time, and is rescued by a young police officer, Claude Leduc. She finds a job running errands for a famous film director, who asks her to use her skills with numbers to falsify his accounts and hide his black-market dealings. But as she is drawn into the criminal underworld of black marketers, Huguette cannot escape her past and finds herself in danger from her father’s enemies. Then she meets Claude once again and finds he is investigating the murder of her father and several other victims, including her best friend. Will Claude save Huguette from her past, or will she become the next victim?

This is a wonderful novel about a natural survivor whose actions often fall outside the law, but who is so likeable that you cannot help but root for her. The world Huguette inhabits is a rough one, dealing with US Army deserters who have become black marketers, and men who will kill at the slightest provocation, and much of what she goes through during the war is hard to take, but makes for compelling reading. I also enjoyed the insights into the film

industry in 1940s France. Readers of Black’s series will recognize Claude Leduc as the man who inspired his granddaughter Aimée to become a detective and will be interested in seeing him in his younger years. Highly recommended.

Vicki Kondelik

AN UNLIKELY PROSPECT

Shelley Blanton-Stroud, She Writes, 2025, $17.99, pb, 256pp, 9781647429461

When Sandy Zimmer inherited The Prospect newspaper from her late husband, she was told to stay in the background because she couldn’t possibly handle the world of publishing. She listened to her naysayers, including her controlling, condescending father-in-law, until V-J Day in San Francisco. As a riot begins, and rapes and murders occur, Sandy witnesses the attacks on women firsthand. Because no other papers are reporting this, Sandy orders The Prospect to begin investigating.

This novel is based on a true story, and I was stunned that rapes and murders actually happened in San Francisco on V-J Day, which seems always to be depicted as a joyous occasion in the United States. Sandy’s personal growth is well-written, and I cheered her on as she went from timid widow to heart-of-steel publisher over the course of the story. The villain in the story, the fatherin-law, is an example of not just sexism, but the corruption of the time. The descriptions of what happened during the celebration turned riot are extremely well done, and the campaign going on in San Francisco to host the United Nations headquarters is part of the story. Fans of strong female characters and post-WWII fiction should check this one out.

Bonnie DeMoss

DEADLY SECRETS AT BALLYFORD CASTLE

Ellen Butler, Power to the Pen, 2025, $6.99/ C$9.99, ebook, 287pp, 9781734365092

When aspiring investigative reporter Ariadne Winter arrives in rural 1950s Ireland, she is eager to relax and attend a glamorous party celebrating the engagement of her cousin and the eldest son of the Baron of Ballyford. The party preparations are, however, disrupted when a body is discovered in the abandoned castle. Ariadne’s amateur sleuth instincts kick in, leading her to believe that the death was not an accident. She is soon drawn into a quest for the truth, even though her life might be at risk.

Deadly Secrets at Ballyford Castle is a playful whodunnit, which blends a classic mystery with the fading glamour of post-World War II aristocratic life. Butler skillfully weaves in the realities faced by the declining upper classes striving to hold on to their vast estates as the world changes without them. The setting captures the last breath of a bygone era with lingering customs like dressing for

dinner, which give this novel a certain charm. Though the novel has some jarring similes, like calling out specific football players, the cast of characters is diverse and lively.

S. Taylor

TWO TRUTHS AND A MURDER

Colleen Cambridge, Kensington, 2025, $27.00/ C$37.00/£25.00, hb, 272pp, 9781496742780

In this fifth installment of the series, inspired by Agatha Christie’s Hallowe’en Party, Phyllida Bright has returned from London to Listleigh Village to resume her duties as Agatha’s housekeeper. While her employer struggles to finish writing a new mystery set on the Orient Express, Phyllida is hired by Vera Rollingbroke, a member of the local gentry, to establish if her husband is romantically involved with Genevra Blastwick.

To aid the investigation, Vera hosts a dinner party where Phyllida observes Genevra and Sir Rolly and decides there’s no affair. But then attention-seeking Genevra coaxes the guests into an after-dinner game of “Two Truths and a Lie.” One of her statements, that she’s witnessed a murder, startles everyone, especially her sister Ethel. On the way home, Ethel is killed in a brutal hit-and-run by a partygoer who mistakes her for Genevra— which means there are now two murders. With help from Bradford the chauffeur and Agatha herself, Phyllida sets out to solve the connected crimes and determine which of the party guests is a coldblooded killer.

As with all the Phyllida novels, Two Truths and a Murder is fast-paced, well-researched, atmospheric, and loads of fun. Readers new to Phyllida’s adventures will figure out the characters and relationships quickly, and maps of Listleigh and Mallowan Hall aid with setting. Those already familiar with the series will relish the unfolding of Phyllida’s sizzling romance with Bradford and the reappearance of secondary characters from previous installments. Two chapters that stray from Phyllida’s third-person point of view seem gratuitous, but they are minor flaws in an overall delightful mystery.

Paula Martinac

THE FRENCH KITCHEN

Kristy Cambron, Thomas Nelson, 2025, $17.99, pb, 384pp, 9781400345267

1943. Kat Harris is working in her late father’s auto shop and barely speaking to her mother, who had left her father for a wealthy man years ago. When her brother Gavin decides to join the military, and then disappears, Kat’s life is changed forever. She is determined to find him and joins the OSS, the precursor to the CIA, hoping to use their resources to locate Gavin. Chef Manon Altier is head chef in a famous restaurant frequented by Nazis, but is also assisting the

French resistance at night. Then she meets Kat, who is working undercover in her kitchen.

1952. Kat Fontaine, mired in a marriage of convenience, is navigating post-war Paris and still trying to find Gavin. Then she ends up in a cooking class taught by Julia Child, an American with a Cordon-Bleu education and an OSS past. It is in this class that Kat begins to discover secrets from her time working with the French Resistance.

When I first started this book, I thought Julia Child would be the star. Instead, Kat Harris/Fontaine easily commands this story. Kat, an independent, talented, and strong woman, is easy to connect with. Julia Child is a solid supporting character, but Manon Altier shines in that role as well. The overall novel is riveting, but the reader may find it hard to navigate the jumps in time between 1943/44 and 1952/53, as well as the point of view changes, because they occur so often. I had to look back at previous pages several times to keep the story straight. That said, the novel is full of suspense, intrigue, and heartbreak, while at the same time weaving espionage, French cooking, and the French resistance into a story that will stay with the reader for a long time. Recommended.

Bonnie DeMoss

ALL OF US MURDERERS

KJ Charles, Poisoned Pen Press, 2025, $17.99, pb, 352pp, 9781464227530

A remote country house. An Edwardian family at war with one another. An inheritance up for grabs. The ingredients for a murder mystery are all here, and charmingly cooked up with a dollop of spicy queer romance in KJ Charles’ latest outing.

Zeb Wyckham has reluctantly agreed to visit his uncle’s Gothic manor. He’s not prepared, however, to find his dysfunctional family are also attending, or that his ex-lover Gideon Grey is there, working for Zeb’s uncle. Worse, they have all been brought together for a reason. Uncle Wynn is determined to marry off his ward to one of the men in the family and then choose that person to be the heir to the family fortune. The Wyckhams are a greedy lot. This won’t end well.

All of Us Murderers is a fast-paced, highly entertaining read. Charles makes the most of her gothic location in a story filled with monkish ghosts, disappearing messages, rolling mists, and misunderstandings. The family fortune has been built on the success of Zeb grandfather, Walter Wyckham’s series of highly successful gothic horror novels. Now it seems like someone is trying turn fiction into reality. While the tension builds, the romance between Zeb and Gideon reignites. But try as they might, they just can’t escape from Lackaday House. It seems the two heroes are the only people in the house who are who they say they are, but will they live to find their happy ending? You’ll have to read it to find out.

Kate Braithwaite

ALL THINGS UNDER THE MOON

Ann Y. K. Choi, Simon & Schuster, 2025, $18.99/ C$25.99, pb, 320pp, 9781982114565

Beginning in 1924, Na-Young and her friend Yeon-Soo are living in a small village in Korea under Japanese occupation. When the widowed Yeon-Soo’s young son dies, her precarious status in the household of her inlaws makes it impossible to stay; Na-Young’s father arranges an unwanted marriage for her. These two events prompt the girls to run away. But life on the run is dangerous, and they are at the mercy of Japanese soldiers. A devastating event brings Na-Young back home to accept her fate, while Yeon-Soo continues a vagabond life. They lose touch, but that emotional bond remains with Na-Young throughout the novel. Even after Na-Young settles into marriage, her goal of adventure and seeking a better life doesn’t end. Learning to read and write proves invaluable to her on her quest to find fulfillment.

Headless Chicken, a favorite character early in the novel, adds a touch of levity to this serious novel. A botched beheading leaves the chicken with enough remaining of its brain stem to live and run around headless. People from miles around would pay Yeon-Soo’s mother-in-law for the privilege of seeing this miracle chicken. Headless Chicken accompanies Na-Young and Yeon-Soo on their adventure into the unknown countryside and plays a role in saving their lives.

The many lifelike, secondary characters that Na-Young meets over the years are ordinary Koreans struggling to live under Japanese control and the suppression of their culture and language – some with acceptance, some with resistance. Danger and adventure follow Na-Young as she falls in with a Japanese resistance group. A teahouse in Seoul makes a wonderful setting for the comings and goings of these characters and a hub for resistance activities. This gripping novel is well-rounded in historical facts and compelling characters, including strong bonds between women, while highlighting this tragic piece of Korean history.

Janice Ottersberg

GOOD GRIEF

Sara Goodman Confino, Lake Union, 2025, $16.99/£8.99, pb, 287pp, 9781662527531

Barbara’s life turned upside down when her husband suddenly passed away, leaving her to raise two small children on her own. Now in 1963, after having her mother live with her for two years, she finally feels strong enough to be on her own, maybe even a little optimistic about the next chapter of her life. But a few days after her mother leaves, an unexpected guest arrives, Barbara’s mother-in-law, Ruth. Convinced she is needed and not willing to take a polite no for an answer, Ruth moves in and upends the calm home Barbara has worked so hard to create. Days turn into weeks, and Barbara is at her wits’ end. Gentle nudging and outright pleading won’t get Ruth to leave, so Barbara will have to be more creative.

What if she can find her widowed mother-inlaw a new husband? Finding someone who could tolerate Ruth seems like a long shot, but Barbara is willing to try anything. Little does she know that Ruth has similar plans for her. Good Grief is a heartwarming story about two mothers brought together by a shared loss who discover they have much more in common than they thought. Although Barbara finds Ruth’s antics exasperating, the reader will sympathize and see Ruth’s good intentions and charm. The dueling matchmaker’s storyline is funny, and there are inspirational moments as Barbara comes to rely more on her Jewish faith. Perfect for readers who appreciate well-developed characters and are looking for a humorous story about complex family dynamics.

Janice Derr

UNCOVERED IN MERRIWEATHER

Michelle Cox, Woolton Press, 2025, $19.99, pb, 333pp, 9798998757105

In her Jane Austen in Wisconsin series, Cox plans to incorporate the plots of five of Austen’s novels into the adventures of the quiet fictional community of Merriweather, Wisconsin, in the time between the World Wars. In her first volume, Matched in Merriweather, based mostly on characters and events from Emma, she introduced the sisters Melody and Bunny Merriweather, scions of the town’s most prominent family and heirs to their father’s general store, as they struggle to keep the family business afloat despite the Depression and their father’s decline. Melody, a matchmaker like Emma, meddles in the love lives of several friends including Harriet Mueller and Kate Kerwyn, while also pining for the life she left behind as a college student in Chicago.

Uncovered in Merriweather (modeled on Mansfield Park) picks up from the first book’s cliffhanger ending involving Melody and her childhood friend, the surly but attractive Cal Frasier. I recommend reading Matched in Merriweather first, because Melody’s story in book two intertwines with that of a second focus character, the sensitive outsider Kate, a parallel for Austen’s Fanny Price. Both novels are full of delightful characters, witty dialogue, and period details, including a pair of artistic lovers/entrepreneurs, Frank Churchill and Julius Fairfax. Cox notes in her afterword that they are inspired by a real-life couple who transformed the sleepy town of Mineral Point into an influential center for the arts in Wisconsin during the Depression. Their entry into the close-knit community provides a shot of creative energy that allows Melody, Harriet, Kate, and Bunny to imagine more exciting futures for themselves and for their own love interests. Austen fans will enjoy the subtle incorporation of character and details from all six Austen novels; they’ll devour this adventure and look forward to the next one.

Kristen McDermott

THE GOOD DAUGHTERS

Brigitte Dale, Pegasus, 2025, $27.95/C$36.95, hb, 352pp, 9781639369874

The history of the hunger strikes carried out by suffragettes in England in the early 20th century is familiar to readers, but Brigitte Dale has breathed new life into the story by focusing on the experiences of three young women, each from a different social class. Charlotte Evans, expelled from Girton College in Cambridge due to her political activities, moves to London to volunteer with the Women’s Social and Political Union. She is arrested, imprisoned, and refuses food and water. Beatrice Piper, the daughter of wealthy parents, decides to hold on to her privileged life then changes her mind to work on behalf of suffrage. She is arrested and assaulted. Emily Brown, the daughter of the warden at the prison that confines the suffragettes, sympathizes more with the women in prison than with her beleaguered father. She too is arrested. The three women each struggle with love interests of differing sorts.

Effectively using multiple first-person points of view, Dale weaves the three stories together, depicting different motivations and back stories while developing the relationships among the protagonists. The three women and others in their circle are fictional characters, but Dale was inspired by historical figures and real events. She does bring in Winston Churchill and others for memorable cameo appearances. In an unusual choice, Dale has written the novel, which takes place in 19121913, in the present tense. Although readers accustomed to past tense may need time to adjust to Dale’s choice, the present tense adds a sense of immediacy to the story. Dale has illuminated the human side of a crucial social movement in a riveting and inspiring novel. Highly recommended.

Marlie Parker Wasserman

WHISTLING WOMEN AND CROWING HENS

Melora Fern, Sibylline, 2025, $20.00, pb, 374pp, 9781960573803

1924, East Coast US. Nineteenyear-old Bertha “Birdie” Stauffer, a gifted trombonist and concert whistler, is selected to tour with the Chautauqua circuit’s prestigious, allwomen musical ensemble. Longing for independence and the excitement of the Roaring Twenties, Birdie has the chance to escape her domineering older sister’s control and break away from the constraints of smalltown living by performing with the Versatile

Quintet. As she and four eager, ambitious young ladies travel by train, presenting their unique act in numerous east coast cities and towns, Birdie learns more about herself and human nature than she thought possible. From her evolving relationships with colorful colleagues, unconventional romantic encounters, to facing complex family issues, she experiences heartbreak and happiness in new and surprising ways.

Fern’s debut novel is a captivating story filled with intriguing twists and turns in both plot and character development. The 1920s are vividly brought to life through the author’s detailed descriptions and lively, often amusing dialogue. The robust cast of eccentric characters, each with their own quirks and charm, is one of the book’s strongest elements.

Heroine Birdie is an immediate draw –spirited, vulnerable, talented, and resilient, who undergoes a significant transformation from a naïve young girl to a confident and liberated woman. The others in the quintet are fully developed and add the perfect layers of intimacy to the well-structured plot. This journey of self-discovery is a fascinating tale told with humor and pathos. A memorable, enjoyable read!

Marcy McNally

THE GIRL IN THE GREEN DRESS

Mariah Fredericks, Minotaur, 2025, $29.00/ C$41.00, hb, 336pp, 9781250367518

A lockedroom murder mystery in 1920 New York City brings together an unlikely and delightful sleuthing pair in Mariah Fredericks’ witty The Girl in the Green Dress

Atlanta

journalist Morris Markey is new to the Big Apple and keen to find his place in a city where the “lost generation” daily lose themselves in hedonistic abandon. Markey, based on the real-life writer, makes the rounds of speakeasy soirees populated with the leading literary lights, looking to gain recognition. Late one night, Markey observes his dapper neighbor Joseph Elwell and a gorgeous brunette in a shimmering green dress. The next morning, Elwell is dead— shot through the forehead in his locked apartment. Markey has his next big story and begins tracking down those who might know the identity of the mysterious woman in green. Also in the city are F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald: exuberant, newly married, and frequent sufferers of crushing hangovers. When Markey learns the couple saw Elwell at a club that night, he inquires at their decadent

Ritz hotel suite. Zelda, bored out of her gourd while “Scott” writes his next masterpiece, decides to help Markey in his investigation, making “smart set” connections for the ill-atease Markey, who exhibits signs of shell shock from WWI.

Fredericks crafts a robust mystery and bookends it with a different one set in 1950 Virginia, both based on real life cases. Her superb characterizations and sparkling dialogue steal the show with laugh-outloud exchanges between Zelda, Markey, and Scott—but she also creates moving and melancholic scenes revealing the inner demons Markey and Zelda struggle with, darkly portending their future.

With an intricate plot and unforeseen twists reflecting themes of corruption and wartime intrigue, The Girl in the Green Dress is a clever, spirited, and touching Jazz Age homage readers cannot miss.

Peggy Kurkowski

THE SEEKER OF LOST PAINTINGS

Sarah Freethy, Simon & Schuster UK, 2025, £9.99, pb, 400pp, 9781398530713

This is a dual-timeline novel, which alternates between 1997 and 1939-1944. In 1997 London, Beatrice Freemont’s mother, Maddalena, is dying. Beatrice hires Jude Adler to value some family artworks, with the aim of raising funds to save the remortgaged family home. Whilst valuing some photographs, Jude notices an oil painting of a smiling boy, in the style of Caravaggio. When Maddalena dies, Beatrice receives a letter from her mother asking her to return the painting to its rightful owner along with a key to a safe box in Rome.

The wartime storyline focuses on Maddalena’s experience as a cook at the Villa Velare in Rome, working for the Conte and Contessa Montefalco and explores the impact of the Second World War on various people in this wealthy Italian household.

The Seeker of Lost Paintings is an effectively plotted novel with two carefully interwoven timelines. It mainly focuses on Beatrice and Jude’s investigation into the painting, which reveals hidden family secrets for Beatrice in Italy, with the 1939-44 section adding texture and answering the questions posed by the 1997 timeline. Freethy depicts the events of the two timelines with subtle period details which render them real and immersive for the reader.

An enjoyable read.

Serena Heath

THE SECOND TRAITOR

Alex Gerlis, Canelo, 2025, £18.99, hb, 320pp, 9781804363782

Europe, 1940. Persistent rumours concerning the anticipated German invasion of England prompt British Intelligence to believe there’s a Nazi-sympathising collaborationist network not only within their organisation but also out in wider society. MI5/6, while tightly guarding sensitive information, must

also support their own undercover personnel, gleaning knowledge but keeping them secure from other malign forces bent on menacing the UK, primarily the Soviets, at present in a non-aggression treaty with the Nazis, and the IRA.

The air of uncertainty and angst in this newly-at-war world of secrets and spies is authentically conveyed through visually detailed writing that could easily transfer to the screen. In its craft and intricacy the story is as well mapped out as might be accomplished by a master cartographer, transporting us via planes, trains, ships, boats (fishing- and U-), cars, London buses and Shanks’ Pony to various locations in wartime Europe, again realistically and contemporarily described through local research and awash with a large cast of intriguing characters many of whom have names, codenames and aliases; so pay attention.

Gerlis’ simply structured prose permits fluid narrative advancement, increasing the menace and jeopardy as his tale progress with measured relentlessness, illustrating the traitors’ risks, rewards and brutal punishments. His true forte is the classic modus operandi of the spies themselves, such as their messages passed on via chalk marks on park benches or pickle jars in shop windows, and the variety of safe houses for clandestine meetings, his double agents mostly one step ahead of their stalkers as bluffs, double bluffs and dissembling abound; all contribute to a very fine thriller indeed.

Simon Rickman

THE SPIES OF HARTLAKE HALL

R. L. Graham, Macmillan, 2025, £18.99, hb, 400pp, 9781035021956

In the winter of 1917, beneath the labyrinthine corridors of the Admiralty Building in Whitehall, the body of a murdered naval officer is discovered in a locked stationery room. The finder of the corpse is recently widowed Mrs. Jonquil Vane, secretary to Rear Admiral Hall, and—by an elegant stroke of narrative convenience—an initiate into the secret service. The case, at once sordid and suggestive of espionage, is entrusted to Patrick Gallagher, senior detective of the service, whose partnership with Jonquil forms the axis of the novel.

The investigation leads them to Hartlake Hall in Kent, Gallagher’s melancholy family seat, where a decaying house and a clutch of embittered family and guests provide the setting for a weekend of intrigue. The familiar trappings of the countryhouse mystery are transfigured here by the pervasive atmosphere of war: political maneuverings, personal betrayals, and clandestine allegiances intertwine in a pattern of deception that demands the reader’s vigilance. What lends the novel its particular ballast is the convincingly rendered milieu of naval intelligence and Great War espionage. The detail feels authentic without descending

into pedantry, anchoring the story in a world where secrecy and peril are quotidian. The narrative moves with assurance, though the recurring motif of the nearby train line—its rumble invoked almost ritualistically—risks becoming an unintended distraction, a piece of atmospheric embroidery overworked.

As the second novel in a series, the book strikes a careful balance: enough backstory is supplied to orient new readers without bogging down the momentum of the present tale. The effect is a novel that stands firmly on its own. It is not merely a historical crime story, but one that engages with the larger anxieties of a nation at war, where even domestic spaces and private loyalties are permeated by espionage’s ever-corrosive shadow.

Douglas Kemp

FINAL ORBIT

Chris Hadfield, Quercus, 2025, £22.00, hb, 416pp, 9781529435955 / Mulholland, 2025, $30.00/C$44.75, hb, 416pp, 9780316581684

Final Orbit by Canadian astronaut-turnedauthor Chris Hadfield is a gripping blend of historical fiction, political intrigue, and edge-of-your-seat thriller, set against the high-stakes backdrop of Cold War space exploration. Drawing on his extensive experience in spaceflight and mission control, Hadfield crafts a story that feels both authentic and pulse-pounding.

Set in 1975, the novel follows NASA Flight Controller Kaz Zemeckis as he oversees a landmark mission: the docking of Apollo and Soyuz spacecrafts in orbit—a symbol of newfound U.S.–Soviet cooperation. But when a catastrophic accident disrupts the mission and an explosion at Mission Control cripples communication, the dream of unity turns to a nightmare. Tensions rise, suspicion flares, and survival becomes paramount.

Unbeknownst to NASA or the Soviets, China has secretly launched its first manned spacecraft from a hidden base in East Asia. Their goal: to sabotage Apollo without being detected. Fang Kuo-chun, China’s lone astronaut, finds himself on a collision course with history. As blame shifts toward the Soviets and Cold War paranoia surges, Kaz must piece together the truth, navigate political minefields, and find a way to save the surviving crew adrift above Earth.

Hadfield’s mastery lies in his ability to seamlessly weave real historical figures— most notably Professor Tsien Hsue-shen, the father of Chinese rocketry—into the fictional narrative, grounding the plot in plausible, chilling realism. His descriptions of spaceflight are visceral, detailed, and terrifyingly beautiful, conveying the fragility of life in orbit.

Fast-paced and cinematic, Final Orbit is not just a space thriller; it’s a sobering reminder of how quickly global cooperation can turn to conflict, especially when secrets, suspicion, and silence reign. Hadfield’s insider knowledge adds depth and tension to every scene, making this a standout novel for fans of historical

thrillers, space exploration, and political drama alike.

Aidan

K. Morrissey

MISS VEAL AND MISS HAM

Vikki Heywood, Muswell Press, £10.99, pb, 191pp, 9781838340100

1951. The Post Office & Sweet Shop, Walham Green, Buckinghamshire, England. This story tells of the last day at the home and place of work of Miss Beatrix Veal, in her midsixties, and Miss Dora Ham, some ten years older. They have run the post office and sweet shop for the last 34 years, and tomorrow the bailiffs will come, and they will be homeless with no income.

Their options are few: joint suicide or having to separate and each living with unwilling relations, which they both consider worse than death. How they came to be in this position is revealed throughout the book as the two women, ‘public companions’ but ‘private lovers’, reminisce about their lives. It is heartbreaking to read how the two women used to love the social life of The Gateway Club, where the gay community could dance, flirt, drink and smoke to their hearts’ content. The lovers moved from London during the Great War, hoping that life in the country would provide clean air and peace and a way of life where they would be accepted, but the reality was very different, and their romantic dream was soon squashed by the community. They had made a life together, though, and they’d muddled through, their love sustaining them. Love, however, was not enough to feed them and pay for their home when Beattie lost her job as a sub-post mistress a couple of years earlier so that such jobs could be given to men returning from the war. So, here they are, to be evicted from their home and facing two impossible options.

I absolutely loved this book. It reminds me of those written by Barbara Pym, not just because of the era but because of the sympathetic characterisation of the two women.

Marilyn Pemberton

THE WASHASHORE

Marshall Highet and Bird Jones, Koehler, 2025, $19.95, pb, 274pp, 9798888247129

1929. Emily Cartwright has just lost her mother, and her Aunt Isabel, who was estranged from her mother, has been named as her guardian. She travels from Nebraska to Martha’s Vineyard to live in Aunt Isabel’s grand home. She is immediately made to give up her first name and go by her middle name, because Emily was the name of Aunt Isabel’s daughter who had vanished years before. Emily makes a friend, Fiona, daughter of the housekeeper, and is just finding her way around when Aunt Isabel’s friend, Ann, is found dead. Isabel suspects murder and enlists Emily to be her eyes and ears around the house and town. As Emily starts to investigate, will she find the killer, and are she and Isabel in danger?

This is an enjoyable story with likeable

characters and an intriguing mystery. Emily is both an orphan and a “fish out of water,” moving from a country life in Nebraska to her wealthy aunt’s luxurious home. The fact that the skills she learned in Nebraska are great assets is made plain this story, as she is stronger for it, both physically and mentally. Aunt Isabel is the very definition of a “grand lady,” but she also possesses a keen mind and an iron will. There is a theme of grief and moving forward, as Emily is grieving for her mother, and Isabel is grieving for her lost daughter. The Prohibition Era, including the way the rumrunners used the island, is well portrayed. The mystery is intriguing and there are some successful red herrings. There is also an action-packed ending to this story that shouldn’t be missed. Fans of historical mysteries will enjoy this one. Recommended.

Bonnie DeMoss

THE NIGHT WE BECAME STRANGERS

Lorena Hughes, Kensington, 2025, $18.95/ C$24.95/£16.99, pb, 336pp, 9781496752451

This is a complexly plotted historical novel, a fictional story that swirls around one historical event: the live 1949 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds in Spanish in Quito, Ecuador. Orson Welles had broadcast it in the US in 1938, causing a widespread panic by people who really believed the Martians were invading. The broadcast in Quito was scripted in a “breaking news” format, with real politicians playing themselves as they gave “breaking news updates” to an increasingly panicked populace. Some set fire to the radio station, leading to the deaths of fifteen people inside.

The characters in the novel include a journalist and radio actress who died that night under confusing circumstances. Years later, the actress’s daughter, Valeria, the main character in a strong group of ensemble characters, returns from boarding school and decides to find out what really happened to her parents (her father disappeared after that fatal night) while she also tries to establish herself as a photojournalist. Her career pursuits bring her back to her crush, Matías, the son of the journalist who also died that night and whose mother now runs the newspaper. The families were once inseparable, but now Valeria is treated like a pariah.

Lorena Hughes has written a few other novels that jump back and forth in time, entwining multiple plot strands and very different locations. This one is well-structured, with the radio station, and the newspaper offices in the same building, acting as a crucible that concentrates the various story threads. The plot-hopping underlines how even the smallest event, like the loan of a scarf, can alter our destinies for years or forever, though in the end Valeria escapes her destiny and proves that wrongs can be made right.

Alison McMahan

BLOOD VENGEANCE

Douglas Jackson, Canelo, 2025, £18.99, hb, 320pp, 9781835983683

It’s Christmas 1943, and Investigator Jan Kalisz has been spirited out of Warsaw at the behest of Sir Winston Churchill to investigate the mysterious death of a beautiful, brave, yet fiercely antisemitic, Polish agent in Arisaig. Kalisz, a double agent, leaves behind his wife and teenage son, who are caught up in various espionage activities and vulnerable to a curious Gestapo despite Kalisz’s Nazi credentials. His time is limited before he must reappear in Warsaw, and it soon turns out there’s more than one crime to solve.

Arisaig, a rugged area of majestic beauty in northwest Scotland was the location for the training of agents during WW2 and is described by Churchill as probably the most dangerous place in Britain. Kalisz, too, reflects on the harsh regime there commenting that ‘with training like this, it’s a wonder of any of them ever reach the battlefield.’ He is soon caught up in some dangerous maneuvers himself, along with his temporary assistant Flight Officer Lucy Devereux.

This third book in The Warsaw Quartet weaves a complex tale which draws the reader in. The landscape and weather, and the challenges and impediments both create for Kalisz’s investigation, are particularly well described. There are a few chapters set in Warsaw, which are among the most terrifying as Kalisz’s wife is visited by the Gestapo. I did expect Kalisz to be thinking more often and be more fearful for his family as the investigation in Arisaig dragged on, but his attention surprisingly never wavered.

There are a lot of twists and turns, and at times I got confused as to who some of the suspects in Arisaig were as each was introduced. A glossary with a list of the main ones would have been helpful here. Nevertheless, this is both a compelling and fascinating read, especially for its setting in wartime Arisaig.

V. E. H. Masters

STORMING THE REICH

Lee Jackson, Severn River, 2025, $21.99, pb, 438pp, 9781648756405

The latest edition of Lee Jackson’s After Dunkirk series follows the fictional Littlefield family (three sons and a daughter) through their WWII adventures during the last six months of 1944, shifting between the European and Pacific theaters of the war, where the Littlefields’ stories are woven in with actual historic events, battles and real people. The depth of Jackson’s meticulous research and attention to detail is extraordinary here, and he skillfully weaves his characters into the major events of this time period – making the history more engaging when interspersed with character development.

The progress of the war after the Allied invasion of Normandy in early June 1944 through the end of that year was extremely busy and chaotic, and ranged across multiple

fronts – from the brutal battles in the Pacific, bomber missions in Norway, the Allies’ westward advance across France through the Siegfried Line toward the heart of Germany, and the failed attempt to seize the bridge at Arnhem in the Netherlands. So this is a very dense book, but Jackson does excellent work in extracting the highlights of the various battles and the historical figures involved in an entertaining style while never losing sight of the human dimension; he tells these intriguing war stories through the lens of the various Littlefields, with their hopes, fears and emotions on full display.

While it seems incredulous that a Littlefield family member was involved in every important battle, the individual stories within this novel are superbly written and entertaining enough to look past this and enjoy the read. I look forward to the rest of the After Dunkirk series and recommend it to any WWII history and historical fiction buffs.

Nate Mancuso

FONSECA

Jessica Francis Kane, Penguin Press, 2025, $28.00/C$37.99/£25.00, hb, 272pp, 9780593298855

Booker Prize-winning author Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000) published her first novel at age 60. Before fame and a decent income, Penelope, her alcoholic husband, and three children eked out a living from their floundering literary journal and spotty teaching jobs. This story takes place in 1952 after they receive a letter from Irish relatives, two Delaney sisters, now living in northern Mexico. The letter invites Penelope to visit and possibly inherit a large bequest. Penelope travels from London to Fonseca, Mexico, with six-year-old son, Valpy, in tow. This fictionalized rendering of that 91-day trip is partly based on one short article by Penelope and emails exchanged between Kane and Penelope’s grown children.

When Penelope and Valpy arrive, nothing is as expected. The wealthy spinster Delaney sisters drink to excess and entertain lavishly. They have induced many far-away and local people to compete for the mysterious legacy. A variety of the invitees stay in the grand Delaney hacienda and enjoy meals prepared by the overworked Delaney cook. Valpy, the only youngster, engages happily with staff, local nuns, and a Fonseca scout troop.

This novel immerses readers in the town, the Delaney hacienda, and the high stakes competition. Kane lushly describes the fusion of Mexican and Irish foods (green chili scones), the Catholic ceremonies, clothes, weather, and the land. Throughout, Penelope is frustrated being so far from home, from her husband and young daughter, while also pregnant with a third child. Several of the other competitors treat her unkindly and question why she is there at all. The legacy, its amount, when it will be bestowed, and the criteria for earning it remain elusive. Author Notes help sort out the factual and invented

details. Recommended as a well-researched literary novel that sheds light on a little-known venture of a beloved British author.

G. J. Berger

BALKAN RHAPSODY

Maria Kassimova-Moisset, trans. Iliyana Nedkova-Byrne, Tippermuir Books, 2025, £11.99, pb, 218pp, 9781913836252

I originally took this book for review out a sense of duty to my late Bulgarian grandfather, but I was quickly drawn in to this fascinating and absorbing fictionalised biography of the author’s grandmother Maria, here appearing as the main character, Miriam.

The story opens in interwar Bulgaria in the port of Burgas, where Miriam lives with her fierce Greek mother Theotitsa, her taciturn Bulgarian father Todor, and her dreamy and enigmatic younger sister Mila. There are also two brothers, Boris and Pencho, who play minor roles. We are never told how much of the action is true, but that does not matter.

Bulgaria is a more multicultural nation than is generally realised, and it was even more so in the first half of the 20th century. In Burgas, Bulgarians, Greeks, Turks, Armenians, and Sephardic Jews live side by side, but do not really interact.

The stability of Miriam’s family is rocked when she takes up with the Turk Ahmed, who runs a lemonade stall. Neither her family nor his can face the idea of a religiously mixed couple. Miriam and Ahmed face not only hostility from their relatives, but also from their neighbours in Burgas, where the news of this mismatch rapidly becomes common knowledge, and Miriam is soon bombarded by verbal abuse in the streets wherever she goes.

The solution seems to be a move to Istanbul, where they start a family of their own, but even more stress and tragedy await them. There is not really an ending, but Miriam moves on, facing the future with her indomitable strength. The author occasionally holds imaginary conversations with her long-dead relatives, who have been so prominent in the story.

It’s been many years since I read a novel that I did not want ever to end.

Alan Fisk

A DARK AND DEADLY JOURNEY

Julia Kelly, Minotaur, 2025, $28.00/C$39.00, hb, 304pp, 9781250865540

The newest installment in the Evelyne Redfern mystery series presents fans of historical mystery novels with a fast-paced trek following British Special Investigation Unit (SIU) agents Evelyne Redfern and partner David Poole to Portugal 1940. Kelly’s vivid details of politically charged Lisbon, bursting with wealthy expats, sparkling jewels, and a throng of spies, is the perfect setting for this book. The disappearance of a British intelligence informant leads Evelyne and

David to Princess Petrova’s soirees, the Hotel Metropol, casinos, bars, and jewelry shops as they piece together the giant jigsaw puzzle.

Kelly gets readers up to speed by revisiting Evelyne’s famous childhood as the “Paris Orphan,” leading to the estrangement of her father, Sir Reginald. When he suddenly contacts her with a surprising request, she sees it strangely coincides with her new mission as an SIU agent. Disguised as a wine buyer and his secretary, David and Evelyne work with Phillips, head of the intelligence branch in Lisbon, to track an informant who supposedly has knowledge that could shift Portugal’s neutrality in the war. Sir Reginald, Phillips, Princess Petrova, and many more intriguing characters are involved in unexpected plot twists at every turn in the crowded Lisbon streets. Kelly interjects Evelyne’s smartly induced theories to keep readers analyzing the clues as the search for the missing informant progresses.

With each new installment Kelly adds a touch of romance as Evelyne and David’s growing attraction is coyly revealed in details of private moments and memories of their previous assignments as SIU agents. Be forewarned of an unexpected, jaw-dropping ending. This entry in the series is suspenseful, and I await the next adventure with great anticipation. Highly recommended.

Dorothy Schwab

THE SIRENS OF SEPTEMBER

Zeenath Khan, Penguin India, 2025, ₹599.00, pb, 408pp, 9780143471608

On 31 December 1946, Farishteh is a bright fourteen-year-old girl in an aristocratic family in Hyderabad, a princely state in India. Farishteh’s grandfather is close to the Nizam of Hyderabad, as well as General Edroos, the commander of the armed forces. The Nizam declares that Hyderabad will not join India. As her grandfather’s aide, Farishteh gets a closeup view of intrigue as Hyderabad prepares to defend itself against Indian annexation.

We experience the drama of the period mainly through the eyes of Farishteh and General Edroos. Farishteh is a sensitive girl who will change forever in these two years. Her marriage will be arranged, and the tide of history will sweep her fiancé to Pakistan, from where he will write her letters addressing her as Madam Secretary. The cocoon of her privilege will be ruptured often, and she will struggle to make sense of the forces pulling her family apart. General Edroos, a man with a tall reputation, will discover what it is to head an effete army, forced together with a bunch of rabble that he despises, against the juggernaut of the Indian state. He will do what he can. “It’s the game of life,” as he says later.

With the exception of one error (a person could not have seen the smoke in Gurgaon from Queensway), Khan’s writing is studded with gems, including the reasons for Churchill’s fond memories of Hyderabad. It shines especially in the moments when we empathise with Farishteh as she feels the pains of her

turbulent times, and realises that all it takes for life to turn around is for Allah to say Kun fya kun, Be and it is. This is great historical fiction: a story that captures the creaking of the wheel of history and of cogs in the wheel.

A. K. Kulshreshth

TO CHASE THE GLOWING HOURS

Katherine Kirkpatrick, Regal House, 2025, $19.95, pb, 246pp, 9781646036271

What could be more compelling than a romantic archaeological adventure based on the memories of Lady Evelyn Herbert, present at the discovery of the tomb of King Tutankhamun? The novel opens in 1922, as Lady Eve and her father, Lord Carnarvon, arrive in Cairo to the thunder of political protests against British rule. It moves swiftly to the Valley of the Kings, where they witness the unforgettable moment when Howard Carter prises open the sealed door to Tutankhamun’s tomb—and they tiptoe inside to glimpse the dazzling treasures of the boy king, hidden for three thousand years.

From that discovery, events unfold quickly. The unconventional Lady Eve and the mercurial Howard Carter fall into a whirlwind secret romance. The find ignites a monumental dispute over ownership of the artefacts, intensified by fraught relations between Britain and Egypt. Rising costs deepen rifts within the Carnarvon family, while the ensuing crisis forces Lady Eve to grow from a pampered innocent into a mature young woman.

Drawing on newly uncovered letters, excavation reports, and eyewitness accounts, the author vividly portrays Lady Eve’s struggles and the glamour, danger, and passion surrounding the greatest archaeological find of the twentieth century. This is a thumping good read that brings the dramatic events of the era to life.

Keira Morgan

THE SCATTERING

Lauri Kubuitsile, DAS, 2025, £16.99, pb, 305pp, 9781838221522 / Penguin South Africa, 2016, R300.00, pb, 296pp, 9781485903079

Tjipuka and Ruhapo are a Herero couple living in German South-West Africa, now Namibia, with their baby Saul. Following an uprising, the Germans massacre the Herero, and an edict is issued that any of them found on ‘German’ territory would be shot. They escape into the desert, but each thinks the other is dead.

Tjipuka is captured and sent to a camp but is hired out to a shopkeeper. They become friends and then lovers, but after she tries to escape, he no longer trusts her so takes her with him when he travels to Bechuanaland (now Botswana) on business.

Riette is a Boer woman forced to marry an older man. When he goes to fight in the Second Boer War, she is sent to a camp but escapes. Tjipuka, Ruhapo and Riette meet in Tsau, a village in Bechuanaland. When it becomes

clear that Tjipuka is pregnant, the identity of the father is in doubt.

This is a very brief distillation of a very complex plot. The characters are all credible and sympathetically drawn. Sadly, the events described, the massacre of the Herero and the scorched-earth policy adopted by the British in Transvaal, are real, and Kubuitsile does not shy away from describing them in detail. It is a story of unbelievable cruelty and inhumanity.

The settlers see the indigenous population as no better than animals and treat them worse than they would treat any animal. It is also a story of love, loyalty, hope and resilience. The ending is cleverly and sympathetically handled, neither dubiously happy nor heartbreakingly sad but hopeful.

This is a well-researched novel, beautifully written, telling a story that deserves to be heard and will stay with the reader long after the final page is turned.

David Northover

THE SILVER BOOK

Olivia Laing, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2025, $27.00/C$38.00, hb, 256pp, 9780374618315 / Hamish Hamilton, 2025, £20.00, hb, 256pp, 9780241783962

When the death of his lover threatens to expose his sexuality, young English artist Nicholas flees 1970s London for Venice with little more than the clothes on his back and his sketchbook. There, Nico unexpectedly meets famed Italian production designer Danilo Donati, who is in Venice to find inspiration for Federico Fellini’s upcoming production of Casanova. Dani has a penchant for younger men and for “rescuing strays,” as he puts it, and he gives the beautiful Nico both a job and a place to sleep. As Dani’s assistant, Nico travels throughout Italy, working with him on Fellini’s Casanova and, at the same time, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s violent and controversial Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom. The sets of both are places of art and dissolution where Nico shrugs off confining inhibitions. But Italy in the early 1970s is also a place of political turbulence, with brutal conflicts between the far right and far left. In a moment of desperation, Nico is pulled into this brutality, unwittingly setting in motion an act of violence that could change the face of cinema.

The jacket copy describes this as a novel about the months preceding the murder of Pier Paolo Pasolini. But, while The Silver Book certainly has elements of noir, Pasolini’s murder is almost an aside. Rather, Laing’s book is a languid and erotic coming-of-age novel about a young gay man stumbling through the dreamlike world of the cinema. Fellini and Pasolini’s film sets are as decadent and debauched as the films themselves, and Nico skirts the edges of their cinematic illusion as he tries to piece together a newer and more confident identity. Laing’s prose reflects this, being simultaneously lurid and cautious, optimistic and despondent, gritty and glittering. A quick, yet substantial read.

Jessica Brockmole

THE FAULT BETWEEN US

Stephanie Landsem, Tyndale, 2025, $18.99, pb, 352pp, 9798400502057

Young sisters Claire, Bridget and Frannie grow up in a traditional family structure in Minnesota. Suddenly and without explanation, in 1942 Mom leaves her husband, Dan, and their three daughters. Frannie was born just months before Mom left; Bridget is six, and Claire a couple of years older. From that day on, Dan forbids the family to talk or pine about Mom.

The story then jumps ahead to the summer of 1959 at Yellowstone Park. A few years before, Claire had found a summer job there and, not long after, a husband, handsome cowboy Red Wilder. From Claire’s letters, Bridget and Dan sense all is not well in Yellowstone. Dan has never trusted Red and even refused to walk Claire down the aisle at their wedding. Bridget, a nurse, lands a summer nurse job near Yellowstone to size up Claire’s life with Red and their new baby, Jenny. Rebellious Frannie, now eighteen, goes along with Bridget. The actual 1959 Yellowstone Hebgen Lake earthquakes, landslides, and floods crash down on the three Reilly sisters, Red, and Jenny. Dan jumps on a train to try to find his daughters.

Landsem organizes the novel with a prologue, 69 short chapters, and an epilogue, each chapter headed with the name of its main character. This structure helps readers follow intense misunderstandings among the Reilly family, Red, and others. Readers can easily think and scheme along with each main character, gasp at their mistakes, and cheer their victories. Riveting details from Claire’s run-down house and rickety truck to summer traffic jams, foolish tourists hand-feeding wild bears, sulfur stench, and unleashed nature all feel very real. Recommended as both an engaging saga of family strife and a vivid portrayal of Lake Hebgen’s disaster.

G. J. Berger

MIDNIGHT BURNING

Paul Levine, Blank Slate, 2025, $18.95/C$24.95, pb, 374pp, 9781943075966

1938. Albert Einstein and Charlie Chaplin are both at the top of their professions. Chaplin is a world-renowned actor, and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity has skyrocketed him to fame. When they are made aware of a plot by an American fascist group to kill famous Hollywood stars, they fight back using their own unique talents. At the same time, both are carrying burdens. Einstein is facing a conundrum: Should he inform Roosevelt of a development that could cause the Nazis to take over the world, or should he, a pacifist, remain silent? Chaplin is secretly sidling up to the evil Joseph Goebbels so that he can do research for a movie mocking Hitler, but Goebbels has other ideas, and they don’t bode well for the American movie industry. Einstein and Chaplin are phenomenal main characters, and they benefit well from Einstein’s genius and Chaplin’s charisma

and contacts. The real-life Georgia Ann Robinson, first Black female LAPD officer, makes a great investigative partner for them as well. Many other real-world figures make an appearance, including Douglas Fairbanks, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Charles Lindbergh, and of course the horrible Goebbels. I love historical fiction that teaches me something new, and I never knew about the large number of fascist groups in the U.S. at that time. This novel focuses on the fascist group, The Silver Legion of America, or the “Silver Shirts,” led by William Dudley Pelley, and “Operation Hollywood,” an effort by the fascists to kill Hollywood celebrities. Charles Lindbergh’s alleged ties to Nazi Germany are also closely examined. The rapport between Einstein and Chaplin is so well written and believable. The cast of characters is rich and varied, and the author easily blends fiction with fact to create a compelling, well-researched novel. Recommended to fans of historical thrillers.

Bonnie DeMoss

BROKEN MADONNA

Anna Lucia, Fluency Publishing, 2024, £13.99, pb, 256pp, 9781068747007

Atina, Italy, 1949: Adelina and her younger friend Elisabetta live in an orphanage in a town in the Apennines, under the care of Sr Beatrice, whose favourite is Elisabetta. Adelina cares for the babies in the orphanage, while eleven-year-old Elisabetta cultivates a juvenile devotion to St Teresa of Lisieux. The little girl’s epileptic fit results in a Marian vision at a damaged statue of Our Lady, followed by apparent healings, a development which gains significant local, and predominantly female support, but which excites the suspicions of the ecclesiastical (and thus male) hierarchy. The Madonna speaks to Elisabetta in local dialect, just as she used Occitan in speaking to Bernardette Soubirous at Lourdes. Elisabetta herself is not an entirely worthy vessel, being somewhat spoiled (so far as an orphan child can be) by Sr Beatrice’s favour. Adelina cannot help but be jealous, which provokes her to take actions she later regrets. Adelina secretly loves the disfigured former soldier Giulio who tends the orphanage garden and whose damaged leg appears to be cured by the Madonna’s intervention with Elisabetta as her instrument, but his connection to the child goes right back to her infancy. The cult that grows up around Elisabetta’s visions is all too much for the clerical powers that be; they intervene with tragic and life-changing consequences for the child.

Historical references, like Mussolini’s Battle of the Births campaign of 1938, are unobtrusively woven in, though references to St Maria Goretti are substantially wrong; she was not violated, but died protecting her chastity aged 11, and wasn’t canonised until 1950. That said, this is a lyrical, elegiac and empathetic portrait of a small-town community and a vanished way of life, and I found it very hard to put down.

Katherine Mezzacappa

THE WAY BEAUTY COMES APART

Christina Marrocco, Ovunque Siamo, 2025, $19.95, pb, 224pp, 9798986269238

Dead men tell no tales, or so we are taught. Marrocco’s novel, The Way Beauty Comes Apart, proves otherwise. In fourteen interconnected vignettes, each told from the perspective of a dead villager from the fictional town of Nelfin in northwest Wales, she weaves a tale of a community and the ties that bind people together. From a mother grieving the loss of her babies to a young girl in a desperate situation, to figures both honorable and cruel, these voices form a vivid portrait of rural Welsh life in the Victorian era and early 20th century.

The characters in each vignette are, despite the book’s premise, alive. They breathe their thoughts and emotions onto every page. Some of their stories are heart-wrenching, some are quietly profound, some are infuriating. All of them leave a lasting impression. It’s been a long time since I cared so deeply about fictional characters.

One of the novel’s greatest strengths is the way Marrocco threads folklore and superstition through the fabric of modernization. Old beliefs about changelings and fair folk collide with Darwinism, science, and industry. The tension between the generations feels timeless, with one group clinging to faith and the way things have always been done, and another challenging that. Marrocco captures that struggle clearly and compassionately.

A book told entirely from the perspective of the dead could easily slide into gloom. But this book offers empathy and insight, not despair. It is elegiac, a lovely meditation on mortality and the fragile, surprising ways we are connected. It is absolutely luminous.

Kristen McQuinn

THE NORTHERN

Jacob McArthur Mooney, ECW Press, 2025, $18.95/C$24.95, pb, 312pp, 9781770417823

Set in America in 1952, this debut novel follows a man and two boys as they cross Canada in pursuit of signatures from minor league baseball players. Their goal is to secure the rights to use these players’ images on baseball cards—a business dominated by two powerful companies, making their task nearly impossible.

A traveling salesman known as ‘Coach’ journeys across the country with Christopher, aged twelve, and his younger brother, Mikey, aged seven. Coach’s fate is tied to his success:

his livelihood depends on persuading the players to sign with his company. He’s a deeply flawed protagonist. At times he’s an impressive salesman but, more often, a pathetic, violent figure teetering on the edge of breakdown. Readers may struggle to root for him, while Christopher, the eldest boy, is an engaging character. Through Christopher’s eyes, we witness the unforgiving reality of adulthood as he tries to understand and survive it. However, his inner life strains believability. Christopher’s thoughts and actions are often unrealistic for a twelve-year old. His adolescent urges are depicted in a graphic manner that feels both unnecessary and uncomfortably exaggerated.

Mooney’s writing stands out for its exceptional quality. His descriptions are vivid and nuanced. He writes of a phone call with his mother, ‘I could hear the smile in her voice.’ He captures a city at dusk: ‘The City Lights had started to appear… animating the dusk with little yellow eyes.” The ending disappoints, offering no real resolution for any of the three characters, leaving the reader with a sense of unrelenting sadness.

Readers may find that Mooney’s remarkable writing talent is overshadowed by the content of the novel itself, but for those interested in the America of 1952 and the world of baseball at that time, the book will hold particular appeal.

Alan Collenette

SECRETARY TO THE SOCIALITE

Amanda McCabe, Oliver Heber Books, 2025, $19.99, pb, 412pp, 9781648399398

McCabe’s fictional treatment of socialite Millicent Rogers’ time in Taos, New Mexico, brings the setting and the character to vivid life.

Heiress to the Standard Oil fortune, Rogers has a remarkable history, but McCabe chooses to dwell on 1947, the year Millicent moves from Los Angeles to Taos. McCabe portrays a dimensional, contradictory woman who is deeply moved by beauty and determined not to let her frail health limit her. McCabe’s Millicent is also stylish, demanding, temperamental, and fascinating.

The point of view alternates between that of Millicent and the fictional Violet, a sweet, sincere ingenue whom Millicent hires as her secretary and who becomes companion, mentee, and foil. Violet, who has left her Iowa life behind in search of more, is awed by Millicent’s luxurious lifestyle and hedonistic ways. The setting of Taos consumes a great deal of narrative attention as each of the women are captured by the beauty and mystery of the mountain. McCabe brings to life both the real

inhabitants of Taos, like the legendary Mabel Dodge Luhan, and her fictional additions, like handsome Lorenzo Serna, an inhabitant of the Taos Pueblo who enchants Violet.

The drama is quiet but rich as the women settle in and build lives in their new home, Millicent surrounded by vivid memories and struggling not to be an invalid, Violet longing to live life to the fullest, though she doesn’t know quite how. The final quarrel between them feels abrupt and unexpected, though Violet’s release from Millicent’s clutches finally allows her to grow according to her own lights. Their resolution, quiet and soulful, is deeply satisfying.

The book is worth reading for the prose alone; the language is rich and engaging, especially in its love for Taos and the area. Recommended for all readers who love stories of complex and challenging women.

Misty Urban

THE LAST SPIRITS OF MANHATTAN

John A. McDermott, Atria, 2025, $29.00/ C$41.00, hb, 336pp, 9781668058732

In John McDermott’s ethereal The Last Spirits of Manhattan, Carolyn Banks does not want to marry Malcolm, the expected path for a girl of her class in the 1950s. She does not know what she does want, but it certainly is not Malcolm. So, off she goes to New York to visit her Aunt Bella and consider her options.

Meanwhile, Alfred Hitchcock wants to throw a party in a haunted house, or an ostensibly haunted house. Pete Donoff, junior ad man at Young and Rubicam, is dispatched to find one and locates Number 7 East Eightieth Street, which certainly looks haunted. It is scheduled to be sold and turned into apartments, and Pete rents it for the night.

Number 7 belonged to Aunt Bella’s relatives, and she assigns Carolyn to represent her at the event without mentioning that at least one of them is still there in incorporeal form. The invasion of Hitchcock’s party guests disturbs the old house and the rest of the ghostly family materializes, drawing other neighborhood spirits to them, as well. The ghosts mingle with the party guests, inspiring terror, belief in hallucinations, or on Hitchcock’s part, the suspicion that his rival Walt Disney has somehow pranked him.

This gossipy, entertaining novel is peopled with luminaries like Charles Addams and Henry Fonda, whose private lives and past mistakes are put on uncomfortable display by the ghostly visitors. The ghosts themselves, none of them sure why they are still there, have their own past to confront and are modeled on the author’s own family. By the end, the ghosts have sorted out their troubles, while the party guests (except for Pete and Carolyn) take theirs home with them again as the evening dissipates like an enchanted night in the woods of A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Amanda Cockrell

THE SITTER

Caroline McGhie, Waterland Books, 2025, £9.99, pb, 230pp, 9781739603410

The town of Swanton Stoke in North Norfolk is dominated by The Works, a railway depot that employs most of the men. Time is measured by the shift-change whistles.

Rosie Etherington arrives one evening in 1900. She had no reason to choose Swanton Stoke and is clearly there to escape, but initially we do not know from what. Looking for somewhere to stay, she asks Jack Stamp, a boy who shows her to the inn. Rosie, musing on her life, and Jack, writing his diary, narrate the story.

Rosie is a highly skilled seamstress from London and was taking art lessons from Edward Stafford Clark, the reason for her flight. She settles into the higher echelons of the town’s society where she is considered exotic by some, dubious by others. But what happened between her and Edward, and must it come to light? Jack thinks she is the most beautiful person he has ever seen, and his diary is divided between his childhood exploits and his musings on life and on Rosie.

This is not a story of dramatic action but of ordinary lives. The characters are well drawn, Jack is a gem, and there is a rich cast of minor characters. Descriptions of the town, the surrounding countryside, The Works and the weather are evocative. Dramatic interludes pierce the tedium of everyday lives: a storm at sea and a lifeboat launch or railway lines swept away by a flood. It is grounded in events of the time: we hear of the death and funeral of Queen Victoria.

The major themes are class and the immutable structure of society, the subservience of women, the unfulfilled lives of rich women compared to the drudgery of the poor and hypocrisy throughout. A gentle novel that runs deep. Well worth reading.

David Northover

MURDER AT COTTONWOOD CREEK

Clara McKenna, Kensington, 2025, $27.00/ C$37.00/£25.00, hb, 304pp, 9781496748539

Millions of years ago, tiny horses roamed Montana. Their fossilized bones spark the plot of Clara McKenna’s latest novel. Set in Montana in 1906, Murder at Cottonwood Creek is the seventh addition to McKenna’s entertaining Stella & Lyndy Mystery series. Here Lyndy and Stella, formally known as Viscount and Viscountess Lyndhurst, arrive in Big Sky Country to visit Stella’s mother, Katherine Smith, and Lyndy’s father, the Earl of Atherly, an amateur paleontologist who is digging for equine fossils on the Smith ranch.

Horses run through this story—and through the whole mystery series. Beautiful, smart, high-spirited, and horsy, Stella is also a Dollar Princess, an American heiress who marries into the impecunious British aristocracy. Cultures inevitably clash, partly because Stella also has a knack for finding dead bodies and unraveling the mysteries behind them. But

fortunately, her arranged marriage blossoms into a love match, and, despite occasional gruesome moments, McKenna’s series glows with good humor and charm. It is also wellresearched and cleverly plotted. This novel is no exception, painting a generally convincing picture of rural Montana in 1906.

Katherine’s second husband, a taciturn rancher named Ned, owns the fossil site where fascinating discoveries are unearthed by the delighted but bumbling Lord Atherly and his scientific mentor, Professor Gridley. But murders keep happening on the dig. Could Gridley’s bitter rival, the villainous Dr. Moss, be responsible? (Their feud is based on the Bone Wars, a historic rivalry between pioneering paleontologists.) But there are many other possible suspects, so Stella and Lyndy struggle to untangle the mystery. Meanwhile, in a lighthearted, romantic subplot, they try to produce an heir to the earldom. The novel ends slightly clumsily, but nonetheless this adventurous Western ride is great fun.

Susan Lowell

MOSCOW UNDERGROUND

Catherine Merridale, Fontana, 2025, £16.99, hb, 336pp, 9780008761530

It is 1934, and the long-awaited Moscow subway system is finally being built, its tunnels burrowing beneath some of the city’s most important and historic buildings. Archaeologists are brought in to advise on the underground walls, cellars, and hidden passages that may help – or hinder – the construction. But work is interrupted when one of those archaeologists is found murdered, and Anton Belkin is called upon to investigate.

The son of a pre-revolutionary artist, Anton is a lawyer whose job it is to investigate routine low-level corruption, but he is dragged into the enquiry by a high-ranking woman with whom he has a long and complicated relationship. As the story progresses, we meet gangs and corruption, buried treasure, and a yearning for a lost past. Like the underground, the story and its politics are labyrinthine. It is hard to know who the enemy is, and who you can trust.

The author is an acknowledged expert on Russia and its 20th century history. She paints a vivid picture of a state poised between revolution and totalitarianism. There is a chasm between aspiration and reality: ‘they wanted gleaming Soviet steel and the white heat of science, but Moscow reeked of horse manure, dry rot and home-made booze’.

Food – or the lack of it – is a recurring theme. I enjoyed the character of Anton’s friend Misha, a gourmet chef who caters for the elites but always manages to find a delicious morsel for Anton to eat. He seems to symbolise a regime that tries to crush the human spirit, but doesn’t quite succeed.

However, there is a slight danger of drowning in detail. The novel is densely written, and it occasionally feels a bit like a history book. But that doesn’t stop it from

being a thrilling adventure and a compelling read.

Karen Warren

THE ASHTRAYS ARE FULL AND THE GLASSES ARE EMPTY

Kirsten Mickelwait, Koehler, 2025, $20.95, pb, 334pp, 9798888246917

Told from the perspective of Sara Wiborg, The Ashtrays are Full and the Glasses Are Empty is a fictionalized account of her life, spanning from her teenage years to her death in 1975 at the age of ninety-two. Alongside her husband, Gerald Murphy, Sara was part of the Lost Generation of artists and writers of the early 20th century such as Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, Cole Porter, and Dorothy Parker, among others. Along with this illustrious cast, we journey with Sara through the golden years of the French Riviera back to the tragedies which await the family in New York.

The novel is beautifully written, rich in detail, but often reads more like a memoir. As a result, I felt distanced from characters who led such a charmed, gilded existence. Even in moments of supposed hardship, they solve problems by selling one house and buying another: money slips easily through their hands.

Pacing is another issue. The opening drags with repeated emphasis on Sara’s desire for independence from her mother, while later chapters rush through decades in quick succession. Yet when the author lingers on a single year, the prose comes alive: the characters finally breathe, the details shine, and Mickelwait’s evocation of grief is especially moving. The latter half of the novel, in particular, achieves this balance more successfully, bringing to life a story that, while unfamiliar to me, proves both compelling and poignant.

Ultimately, the novel’s beauty lies in its detail, but its uneven pacing and emotional distance keep it from fully realizing its promise.

Samantha Ward-Smith

THE GREAT DECEPTION

Syd Moore, Magpie, 2025, £9.99, pb, 328pp, 9780861549658

Daphne Devine, a British secret agent, is sent to neutral Iceland in 1940 to track down a clairvoyant under suspicion of selling secrets to the Nazis. During her mission, she experiences trials of fear, love, and loss while defending British interests on this mystical island.

At first glance, Daphne seems an inexperienced agent, fresh out of training, making mistakes that a seasoned agent would never make. Despite this, she has the loyalty and determination to carry her mission forward. It is no mean feat integrating into a community while discovering its secrets; and

Daphne does just this, making friends even as she uncovers the traitors in their midst.

We don’t normally think of Iceland for a WW2 historical novel; Syd Moore successfully achieves this and effortlessly portrays the problems that this island had in the 1940s. It was also interesting how she used Iceland’s folklore to enhance her plot in a credible way.

The author includes a useful summary of information at the back of the book of key historical events and witchcraft seen in the novel. However, there are moments where the 2025 views on some events encroach on the 1940s. Despite this, the story has some both light-hearted and serious moments, highstake fights, and tear-jerking conclusions against the backdrop of the wondrous scenery of Iceland that makes the reading worthwhile.

Clare Lehovsky

THE WORLD AT HOME

Ginny Kubitz Moyer, She Writes, 2025, $17.99/ C24.99, pb, 334pp, 9798896360186

Inspired by the Nutcracker ballet, Moyer writes a love letter to her city, bringing 1944 wartime San Francisco to life from a woman’s perspective during a time when over a million and a half servicemen passed through this port city.

The “world” in the title belongs to twentyyear-old orphan, Irene Cleary, a seamstress raised by nuns, who connects, through her work, to the elite world of Nob Hill after socialite Cynthia Burke hires her to redesign her rose satin gown. Cynthia’s Polish husband, Max Bukowski, is so impressed with her sense of style that he hires her to help plan his new nightclub. While at the USO, Irene meets and dances with wealthy Johnny Pendleton, a former Princeton man, now in the Navy. It’s a sweet first love for both before he ships out. The scene of them rowing on the lake in Golden Gate Park is especially romantic and shows how vulnerable these young soldiers can be.

Readers surmise from deftly placed clues and the amount of time Irene and rougharound-the-edges Max spend together that it’s just a matter of time before their business relationship escalates. His cold and disdainful wife, Cynthia, is secretly meeting her former beau, while Max and Irene grow closer. Relationships are complicated, and values are questioned. When her friend Trixie reminds Irene, “he’s married,” we see how values can change in wartime as Irene replies, “Because of the war, the things that used to matter don’t anymore… The old rules don’t apply.”

Fluid prose, natural dialogue, and believable characters and locales add to the joy of reading this novel. Just when Irene is feeling down, she’s thrown into making costumes for the very first American production of The Nutcracker. Small moments of joy provide resilience in a year of momentous challenges, growth, and grace.

Gail M. Murray

THE IVORY CITY

Emily Bain Murphy, Union Square, 2025, $18.99/C$24.99, pb, 340pp, 9781454957829

St. Louis, Missouri, April 1904. The World’s Fair honors the past and previews the future. Grace Carter Covington marvels at how her cousins’ Forest Park neighborhood has morphed into a sea of pavilions and amusements since her last visit. She has learned both determination and realism from her mother, who spurned the Carter riches and a future governor’s advances to marry a Kansas City restauranteur for love. Those cousins, Oliver and Lillie, treat her like equals, so she is invited to the opening banquet and other events with their high society friends. Oliver is one of the city’s most eligible bachelors, but he is smitten with an actress (which would break his mother’s heart), so he swears Grace to secrecy. However, when the actress dies from poison in a glass Oliver gave her, he is jailed for her murder. Grace vows to ferret out the guilty party to salvage her extended family’s honor.

This is Murphy’s second adult historical mystery after making a name for herself in the young adult field. She shows her new hometown in all its glitz and glamour while not denying the homelessness and drug culture in the “Ivory City.” The Fair’s sights, sounds, and smells shine through due to her extensive research, though descriptions sometimes overwhelm the narrative. The theme of family secrets runs through all of the sub-plots, which are sewn up nicely when the killer is unmasked. This is a poignant tale with a plucky heroine in a great historical setting.

Tom Vallar

EVERYONE A STRANGER

Kevin O’Brien, Kensington, 2025, $18.95/ C$24.95/£16.99, pb, 414pp, 9781496738523

1943: Everyone a Stranger is a historical thriller set in wartime America. The novel begins in Washington, DC, a city grappling with a conflicted domestic political climate. Protagonist Virginia Abrams is a widow, her husband killed a year earlier at Guadalcanal. Unwittingly, she gets entangled with a powerful senator’s family. She harbors a secret which the senator is willing to kill to conceal. Fearing for her life and her unborn child’s, she jumps on a train that takes her across the country to Seattle.

Once in Seattle, she changes her name to Ginny Moore, finds employment with reclusive mystery writer Dawson, and finds a dream apartment of her own in a cozy complex. The day after she moves in, her neighbor Evelyn dies under mysterious circumstances. Virginia wonders if she was the killer’s true target. Evelyn’s teenage son Tim is an endearing character obsessed with the notion of Nazi spies on American soil. Obsessed with finding his mother’s true killer, he uncovers the proGerman Bundist spy ring operating in their midst. When another neighbor dies in a staged suicide, Virginia and Tim both try to solve the mystery. Tim disrupts a plot of Bundist saboteurs, and Virginia closes in on Evelyn’s

real killer. Meanwhile, the Senator’s henchman tracks Virginia down, determined not to rest until she’s dead.

Everyone a Stranger is a fast-paced thriller with a lot of action and a few more dead bodies than necessary. Few World War II novels offer a glimpse into life in America during World War II. I learned about the threat of German U-boats sinking boats off the east coast of America, fifth columnists based in America, and the Four-F scheme that stopped men of fighting age from going to war. O’Brien also highlights the challenges faced by single working women in the 1940s. I recommend Everyone a Stranger to lovers of World War IIthemed literature.

Zeenath Khan

THE GOSSIP COLUMNIST’S DAUGHTER

Peter Orner, Little, Brown, 2025, $29.00, hb, 451pp, 9780316224659

The novel is narrated by Jed Rosenthal, who isn`t having a good time at the moment. He is a writer whose inspiration has dried up and whose wife no longer wishes to live with him. He decides to investigate a cold case connected to his family, namely the murder of Hollywood actress Karyn `Cookie` Kupcinet in 1963. The laconic conversational style makes the reader feel as if they are sat in a booth, sipping bourbon listening to a hard-bitten detective journo who has seen it all before, telling you about the case. It`s an unusual approach, but the power of the language and the interesting images mean the reader is compelled to read on. It is almost like being accosted by an updated version of the Ancient Mariner who must tell his version of the past and integrate it into his family history – the personal melds with the political, and this comes together with the reportage of the case to create a cohesive whole for the reader.

Although there are many characters, the description makes the reader visualise them clearly. `He walked like a penguin wrapped in an inner tube` is just one example. The case isn`t really the story in a sense, it`s more than that – it`s an exploration of character, family, crime and how the past shapes and haunts us. Unconventional and thoroughly recommended.

Ann Northfield

THE COMMUNIST’S SECRET

Suzanne Parry, She Writes, 2025, $17.99/ C$24.99, pb, 312pp, 9781647429348

The Communist’s Secret is book two of Suzanne Parry’s Leningrad Trilogy. In the summer of 1941, the German army has begun its invasion of the Soviet Union. Their foot soldiers, tanks and bombers are making rapid progress toward Leningrad. Chaos reigns.

Katya Karavayeva’s life is already in shambles. She has unintentionally betrayed her beloved husband, Shura, a Russian military officer, arrested for lack of devotion to the Communist revolution. Katya is, or has been,

a loyal member of the Party. Her entire outlook on life in Soviet Russia and her loyalty to the Party come crashing down as the whirlwind of war and treachery lead her to an awakening that the world she lives in is far from what she imagined.

Katya is thrust into the battle for survival against the Nazis, escapes the massacre of her fellow volunteers, and, with a 16-year-old accomplice, flees the German Wehrmacht in hope of reuniting with her daughter in Leningrad and resurrecting her relationship with her imprisoned husband.

Her flight is an arduous and deadly journey through Nazi-occupied territory. Author Parry is as unrelenting as Katya in fighting for her survival, and that of the people she meets along the way. Much blood is spilled, against Katya and by her. This is war, after all, and her country has been invaded by an evil that is only matched by Stalin and the cold-hearted, remorseless treatment of her fellow Russians by the Party she has sworn loyalty to.

While The Communist’s Secret is the second part of a trilogy, it could stand alone for its entertainment value. I did not read the first volume but found myself caring for Katya and dreading to find out what might happen to her despite her bravery in a land where no one is truly your friend.

Peter Clenott

THE DISTANCE BETWEEN DREAMS

Emily Paull, Fremantle Press, 2025, A$34.99, pb, 384pp, 9781760993825

Fremantle, Western Australia, 1939. After a chance encounter at a society function, Sarah Willis and Winston Keller are immediately attracted to one another but their budding relationship will have many obstacles in its way. Sarah comes from a privileged, moneyed background, while Winston’s family struggles to get by. There is also some unpleasant past history between their respective fathers that noone in either family is prepared to talk about. When all is revealed, it causes what seems to be an insurmountable rift between Sarah and Winston. The outbreak of war sends the couple on divergent paths. Winston enlists, and Sarah meets American submariner, Nick Anderson. Against the advice of her best friend, Marly, but coerced by her father, she makes a fateful decision. And then, after five years of war, is it ever possible for any of them to return to the people they had once been?

At the beginning, this reads like a modest World War II love story, but what pushes it beyond such is the powerful exploration of what Australian prisoners of war had to endure when forced by the Japanese to build the Thai-Burma Railway. No-one reading these chapters can fail to be moved by the vivid, often shocking, descriptions of how these men suffered and died, and of how a rare few managed to survive against all the odds, buoyed by sheer grit, love and hope - all laced with doses of Aussie laconic humour. The 1919 flashback to the source of the conflict between

the naive, but honourable, George Keller and the manipulative, controlling Robert Willis, is also well-crafted.

Aside from the immensely likeable Sarah and Winston, there are other entertaining characters who are worth spending time with in this uplifting and enjoyable novel.

Marina Maxwell

A BEARER OF TALES

Marilyn Pemberton, Williams & Whiting, 2024, £9.99, pb, 275pp, 9781915887917

Any reference to the sinking of the Titanic is a fail-safe attention-grabber, which Marilyn Pemberton employs to very good effect in the opening pages of the latest novel in her Grandmother’s Footsteps series. She forges a tenuous link between the ill-fated ship and her own work by placing, on its sloping decks, two of her running characters, one of whom survives the disaster while the other does not. She then returns her attention to a group of rather less interesting characters, most of whom have featured in her previous books.

As the various storylines move on and through and into the early years of the 20th century, they reach us in the well-used form of the first-person narrative. For this device to succeed the narratives need to emerge as strong, individualised accounts, each developing new and often contrasting aspects of the relationships between the characters involved. This device is not well enough used in this novel, and as a result there is a sameness in the style of each account. This risks resulting in the reader’s loss of interest in both the events being described and in the character experiencing them.

There are some nice moments in Ms Pemberton’s pages, such as her appreciation of the traditional British cup of tea but, overall, the characters and their storylines have a lacklustre, slightly ambiguous quality about them which could leave a reader unsatisfied.

For a novel to succeed in attracting and holding the reader’s attention, the author must offer not only a powerful opening but a continuing level of complexity regarding the characters’ storylines. This is where A Bearer of Tales fails. Neither the storylines nor the characters involved are strong enough or original enough to support its treatment. There is a medical condition involving the human heart, which is known as “flatlining,” and which seems to me to suggest this treatment of this novel.

Julia Stoneham

A GHOST HUNTER’S GUIDE TO SOLVING A MURDER

F. H. Petford, Hodder, 2025, £10.99, pb, 304pp, 9781399749831

A Ghost Hunter’s Guide to Solving a Murder is described as the first of the Alma Timperley mysteries – and this is a thrilling introduction to the series.

The novel opens on Christmas Eve in 1914. Alma Timperley has a secure job as a clerk in

London – but, as she travels to meet solicitor James Nascent, she is about to hear news that will change her life. She has inherited a hotel in Cornwall from an aunt she didn’t know she had. But this is no ordinary hotel – it is a Spiritualist Hotel – and her aunt was a famous medium.

Petford opens the story with this intriguing hook. As Alma settles down to the business of running the hotel, fears of a German spy disrupt everyday life. The actual spy is revealed halfway through, which increases the reader’s suspense as we see characters’ misjudgements and errors. The murders then begin.

The theme of Spiritualism is central but raises questions. The attraction of contacting dead sons offered solace to bereaved mothers, but also lucrative rewards for the mediums. The genuine mediums in the novel make contact and show the deceased enjoying a peaceful afterlife with dead colleagues – a consoling message. However, the charlatans are shown to achieve the same but accomplished through a ruthless invasion of privacy. The spiritual fraud is not criticized, and the message of comfort is a bit too easily given, the real horrors of war kept very much at a distance.

However, the novel does not claim to be a gritty historical novel. It is a cosy novel about espionage set in a sleepy English seaside town. And this is not to decry what is achieved: the narrative is always absorbing, and the final scenes are exciting and suspenseful. So, with a couple of reservations, this is an enjoyable and escapist read.

Adele Wills

THE THREE PARTISANS

Jean-Yves Pitoun, Union Square, 2025, $18.99/ C$24.99/£9.99, pb, 480pp, 9781454958062

Beginning in 1942, the darkest days of World War II, and bringing us to the other side, we are swept along following the missions of three members of the Résistance. A host of characters—collaborators, traitors and the wondrously self-sacrificing, resilient, and brave—join Mike, an American aviator; Robert, an Algerian Jew; and Janine, a widowed Frenchwoman raising a daughter. They survive wounds taken in desert firefights, crash landings, smuggling of downed pilots into Spain, deportation train hijackings, and love in desperate times.

Readers are fortunate to find themselves in the capable hands of this writer. He proves that a long-time screenwriter can create compelling cinematic scenes in prose when he takes on the jobs of wardrobe and set designer in the novel format as well. This much-trodden fictional territory gains new, page-turning life as well as many nuances of courage and feeling the screen has no time for, and a more European sensibility usually missing in American versions. The greatest gift of this book is, as Prologue and Epilogue make clear, that these are the fictionalized real-life accounts Pitoun garnered as a child listening

to his father and his old comrades sitting around the cafe over bottles of wine in Pau in the south of France. I highly recommend this book.

Ann Chamberlin

THE GREAT LUNENBURGLARY

Bryn Pottie, Moose House, 2025, $14.99, pb, 224pp, 9781998149735

Waterborne wackiness abounds in this Canadian caper set in 1922 Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. While the humor seems comparable to say, The Princess Bride, this book’s characters are not gentlemen setting out on a course of derring-do for the sake of justice, but teenage boys trying to find their own place in the world.

Angus Junior is a good boy and a talented musician who suffers in contrast to his extroverted racing boat champion father, while Elias who just lost his father at sea is a schemer, a rebel, and a hard rock musician 80 years too early. Elias’s plan to get their “trash fiddle” music on the radio turns a midnight joyride on Angus’ father’s boat into a huge escapade. The ensuing antics over the course of one night involve thievery, unintended kidnapping, political gangsterism, and wild musicianship, along with instances of gambling, moonshine, and other markers of the Roaring ´20s. The crazy characters who partake in this madness include a statistics/ probability aficionado who may become Angus’ girlfriend, a father figure for Elias who is only two years his senior, a demanding celebrity radio show hostess, a schoolteacher who has problems with teenagers, wannabe gangsters who are practicing their mobster diction, and many other quirky townspeople in both Lunenburg and its rival town, Lockeport.

While silliness pervades every single page, its lightheartedness is catching. Would not a teenage boy in 1922, for example, not find someone who grew up in the 90s (the 1890s, that is) to be an old-timer no longer in sync with the modern world? Heartily recommended for anyone who needs a good laugh (and who among us doesn’t?).

Karen Bordonaro

WHILE THE GETTING IS GOOD

Matt Riordan, Hyperion Avenue, 2025, $27.99/ C$36.99, hb, 330pp, 9781368101455

In the later years of Prohibition in the US, Great Lakes fisherman Eld makes barely enough money to keep his family fed. Seeing the opportunity to make far more money by occasionally running whisky from Canada across to the US, he agrees, hoping this will lift his wife and two children out of their hardscrabble existence.

But ‘occasionally’ becomes more frequent. Soon Eld is involved with one of the gangs. When his son, Doc, is killed, Eld attends a gang party trying to locate the killer. The party is raided by a rival gang. Eld barely escapes, along with the gang leader’s sister,

Georgia. He disappears into Canada, while his wife Maggie and their young daughter are left with Georgia to struggle for a living in a world full of unemployed men.

Based partly on family stories, partly on the author’s experience as a commercial fisherman in Alaska, this story evokes the raw desperation of many families during the Great Depression. The chance of fast money during Prohibition promises a way out of the endless spiral of hunger and debt. Eld, a sensible, responsible man, is unable to resist; his bare-bones life has been so clearly revealed that the reader understands and empathizes with his decision. But much of the story follows his wife, also forced to make hard choices as she struggles to keep her head above water financially and ward off the growing estrangement of her young daughter.

The novel gives an accurate but disturbing picture of the lives of many during the Depression. The images are searing as characters and action portray a vivid picture of the social upheaval of the time. The book’s title is particularly appropriate.

Valerie Fletcher Adolph

IN THE FULLNESS OF TIME

Terry Roberts, Keylight, 2025, $34.99, hb, 384pp, 9798887980584

A reluctant new sheriff in Madison County, North Carolina, must contend with a series of crimes as he pursues an unexpected opportunity to love again in Terry Roberts’ affecting In the Fullness of Time. Clinton Salter is the newly elected sheriff of Marshall, the county seat, though he never wanted to be. His younger brother, Will, a prominent Democrat in local politics, put him up to it to replace the previous inept official, a Republican. But Clint does not care about politics: he cares about his farm and farmhouse in the country, his adult daughter, Marian, and his long-lost son, Matthew, who refuses to come home to visit. A widower, Clint meets high school teacher Catherine Metcalf through Marian, and they connect over a consequential cup of coffee. “Cat” is also a widow of sorts—her husband has been in a coma for years with no hope of recovering. Together, they build a tentative friendship that soon blossoms into a profound and passionate love.

Meanwhile, a string of barn burnings of local Republican citizens is at the top of Clint’s investigative list. Clint believes Will knows more than he lets on about the acts of arson. And when an elderly couple are murdered in cold blood, Clint’s investigation leads him— and Cat—into danger and blackmail that reflect the prudish nature of 1960s America. Roberts is adept at character development, and it is a joy to read the slow build of emotion and shared intimacies between Clint and Cat, two people with a life full of hurts who find healing in each other.

More than just a police procedural, In the Fullness of Time is a moving meditation on mature love that burrows into the soul. It is

also an evocation of a lovely landscape forever marred by Hurricane Helene in 2024.

Peggy Kurkowski

BUCKEYE

Patrick Ryan, Bloomsbury, 2025, £16.99, hb, 464pp, 9781526689283 / Random House, 2025, $30.00, hb, 464pp, 9780593595039

Very occasionally, a book comes along so accomplished, so throbbing with the very essence of life, I know I will be pressing it upon people for many years to come.

The last book to have had this impact upon me was Richard Powers’ The Overstory, a devastating examination of the damage humanity has inflicted upon the natural environment. Buckeye, the debut novel by Patrick Ryan, has done the same. It is an amazing achievement. Full of yearning, sadness and beauty.

Ryan, the author of several short story collections and a former associate editor of Granta magazine, brings us the small Ohio town of Bonhomie and a cast of flawed characters seeking love, companionship and meaning in the aftermath of the Second World War. There’s barely any fat in its 450+ pages.

The story’s opening sees Cal Jenkins and Margaret Salt come together in a stolen moment of passion, sparked in the aftermath of the Allied victory in Europe. The illicit encounter will ripple through the decades. Secrets surface; lives will be changed forever.

Buckeye deserves to take its place alongside the Great American Novels, those books that somehow manage to contain the essence of the country – her vastness and values, her sense of herself, her contradictions and failings. The book jacket contains a testimonial from Tom Hanks. It’s that kind of book. People will be talking about it for years.

Peter

Sherlock

THE SALVAGE

Anbara Salam, Tin House, 2025, $17.99/C$23.99, pb, 368pp, 9781963108477 / Baskerville, 2025, £18.99, hb, 448pp, 9781399806633

1962, Scotland: Marta Khoury, a marine archaeologist, travels to Cairnroch, an isolated island off the east coast of Scotland. She is to investigate a 19th century shipwreck containing the remains of a prominent islander from the Victorian times, “Auld James” Purdy. His ancestors hope to open a museum and encourage tourism, capitalizing on this explorer’s famed Arctic expedition. Marta sees this job as a chance to boost her floundering career, now exacerbated since her marriage to the head of her museum is also on the rocks. And Marta has other reasons to feel guilty.

Marta’s first dive increases her discomfort as she sees a shadowy figure lurking in the wreckage. Is it her imagination? A dolphin? Or is it something more menacing? On her second dive Marta discovers that precious artifacts needed for the museum have mysteriously disappeared from the wreckage, further complicating her mission. The Cuban Missile Crisis casts looming fear over the island and

Marta’s status as an outsider in this tight knit community becomes glaringly evident. Her friendship with Elsie, who works at the hotel, begins to deepen into something warmer, but Marta’s stubborn desperation to salvage her career and to restore the stolen artifacts traps her on frozen Cairnroch through one of the iciest winters in the 20th century, with no choice but to wait for the thaw.

The Salvage is an atmospheric Gothic, with hints of the supernatural skulking in its depths. Marta is a driven heroine, with good reason, and her character is well developed. The chilling isolation of the bleak setting contributes to the novel. An unusual and gripping read.

Susan McDuffie

STARTING FROM HERE

Paula Saunders, Random House, 2025, $27.00/ C$39.00, hb, 304pp, 9780593978290

The authentic and clear voice of Starting from Here declares Paula Saunders’ novel exceptional on page one. The story of a girl’s dream to become a ballerina in 1970s South Dakota may be unique, but the struggles along her journey are recognizable. René has a reluctant stage mother in Eve, who never stops working to support her daughter, but she does not do so without complaint. René must move to Phoenix and Denver in pursuit of the studies she can afford to train for her New York dream debut.

To sustain these classes, she lives in awful rooms let by mostly awful people. René accepts these conditions and her aching loneliness in her pursuit of ballet. While bringing her dance to a high level and surviving an exhausting life alone, René yearns for grown-up love. She tries and fails here too, the missteps with and by the boys and men shown ring true.

Starting from Here is a very much a story of mothers and daughters, and there is a scene where René sees her mother watching rehearsal and is overwhelmed, a moment of unexpected emotion experienced by the reader, too. As with most teen-aged girls and their mothers, the battle lines are drawn between René and Eve, but the bonds of love and connection are strong and tight. The novel ends in 1975 New York, and it is the only section that does not ring entirely true. Aspects of modern New York unfortunately were overlaid on the intended 1975 version, to the point where Eve pays $17 for a sandwich. Even the fanciest Upper East Side place Eve might have ventured into, Maxwell’s Plum, charged $5.65 for the luncheon plat du jour. This avoidable error pulls the knowledgeable reader out of this wonderful narrative near its conclusion.

Constance Emmett

THE BEST OF INTENTIONS

Caroline Scott, Simon & Schuster UK, 2025, £9.99, pb, 416pp, 9781398526310

This novel is set in a Utopian community of the 1930s. Apparently Scott loosely modelled her setting on Dartington Hall in Devon, but I was also reminded of other communities such

as those led by Eric Gill or John Middleton Murry.

Through the eyes of incoming gardener Robert Bardsley, we are introduced to the rambling estate of Anderby. Robert has arrived to take up a job offer he secured via a falsified reference. The lady of the manor, keen to renovate her neglected gardens, is a glamorous American woman named Gwendoline Fitzgerald. A cast of supporting characters come on the scene – among others, Gwendoline’s louche Irish husband, an aristocratic lady dog breeder, an irascible artist with a long-suffering wife, a pompous potter, an idealistic composer and Fay, a teacher of about Robert’s age, initially sceptical about the need to employ him. All are committed to the principles of democracy, co-operation and creativity, but funds are tight: the community is shaken when it emerges that the Fitzgeralds have sold off an ancient orchard for a housing development.

The central dilemma of her characters is how to reconcile their ideals with the new consumerism of the 1930s. As a character says, ‘Certain people here are hideously snobbish… they might criticize the old prejudices of money and class, but they have their own elitism based on culture and education and what they deem to be good taste.’

The reader would have been helped had the large cast of characters been listed at the beginning. Robert is at times a rather protean character, ‘everyone’s confidant’, and I felt the romance between him and Fay could have been accelerated. Still, I found this an amusing, evocative and very human book, by an author with a great feel for nature and location. Enjoyable, and good history – with modern resonances.

Ben Bergonzi

A THREAD OF LIGHT

Neema Shah, Picador, 2025, £16.99, hb, 336pp, 9781529030556

From the cover and the blurb, one would expect this to be another story of the London Blitz, celebrating the fortitude, resilience and patriotism of the British people. But look closer and you will find it is about a group whose loyalties were very much divided.

Although the population of Asian descent living in Britain was much smaller in the 1940s than it is today, it was already significant, especially in London. Most were expatriates, but there were also many British-born Asians. This was before the Indian Empire fragmented into separate states and all South Asians were then known as Indians.

This was the height of the Free India movement, and Indians were divided as to whether supporting or opposing the British war effort best advanced the cause of Indian independence. The story follows the lives of two women, Kitty and Ruby, alternating between them chapter by chapter. Kitty is an Indian lawyer working in London. Ruby is British-born of Indian descent. By day she is a shop assistant, but she also serves as an

air raid warden and supplements her income by petty theft from bomb sites and black marketeering. She unwittingly falls in love with an Indian freedom fighter/terrorist whom Kitty is called upon to defend in court.

The story begins in the final weeks of the Blitz and runs on to the end of the war, five years later, so there is much more about Indian politics than air raids. It is a reminder about another great human catastrophe of WW2, the Bengal Famine of 1943.

This is a highly readable novel with convincing characters that is refreshingly different to most Blitz novels.

Edward James

IN THE LIGHT OF THE SUN

Angela Shupe, WaterBrook, 2025, $18.00, pb, 384pp, 9780593601945

While World War II historical fiction typically centers on the European theater, Shupe alternates the struggles of Rosa Grassi in Florence, Italy, with those of her younger sister, Caramina, in the Philippines. Rosa’s promising opera career, even her life, is daily threatened by Fascist and then Nazi forces. As the Allies abandon the Philippines to a brutal Japanese invasion, Caramina’s formal musical training is sacrificed as her family retreats to the upland jungles.

For both sisters, music becomes a solace and a challenge to the violence of war. Both struggle to find moments of normalcy and joy when every seeming friend might be a traitor and a convent school becomes an acceptable military target. Rosa falls in love with a man of mysterious leavings as she is drawn into the partisan resistance. Caramina sees love bloom around her despite every obstacle as she contemplates whether romantic love is the path for her.

Shupe gives Rosa more agency in her choices, making her journey more characterdriven and compelling. However, the sensual descriptions of Caramina’s jungle world, the scents, and intimate connection with the land and seasons are intoxicating.

While readers don’t expect a detailed military history, it is disconcerting that the news of Japanese surrender comes to Caramina’s family with no mention, then or later, to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In Rosa’s story, the seemingly overnight shift of Italy to the Allied side, making Nazi forces the invaders, could use more context for some readers. The end of the war brings a satisfying conclusion, with both sisters achieving their dreams in a new land, their voices enduring and ultimately victorious.

Pamela

Schoenewaldt

THE HITCHHIKERS

Chevy Stevens, St. Martin’s, 2025, $29.00, hb, 384pp, 9781250133656 / St. Martin’s, 2025, £15.99/C$24.99, pb, 384pp, 9781250424464

Tom and Alice are a married American couple who kick off a long road trip eastward across Canada to the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics in their new RV after Alice suffers

a devastating miscarriage, from which they both need time to heal. The couple picks up two fun and seemingly innocent young hitchhikers, Blue and Ocean, who they soon learn are dangerous killers on the lam when Alice sees their pictures in the newspaper. Blue and Ocean, real names Simon and Jenny, kidnap the couple and hijack their RV to keep a step ahead of the law. What follows is a harrowing and suspenseful ride through the Canadian Rockies, which the characters navigate in unpredictable fashion with many twists and turns along the way.

The vast isolated wilderness of Western Canada and its beautiful natural scenery, juxtaposed with the nail-biting tension inside the RV, is a terrific setting for this thriller. The author’s abundant use of captivating physical imagery and sensory detail brings this story to life and keeps the reader thoroughly engaged.

But the greatest attribute of this story is its strong character development. While, from a plot perspective, we know this road trip may end tragically for one or both couples, Stevens skillfully weaves their stories together—particularly the two women, Alice and Jenny—while the story shifts between their personal viewpoints in a way that adds depth and makes the deadly sprint to the end much more intriguing. I was entranced by these characters and could not put the book down for the last hundred or so pages; there are many sharp unexpected plot twists to keep you on the edge of your seat. The Hitchhikers is one wild ride that I strongly recommend.

Nate Mancuso

THE PRESIDENT’S WIFE

Anna Stuart, Bookouture, 2025, $11.99/ C$15.99, pb, 382pp, 9781836182337 / £1.99, ebook, 382pp, 9781836182320

On September 2, 1939, Eleanor Roosevelt is woken from a sound sleep by a telephone call from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, announcing that the Nazis have invaded Poland. As the isolationist United States grapples with the possibility of war, Eleanor is determined to do all that she can to help her husband, her country, and humankind. But her efforts are dogged by the distance that has grown between her and the President ever since his betrayal of her years before—and not everyone appreciates a woman involving herself in world affairs.

Alternating between wartime events and the earlier days of Eleanor and Franklin’s relationship, The President’s Wife (narrated in the third person) is an enjoyable read that moves at a fast pace. Once the author gets expository lines such as “Poland? The country Britain and France have sworn to defend?” out of the way, the writing is lively, and the Roosevelts themselves are engaging and well-drawn. Refreshingly, Stuart avoids sensationalizing their personal lives.

Stuart does have a tendency to hammer her points home. We’re told rather too often, for instance, that President Roosevelt was a consummate politician—that we can figure

out for ourselves—and anyone who cares to make a drinking game of how many times we’re informed that Eleanor dislikes alcohol has no business driving afterward. Nonetheless, this is an inspiring account of a formidable woman, with the bonus of an informative author’s note.

Susan Higginbotham

WHAT REMAINS IS HOPE

Bonnie Suchman, Black Rose Writing, 2025, $23.95, pb, 338pp, 9781685136550

What Remains is Hope is the second book in the Heppenheimer Family Holocaust Saga. The novel continues the stories of four Jewish cousins in Germany before and into WWII. Gertrud, Bettina, Trudi, and Gustav have a close bond, despite busy lives. They mature, find work, some marry and have children, but they stay connected. They even create a secret code for letter exchanges if war strikes.

War breaks out, bringing harsh rules and hardships as Jewish persecution increases. Family members get deported without a trace. Gustav is sent to Auschwitz, where he struggles with an illness that threatens to send him to an extermination camp. Finally, the war ends, but not the pain. Decades later, three of the four cousins are reunited. They reminisce about those they’ve lost and say the Mourners’ Kaddish in honor of their beloved fourth cousin, who died during the war.

This is a true story based on the four Heppenheimer cousins, from whom Suchman’s husband is descended. Suchman’s detailed research is evident throughout, particularly in describing the hardships of the times and the devolving living conditions of Jews in Germany, especially in Munich. Because of the changing viewpoints, it’s challenging to connect deeply with each cousin. More interiority would strengthen their distinct characters. Also, the redundant exposition through dialogue could be reduced through description, or tighter writing.

This is an impactful read about the origins of the Holocaust seen through the eyes of four young people fighting for a better future. The rich detail and research brought each of them to life, in the telling of a time that must never be forgotten.

Deb Stratas

THE ROOM OF LOST STEPS

Simon Tolkien, Lake Union, 2025, $16.99/£8.99, pb, 379pp, 9781662528668

In July 1936 in Barcelona, Theo remembers Easter Sunday a few months before: the blood on Primitivo’s hands as he holds his horse’s reins and the girl on the horse’s back—Maria, the love of Theo’s life.

The Room of Lost Steps is the second in Simon (grandson of J.R.R.) Tolkien’s duology about a young American man coming of age at the end of the Great Depression and start of the Spanish Civil War. It begins where the first book in the series, The Palace at the End of the Sea, ends but with no real reentry. Readers unfamiliar with the earlier work can

be disoriented as they encounter Theo and the people in his life without context. Most questions do resolve quickly, but it can take a while for a reader to figure out who and, importantly, how old Theo is so they can assess how mature his observations and actions are.

The book recalls the tumultuous early days of the Civil War and the warring factions— anarchists and communists fighting the fascists. Theo is thrust into a battle between the military and anarchists in Barcelona’s Plaça d’Espanya before being branded as a fascist son of a wealthy man and fleeing. Then, from his home in Oxford, he joins the International Brigade, returns to Spain, and fights for the Spanish Republic in the bloody 1937 Battle of Jarama.

Despite placing Theo in the midst of fighting with untrained, inexperienced volunteers and their misguided leaders or relating the abuses perpetrated by those fighting against fascism, the narrative is dispassionate, almost matterof-fact. The reader walks with Theo as he moves from one situation to the next but does not deeply feel or understand.

K. M. Sandrick

NARROW THE ROAD

James Wade, Blackstone, 2025, $29.99, hb, 306pp, 9781665024136

Living in Shawnee Prairie, Texas, in 1932, young Will Carter knows more than he wants to about dying. The bank is about to foreclose on the farm he is barely managing in his father’s absence, his mother is fatally ill, the cotton crop is blightridden, and the unrelenting heat and drought shrivel everything in sight. He is filled with a boy’s righteous rage at his father, Thomas, who has not come home, so he convinces his friend Ollie to help him find him.

Chasing phantoms through the ghost towns of East Texas towards Silsbee, the boys encounter a harsh unforgiving world, thwarted each time they reach a destination where Thomas was last seen. They are accosted, waylaid, lied to and misled, and chased by predators both animal and human. They trudge past poverty, drought, and destitution. They slog through the humid understory, through juniper, cypress, oak, dogwood, maple, a veritable “planet of trees.” Wade writes with easy familiarity about this terrain— nature at its most awe-inspiring and most feral.

The true heart of Will and Ollie’s loyalty and friendship is expertly captured on the page. Then the subtle change in dynamics when the spirited, independent Lena shows up—far more worldly than either boy, and far more

capable of protecting them (and herself), than they are her.

Young emotions bounce from angst to philosophical to frustrated to angry, as the kids’ optimism fractures in differing directions. Will is overwhelmed with guilt at having selfishly dragged his friends into this version of hell and tragedy follows. But true to his promise to his mum, he learns to embrace what cannot be changed and renews his unwavering appreciation of friendship.

This is not optimistic or joyful, and yet it seeped into my psyche—a perceptive and moving coming-of-age which does manage a loosely uplifting ending.

Fiona Alison

SONORA

Jenni L. Walsh, Harper Muse, 2025, $18.99/ C$24.99, pb, 400pp, 9781400246779

There’s something kind of fascinating about the idea that people used to ride horses off high towers and into pools of water in the heyday of American carnivals. It sounds crazy, but it really did happen, and Jenni L. Walsh explores the whole process vividly in Sonora The novel is based on the real-life story of horse diver, Sonora Webster Carver, born in Georgia in 1904. Prompted by her mother, Sonora replies to a newspaper advertisement for an attractive looking girl who loves horses and swimming, and finds herself joining the circus and training to horse dive. In some ways it’s a dream come true, not least when romance blossoms between Sonora and the circus owner’s son, but it’s also a hard-working life, perhaps even more dangerous for the riders than for the horses.

Sonora’s voice is the treat here, drawing the reader into her story and character. She’s a straight-talker, brave, and most certainly resilient. Walsh’s conjuring of the colorful world of the 20th-century circus circuit feels effortless, and the details of the training and the intricate relationship between rider and horse are not to be missed. Compared to these elements, the romance is fairly muted and predictable, but when real hardship comes Sonora’s way, her response makes fascinating reading. An ideal read for fans of stories of overlooked women, and tales of perseverance and resilience in the face of near tragedy.

Kate Braithwaite

HOUSEHOLD GODS

John Ware, Page d’Or, 2025, £13.99, pb, 548pp, 9781915654502

It’s 1917, and this final instalment of the Dirty Shirt tetralogy follows the adventures of Daniel Wyndham, a young American who came to Ireland in search of the epic heroes of myth and legend and ended up following Colonel Fitzmullen-Brophy first into the army and then to war.

The novel’s historical arc is rooted in the history of the Royal Munster Fusiliers, who have fought on every battlefield from India to Burma to the fields of Flanders. Now, as WW1

grinds to its bloody end, times are changing, and soldiers of the old school like FitzmullenBrophy, with their unwavering loyalty to duty and tradition, are increasingly irrelevant.

Lieutenant Dan Wyndham has two goals: survive the vagaries of war and win the love of Miss Nora Maxfield, a blazing redhead who very much has a mind of her own. As a discharged soldier, Wyndham has money in his pocket and a Paris suit. Now all he has to do is persuade Nora to marry him, but the tide of history gets in the way as the war for Ireland’s independence disintegrates into a brutal civil war. Choices have to be made, and old loyalties are put to the test.

Ware writes with humour and an appreciation of the ridiculous aspects of army life. Beneath the charm he conveys a real sense of the futility and brutality of war that can leave a man gibbering in the night from shell shock and unable to adapt to the postwar world. He explores a largely forgotten period of Irish history when the dream of independence ended with former friends facing each other across a barricade, the click of a revolver hammer in a darkened room and the decision to shoot or not to shoot. It is a story told with wit and intelligence and a deep sense of humanity.

Jim Loughran

AND THEN THERE WAS THE ONE

Martha Waters, Atria, 2025, $19.00/C$26.00, pb, 352pp, 9781668069578

After solving four murders in the past year in the sleepy Cotswold village of Buncombeupon-Wooly, Georgina “Georgie” Radcliffe is not thrilled when the healthy chairman of the village council dies of a sudden heart attack. With the police unwilling to view the case as a potential homicide, Georgie decides to call for reinforcements and invites noted London detective Delacey Fitzgibbons to help. Unfortunately, Fitzgibbons is not interested, and instead sends his secretary— the handsome, debonair, and rather too charming Sebastian Fletcher-Ford. Together, the two embark on their investigation fortified with plenty of tea, scones, and a penchant for sniffing out—and getting into—trouble. As they home in on the truth, Georgie and Sebastian must take care not to let their growing feelings for each other overshadow their goal: to find the killer.

Though the pacing is somewhat slow and Georgie’s overwrought irritation with Sebastian borders on annoying, the book’s wit and charm more than make up for it. Waters’ writing is reminiscent of some of the best British authors of interwar detective fiction such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. In short, it is wonderfully English. Waters’ strength is in developing well-rounded characters and a vivid, colorful setting, fully immersing the reader in 1930s England. This is one of those cozy mysteries with a dash of romance that readers will thoroughly enjoy.

Melissa A. Amateis

ORPHANS OF THE LIVING

Kathy Watson, She Writes, 2025, $17.99, pb, 352pp, 9781647429782

A debut novelist presents a fictionalized account of her mother’s brutally difficult and often heartbreaking upbringing as the youngest child in a family of destitute sharecroppers during the early 20th century. Nora Mae’s father dreams of riches from agrarian land schemes in an epic tale of the Stovall family that spans from Arizona to Mexico, to Montana, to cotton sharecropping in Mississippi, to the Central Valley in California.

Told from multiple points of view, the writing reaches emotional depths in exploring a mother’s stresses over raising nine children in abject poverty and the waning of her husband’s hopefulness and noble sensibilities under the crushing effect of economic devastation. For the youngest of nine, Nora Mae, survival is the only realistic goal, as she bonds with older, previously abandoned brother Glen to find her solitary path inside the family, as suggested by the title. Scenes are set well with period detail, and race relations of the time are explored in moving scenes. Approaches to pursue overburdened and undercompensated workers’ rights are also explored.

The author notes “This book is a work of fiction. It’s also true.” In this sense, she taps into her mother’s family history for inspiration, with an unsparing look that seems to come from deep inside her at the hardships and tragedies of the agrarian working class based on experiences of real people. An excellent read for fans of Kristin Hannah’s The Four Winds and John Steinbeck’s classic tale of displaced tenant farmers during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression, The Grapes of Wrath

Brodie Curtis

THE HIGH HEAVEN

Joshua Wheeler, Graywolf, 2025, $28.00, hb, 304pp, 9781644453575

Izzy, child of a UFO cult in the New Mexico desert, is orphaned in 1967 when her cult leader tangles fatally with the local authorities. She is taken in by Oliver Gently, a rancher who is barely holding out against the government rocket installations and the space race that is hungry for his land. Izzy gradually sheds the shell of her cult life and blossoms as an unofficial daughter until a tragedy born of horrible misunderstandings sends her on the run.

The novel follows Izzy through the latter half of the 20th century as she searches for a place to belong and for some absolution for the tragedy. She wanders from New Mexico to Texas mostly stoned as soon as she discovers the anesthesia of drugs and gin. Her cult was waiting for aliens to arrive from the sky but Izzy fixes her attention on the moon and the space program, obsessively following first the moon missions and then the space shuttle. The Challenger and the Columbia disasters leave her further scarred. By 2024, she is in

New Orleans, sixty-nine, sober, and a social worker, with clients who have become unable to see the moon at all.

Wheeler’s prose is both dense and lovely, philosophical and wry, and Izzy is a compelling character, but I followed her trajectory waiting for a conclusion that never materialized. The oddly apocalyptic ending hangs on a solar eclipse and a new space program, and the last chapter reads as if the author simply did not know what to do next. That apocalyptic ambiguity is no doubt intentional, but it left me thoroughly unsatisfied after enjoying the rest of the novel very much.

Amanda Cockrell

MURDER AT THE WHAM BAM CLUB

Carolyn Marie Wilkins, Kensington, 2025, $27.00/C$37.00/£25.00, hb, 272pp, 9781496754714

The subtitle of this novel, “A Psychics and Soul Food Mystery,” is enough to draw our attention, and the book lives up to its promise. In 1922, Nola Ann Jackson returns from New York City, where she lived all too briefly with her husband Will until he was killed in WWI, to her psychic Aunt Sarah’s home in Agate, Illinois. Agate is segregated, and the Ku Klux Klan is active. A white minister who claims to be a spiritualist holds Firey Cross Ice Cream Socials. Broad-minded white folk also live in Agate, including Mrs. Ratcliffe, who employs the Black caterers Nola works for to prepare their fine food for her social events, including a séance conducted by a Black medium. As Nola learns her way around Agate—and senses her own psychic abilities more and more— she encounters a variety of vivid characters from Congressman “Happy” Skelton and his assistants to Boss Franklin Dillard, the first Black lawyer in the county and owner of a pool parlor, to the employees and habitues of the notorious Wham Bam Jazz Club outside the city limits.

Before eloping with Will Jackson, Nola lived at the Phyllis Wheatley Institute for Colored Girls. Now one of their residents, Lilly Davidson, has disappeared, and the headmistress asks Nola to help find her.

Besides Aunt Sarah’s good cooking and her catering shifts, Nola becomes an amateur detective, more involved with the scandalous Wham Bam Club than she wishes. A murder complicates her search for Lilly and tensions build. Wilkins’ depictions of racism, psychics and the Spirits, political intrigue, love, and food make this a lively read. Her use of “Negroes” and “colored” reflects the usage of the time. A hint of another mystery in the series pops up at the end.

Jinny Webber

A LASTING PROMISE

Mary Wood, Pan Macmillan, 2025, £8.99, pb, 360pp, 9781035036790

Set in 1943 in France and also in London twenty years later, A Lasting Promise follows

the life of a young nun, Angelica, working with the French Resistance to shelter a group of Jewish children who have been hiding in a nearby wood in fear of their lives. The author tells us that it is based on the real story of a nun who did just that, and the testimony of two of the children she saved. The strength of the book is in the retelling of this story, of the constant fear of discovery, the terror when Nazis visit, the pretence which must constantly be upheld. This early part of the book engages the reader with its realistic mixture of brutality and compassion. Then everything changes, and Angelica finds herself in London’s East End, no longer a nun, pregnant and penniless. She has one staunch friend, however, in Irene, a pregnant widow. Irene is East End born and bred, and together they manage to weather the considerable difficulties life throws at them.

I found the 1963 part of the story less convincing. Angelica is dying of cancer, nursed by her devoted daughter, Mia, and Irene’s daughter, Angie. Angelica is restless and incoherent, weighed down with guilt that she never kept her promise (the promise of the title) to a young Jewish girl who was in her care. Gradually Mia pieces together what is troubling her mother’s conscience and determines to set things right so that Angelica can have a peaceful end.

This should be a powerful story, but it is sadly let down by the descriptions of the various love affairs woven through it. These are unrealistic, and the characters involved not fleshed out so we can’t relate to them. A pity.

R. Hayes

ONE OF THEM

Kitty Zeldis, Harper, 2025, $30.00/C$37.00, hb, 352pp, 9780063352841

Miriam Anne Bishop returns to Vassar for her sophomore year, quickly settling in again with her clutch of WASP friends. But Anne, who dropped her first name as a freshman, remains at the edge, constantly worried everyone will discover she’s “one of them” – a Jew. Believing life is so much easier as a gentile, Anne ignores the snubs and derogatory comments bantered about over afternoon tea, especially when her friends set their sights on Delia Goldhush. Delia is smart, sophisticated, obviously Jewish, and obviously doesn’t give a fig what anyone thinks of her. Anne is awe-struck, yet their budding friendship threatens the peaceful life she’s created for herself. Then Anne chooses her WASP friends over Delia and betrays her. Filled with regret, Anne spends her junior year studying in Paris. Delia, too, is in Paris, though neither of them knows that until a chance encounter gives Anne the opportunity to atone for the cruelty she caused Delia. If only Delia will forgive her.

Set in the years immediately following WWII, Zeldis reminds readers of another time in America when there were Jewish quotas at universities as well as “Restricted” golf and country clubs, restaurants, and even neighborhoods that prohibited Jews—just as they restricted Blacks. The contrast between

how Anne and Delia own their Jewish identities, and how Anne eventually comes to terms with hers is portrayed with deep understanding. Each woman’s journey is tangled with their histories, upbringings, tragedies, and mistakes, creating two very distinct characters who meld together perfectly. While there are a few convenient events in the story line, the story of friendship and the hope of happiness given both characters at the end feels completely satisfying. This book feels particularly timely.

Meg Wiviott

TO SAVE A LIFE

Larry Zuckerman, Cennan Books, 2025, $18.00, pb, 294pp, 9781947976566

Zuckerman’s second novel avoids the “sophomore slump,” due to its excellent characterizations. I was fascinated by this tale of Russian Jewish immigrants in 1909, trying to make a life in New York, in the so-called “golden land” that often wasn’t very golden.

Malka Kaminsky has emigrated alone, avoiding a forced engagement to a cold merchant by stealing her dowry money and using that to set sail for New York, where she moves in with her aunt. She finds work in a garment factory but gets involved in a confrontation on a picket line during a strike. When thugs attack the picketers, Malka fights back and is rescued by Yaakov Rogovin, a bystander and presser at another garment factory. Malka quits her job in the aftermath, to help her aunt run her pushcart business. Yaakov has always loved music, and when he loses his job, he tries to make a career of singing at weddings and during theater intervals, and learns to play ragtime on the piano. Yaakov is interested in Malka, but she holds him at arm’s length, not wanting to be tied to the traditional role of a Jewish married woman. Then Malka is shocked to learn that her fiancé from Grodno is on his way to claim her and make her return with him to the old country.

Zuckerman was inspired by a visit to the Tenement Museum in New York and the experiences of his own immigrant forebears. He includes an impressive list of historical sources, plus a glossary of Yiddish and Hebrew words found in the text. Along with the multiple rich characterizations, I appreciated the vivid setting and details of immigrant life in New York. Highly recommended, especially to readers who have immigrant ancestors and wonder what their lives may have been like.

MULTI-PERIOD

THE GUEST IN ROOM 120

Sara Ackerman, MIRA, 2025, $18.99/C$25.99, pb, 336pp, 9780778387220

This compelling blend of historical fact and fiction centres on the death of Jane Stanford, of Stanford University renown. Ackerman’s story is set in 1905 and one hundred years later, spotlighting a short time in three women’s stories. In 2005, Zoe Finch is an author with one successful romance under her belt, but now suffering from writer’s block. In 1905, Jane Stanford is struggling with her mental and physical health, and in the same time strand ‘Iliahi Baldwin, a Hawaiian girl, becomes a maid at a new beachfront hotel. This is familiar ground for Ackerman, and her knowledge and love of Hawaii sparkles through her storytelling.

Zoe needs inspiration and believes a change of scene might reignite her imagination for a second best-seller. In a spur-of-the-moment decision, she signs up for a writer’s conference at the Moana Hotel in Waikiki. Meanwhile, ‘Iliahi’s life is precarious in 1905, as she has to raise and support her two younger brothers on a maid’s meagre income, after her mother is diagnosed with an incurable illness. Jane Stanford experiences a frightening event in California, so she removes herself from the world by taking only her most trusted staff to the Moana. All three stories hold equal merit, so it is important that the author braids them together in a convincing way, placing each of her protagonists at the Moana, and she does just that.

This is a poignant tale of pain and suffering, juxtaposed against a lush and verdant backdrop. The author’s exploration of the mystery is especially interesting because her novel goes a step further. The research is sound; the settings are as jaw-dropping as one might expect as readers are transported to Waikiki’s warm sands, turquoise seas and azure skies. For romance lovers there’s a slowburn interplay. A very enjoyable read.

Fiona Alison

A QUILTING OF SCARS

Lucy E. M. Black, Now or Never, 2025, $26.95, pb, 195pp, 9781989689899

B.J. Sedlock

In 1911, in Cemetery Hill, Ontario, fifty-oneyear-old bachelor Larkin is successfully raising stallions on his farm. He is striving hard to save enough money to buy a “horseless carriage.” One day, he takes one of his stallions to the fairgrounds to service mares and is paid well by their owners. However, that evening, he is still bothered by remarks made over lunch by some farmers about the Skinners’ farmland, which is near his property. Larkin fetches the old scrapbook in which his late mother had glued newspaper clippings about the tragedy that had occurred on the Skinners’ farm almost forty years ago. Larkin rereads the reports to refresh his memory of those events, of forbidden love, abuse, and murder, which he has kept to himself, and attempts to slay his inner demons.

Lucy Black writes on her website that the

idea of this novel came to her upon seeing a reproduction of an 1874 newspaper ad by a farmer offering a stallion for service. Black was intrigued by the audacity of that farmer to place such an ad in those times. She developed her fictional character, Larkin, making him a unique person with extraordinary desires and aspirations. Black also pulled upon her experiences as an educator and knowledge that many young people hide their true sexual identity for fear of abandonment. The novel is a stitching together of memories of unspeakable events. Black takes us on an exciting journey through rural Ontario in the late 1800s. We face, along with the characters, that era’s Victorian social norms and moral values. Black’s in-depth research is evident in the descriptions, including the cost of items. While, since those days, there has been much progress and inflation, there is a timelessness to the human aspects of the story. Highly recommended.

Waheed Rabbani

THE RESTORATION GARDEN

Sara Blaydes, Lake Union, 2025, $16.99/£8.99, pb, 315pp, 9781662533198

This is a family story of loss and tragic fallout which endures through generations of secrets and misunderstandings. Beginning in the present day, redundant landscape architect, Julia, arrives in England with her five-yearold nephew, Sam, in tow. Her contract, drawn up by Andrew, the Havenworth estate owner’s godson, is to restore the oncefamed gardens.

Very little of the gardens remain, but Julia has confidence in her ability. That is until she meets Havenworth’s owner, 92-year-old Margaret Clarke, who specifies that the gardens be returned to their former glory – exactly! –plant by plant. Doable but expensive, Julia thinks, but then she is told that there are no photographs or drawings, no records of any kind. Margaret’s past seems as much a mystery as the forgotten garden.

Blaydes’ novel weeps with regret, guilt, things said which cannot be unsaid. Emotional turmoil invades both Julia’s memories of her dead sister and her commitment to raise her nephew, and Margaret, who is haunted by past mistakes. As past bleeds into present, Julia becomes determined to fulfil Margaret’s last wish. But Margaret seems equally obsessed and distressed by the plan, while her fragile health worries her godson. We are swept into seven-year-old Margaret’s 1940 world, but the focus, which would usually be

on Margaret, is on Irene, Margaret’s older half-sister, a lonely artistic soul who the Clarke family (bar Margaret) ignores and shuns.

This is very much Irene’s story, but aspects of both timelines entice—we watch Julia create digital horticultural wizardry, while Irene imbues her pages with magic of a different sort, all the while unwittingly walking into a future without sister Margaret. The author cleverly ties her protagonists together. This is an easy novel to get lost in. It tickled my personal love of gardens, and stoked memories of the stunning Lost (and recovered) Gardens of Heligan.

Fiona Alison

THE HAUNTING OF HERO’S BAY

Amanda Block, Hodder & Stoughton, 2025, £20.00, hb, 400pp, 9781529360837

The Haunting of Hero’s Bay is Amanda Block’s second novel, an engaging and atmospheric story of doomed love and the powerful resurgence of the past. The novel opens dramatically in 1977 when the body of a young woman is found in the sea. The plot then moves between two timelines: the present, where young Finley arrives in the seaside town of Crescombe in Devon to help his godmother run a guest house; and the past – 1840 – when another young man – George, Lord Delmore –stays in the town for the summer and paints a famous work, Hero’s Bay. The bookish Finley is charged with writing a guidebook about local history – and his research uncovers more than he bargained for.

The glimpses of the past are, at first, confusingly tantalising; but as Finley learns more, the reader’s immersion in past events becomes deeper and more emotional, reaching a degree of urgency as events escalate, past and present merging together. Block manages this gradual unweaving of the past particularly well. The setting is wonderfully recreated through beautiful descriptions that have the reader almost tasting the salt-sea air. Finley is a likeable central character: a classics graduate who loves stories about the past, he seeks solace and healing by the sea – but ends up discovering much more.

Crescombe suffers all the frustrations of a small, insular community but with hints of a bigger world: mixed race relationships cause unease and Italian immigrants add an exotic touch. Ambrose Montgomery, local gentry, is determined to develop the town but faces a dangerous underworld of smuggling and contraband.

This is an enjoyable Gothic historical mystery. The ‘haunting’ of the title is real, but also serves as a compelling metaphor for the powerful influence that the past can have on the present – not always in a benign way.

Adele Wills

THE QUEEN’S NECKLACE

Adrienne Chinn, One More Chapter, 2025, £9.99, pb, 384pp, 9780008643829

Adrienne Chinn’s latest novel is a dualtime narrative which explores the relationship between Anne and Mary Boleyn in the Tudor court of the 16th century, and the idea that the iconic B necklace could have survived and passed down through the family and into the hands of contemporary actress Bryher Finch. Anne and Mary are fleshed out wonderfully as sisters and rivals as they move through the royal court and as each is lifted up and cast down in turn.

Meanwhile, Bryher’s life has been turned upside down by a faked video appearing to show her cheating on her husband. She is hounded by the media and shut out by her husband; the only relief coming from a chance to explore her family tree and her connections to the Boleyn family, and to meet a distant cousin in England. When Bryher loses her job as a recurring character on a popular show, she is adrift. Offered the chance to play Anne Boleyn in a new miniseries, Bryher accepts and reluctantly moves in with her cousin; soon the idea of Anne and the Boleyn necklace becomes all-consuming.

The dual timeline is used very effectively, and Chinn’s storytelling is fast-paced and exciting. This is Chinn’s first foray into Tudor fiction, and I hope it won’t be her last. An ideal read for fans of Philippa Gregory and Joanna Courtney.

Lisa Redmond

THE CUT OF THE MOON

Cynthia Ellingsen, Lake Union, 2025, $16.99/£8.99, pb, 395pp, 9781662529399

This ambitious dual-timeline novel opens in 1925 with the story of Ruby, the youngest daughter of the wealthy Thornhill family, living in a mansion called Wind Thorne in rural upstate New York. During an engagement party for Ruby’s sister, a maid falls down the staircase and dies. Ruby suspects murder but does not know the identity of the killer. Unhappy with her life, fearing her lecherous uncle, and aware of her family’s illegal whiskey business, Ruby steals her sister’s diamond engagement ring and runs off to New York City with a young man from a nearby farm. They talk their way into employment in a large brownstone for four years, until the start of the Great Depression. Hard times force them to return to Wind Thorne, where they find illegal activities have expanded. Ellingsen’s second story, which is contemporary, centers on Lindsey McKenna, a data analyst and would-be jewelry designer whose aunt now owns Wind Thorne. Lindsey obsesses over the legend of the missing ring and the disturbing fate of the Thorne family and enlists a handsome gemologist to help with her sleuthing.

Ellingsen excels at weaving together the timelines, creating connected plots and suspense about the resolution of both tales, and clarifying how Ruby and Lindsey change

over the arcs of their stories. But the plot is complex and predictively dependent on diaries, and the motivations of the characters are not always plausible. Also, although Ellingsen adds descriptions about settings, both stories seem suspended in time, not anchored in historical or political detail about the twenties, World War I, or the Depression. Nonetheless, I raced to the end, eager to learn the fates of the feisty women and their love interests.

Marlie Wasserman

THE STRANGERS

Ekow Eshun, Harper, 2025, $35.00/C$43.50, hb, 400pp, 9780063450523 / Hamish Hamilton, 2024, £20.00, hb, 400pp, 9780241472026

Ekow Eshun describes his monumental work The Strangers as creative nonfiction, and it embraces the best of both fiction and nonfiction writing. The titular strangers are five Black men, all historical figures far from where or how they were born. Five novellas capture a snapshot of each life at a crucial moment. Nineteenth-century Shakespearean actor Ira Aldridge, as he labors to convince London with his authentically Black Othello. Explorer Matthew Henson, traveling with Robert Peary in his race for the North Pole. Frantz Fanon, a Martiniquan psychiatrist working in revolutionary Algeria, treating both Algerian prisoners and French soldiers, the tortured and the torturers. Civil rights activist Malcolm X in the searching months after leaving the Nation of Islam. British footballer Justin Fashanu, hiding his sexuality behind the swagger of fame. These are men who are, as Eshun puts it, “perpetual outsiders” in the places they live and the spaces they inhabit.

But Eshun himself is also a stranger, and he reflects on that through a series of essays tucked between each novella. He writes about growing up Black in London in the 1970s and 1980s and compares his experiences to those of Black men throughout history, different figures with different stories than those explored in the novellas. Writers, artists, musicians, activists, politicians, scholars—thinkers and creators who shaped Eshun’s understanding of his identity and his place in a world that persists in othering him. Taken together, the novellas and essays are meditations on Blackness and masculinity, on how the color of one’s skin defines and confines one’s identity, and on what it means to still be considered a stranger in a place one has lived all their life. A thoughtful and meaningful work.

Jessica Brockmole

FATE: Tales of History, Mystery, and Magic

Helen Hollick, Annie Whitehead, and Jean Gill, et al., Taw River Press, 2025, $9.99/£7.99, pb, 250pp, 9781068772146

A short story makes me think of haiku, those

short pithy poems of nature. Here is mine for this anthology of short stories: Ten stars of book fame Varied style, time, and matter Recommend you browse

These accomplished, award winning purveyors of story bring us literary snacks: Anna Belfrage, Jean Gill, Helen Hollick, R. Marsden, Alison Morton, J. P. Reedman, Elizabeth St. John, Marian Thorpe, Debbie Young, and Annie Whitehead. Cathie Dunn provides the thematic introduction, Helen Hollick an Endword. Each of the ten stories has a final author note, adding detail and charm. Variety of subgenres, time, and location are the keys to this collection all tied together with the sense of fate in its various meanings. You will read tales of: Ghosts from a true believer, protecting your own from invaders, a missing and found art mystery, the common creature’s fantastical revenge, a Greek myth explored in a new way, a mythic rescue dog set in a true story, time travel to alter fate, medieval alchemy grander than making gold, a dying disgraced queen served by a king’s bastard, and a saint in our midst.

As Helen Hollick reminds us, each reader has preferences. I have my favorites from this book; all were enjoyable. A benefit of this short story anthology is to remind you of other styles and subjects which will pique your interest. Suspend your bias and open your eyes to other time periods and story structures. Each of these is a gem of craft and careful writing. Words always matter; they must work harder in a short story. Each author excelled, which calls the reader to consider their novels. Highly recommended.

Catherine Mathis

THE HONG KONG WIDOW

Kristen Loesch, Berkley, 2025, $30.00/C$39.99, hb, 368pp, 9780593548011 / Allison & Busby, 2025, £18.99, hb, 320pp, 9780749032791

Maybe it’s the influence of the film Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), but there seems to be a new generation of novels with very complex plots. Mei, the main character in The Hong Kong Widow, stars in multiple timelines: the frame narrative takes place in Seattle, Washington, and Hong Kong in 2015, where Mei starts her story in first person. She tells about her impoverished childhood and her mother’s disappearance in Jiangsu Province in 1937. This timeline continues in Shanghai, when Mei is given away to a rich uncle. During WWII she marries her first husband, a Jewish magician, discovers her own psychic abilities, and is soon widowed.

There are several widows in the book. The titular widow is Holly Zhang, a silent film star who organizes the séance competition in her dead husband’s Gothic mansion. The competition ends with six people dead, their bodies disappeared. In 2015 Mei’s daughter insists on finding out what really happened and why Mei is the only séance leader to survive the competition.

The dueling points of view help the reader keep the narratives straight but also make

things confusing; it was not until the middle of the book that I realized that both viewpoints belonged to the same person. Adding to the narrative density is the theme of possession that is central to the book. We are possessed by the past and we are possessed by ghosts, by the ghosts of our past, and by our own former selves that we prefer to leave behind. Spookiness is added by drawings by Jiksun Cheung.

Complex though it is, the book is unputdownable. In fact, as soon as I finished it, I read it again from the beginning, to savor all the details.

Alison McMahan

EDENGLASSIE

Melissa Lucashenko, Oneworld, 2025, £10.99, pb, 320pp, 9781836431060 / Univ. of Queensland Press, 2023, A$32.99, pb, 320pp, 9780702266126

Granny Eddie has a fall, knocked cold. Everything has ‘gorn skewiff’, whitefellas avoiding looking at an old Goorie woman. In the crisp hospital bed, she thinks of dirt, all her life being ‘a dirty Blak’. She feeds the journalist tall tales about the old days. Her granddaughter Winona is an angry woman. Dr Johnny is smitten.

1840. Dawalbin espies the Ancestors’ arrival, a ‘great white curve coming upriver’. The dagai (I guess, foreigners) are leaving; will the people now have peace? Mulanyin, a Yugambeh youth, catches a big mulloway, but has to return it since it’s a female bearing eggs. Soon he will be ready for the bora ceremony, and he dreams of owning his own whaleboat and marrying Nita, the Petries’ housemaid.

He and Murree compete in the regatta, only to find the prize for the blackfellas is less than for the whites. Young Tom Petrie, the first white child born in Brisbane, who ‘speaks Yagara like a Goorie’, catches a river turtle. Meanwhile, the whitefellas in the government town struggle to ‘build a Christian civilisation in the wilderness’.

The story is based on the colonial history of Queensland. ‘Edenglassie’ was a name briefly used for the penal colony near Brisbane. The voices of Eddie and young Mulanyin are brilliant; one offering history, the other vitality. Young Tom’s familarity with the Goories allows us to see their world through sympathetic white eyes and see the whites’ world through their eyes—alien concepts like ‘Work, Fences, Debt and Jesus’.

A masterpiece, and a model of showing, not telling. However, the unfamiliar vocabulary and culture obscured some of the major plot points, e.g. I didn’t understand the ‘statue disaster’, and I could have used a glossary. At the end, the stories of the modern-day and 19th century Goories connect beautifully.

Susie Helme

BOG QUEEN

Anna North, Bloomsbury, 2025, $28.99, hb, 288pp, 9781635579666 / W&N, 2025, £18.99, hb, 288pp, 9781399629942

In 2018, a woman’s body is found buried

in a peat bog near Ludlow, England. Is she the murder victim police have been looking for? The coroner sends for Agnes, a forensic specialist in bones and teeth, who discovers that this remarkably well-preserved young woman is hundreds of years old. Alternating chapters are dated by the cycles of the moon in 50 BCE, the lifetime of this Celtic Druid when Romans were encroaching on their territories. The book begins with a third element, the moss: “A colony of moss does not think or speak in language. But if such a colony could tell the story of its life, it might say this: Once we flourished.” These passages and their titles, recurring six times through the book, add a surprisingly moving perspective.

Events in these two periods are compelling in different ways. We know the Druid died young but not how, so as we follow her, we wonder what will cause her death. Agnes, who is used to studying murdered bodies alone, must consult with specialists to date the body and understand what struck her down, all of whom (including the precocious young Ruby) enrich the story. Agnes and the researchers want to excavate the peat more fully but are met with two opposing forces: environmental protestors who want to restore it by letting water flow freely again and a commercial company who plan to harvest it.

The mysteries in Bog Queen captivate, and the voice of the moss enriches our sense of a history much older than the Druid herself. The situations she confronts draw us into her Celtic life, and so too with the contemporary characters and their passion for discovering the truth and honoring the Druid. Highly recommended!

Jinny Webber

SLASHED BEAUTIES

A. Rushby, Verve Books, 2025, £18.99, hb, 352pp, 9780857308856 / Berkley, 2025, $30.00/C$39.99, hb, 384pp, 9780593954645

Three bewitched 18th-century wax models are expressly designed to entice medical students who will be eager to slash and dig into their beautiful bodies. These ‘Anatomical Venuses’ are objects to be desired, automatons of pleasure; men—like Geon Yoon—will ‘scratch at the walls to get to them’. In one of the models, the face and groin are interchangeable parts—a gruesome metaphor.

Eleanor, abandoned in 1769 London by her cad of a lover, has two choices—the new factories or the bawdy house. She meets Elizabeth and Emily in the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens and enters into a Faustian pact. She is offered a life of luxury but warned that ‘only

the exterior is gilded in this world’. When the brothel comes upon hard times, the three beauties are paid handsomely to sit for the anatomist.

Antiques dealer Alys, who has a macabre speciality, is given a large amount of money to transport one of the models from Seoul to London. The legend goes: when the three Venuses reunite, they will rise. The Venuses, debauched for their beauty by men, want revenge, and there is a coven of witches who have the magic to make everything right.

The modern players involved in the scramble for the Venuses ‘have skin in the game’, occupationally or genealogically. Halfway through the plot—which is equally engaging in the modern timeline as in the 18th century one—we learn just how interested they are. There are dark and dangerous secrets in everyone’s history. Alys admits, ‘I’m hiding everything’.

I loved wondering just how real the Venuses are—we are kept guessing. Is ‘Elizabeth’ the anatomical mannequin or a sentient powerhungry brothel madam with magic powers and her own evil agenda? Rich, intricate, and full of surprises, and everything ties up wonderfully at the end.

Susie Helme

THE LOST MASTERPIECE

B. A. Shapiro, Algonquin, 2025, $29.00/£25.00, hb, 435pp, 9781643756370

B. A. Shapiro’s critical acclaim for The Art Forger gives her a high bar to clear with her new multiple-narrator book tackling both a Jewish “material claims against Germany” art treasure in the present and the Impressionist cabal of Berthe Morisot and the Manet family. Not only is the time scope broad, 1869 to 1921 and also “now,” but so is the geography—Paris to Boston.

Tamara Rubin is surprised to find that she’s a great-great-great-great granddaughter of the sometimes-outrageous Morisot, noted among the Impressionists for her tender domestic scenes. Through her third-person voice in the bulk of the book, it’s clear Morisot would rather be painting what the men around her are allowed: crowd scenes in the City of Light and along the river Seine. But in her time, it’s shocking that she’s attempting to paint in a group studio among the men, and to her dismay, the marriage eventually forced on her conspires to tighten the corset of convention further. What can she achieve for herself and how daring can she be without society shunning her efforts?

Shapiro explains (in an author’s note) that she’s modified “facts” for the four significant women in her novel—only one of them existed— and the most controversial artwork at stake, Party on the Seine, is fictional. Shapiro uses this reach of imagination well to convey Berthe’s constricted life and career, and splashes a thread of mystical behavior of the painting itself into the mix. The romancing and sexual risks in the tale come through as especially authentic (the painting’s “messaging” to

Tamara, not so believable). Most powerful and resonant are the energy and poignance of Morisot’s life conveyed here, in a tale well worth savoring.

Beth Kanell

RESTITUTION

Tamar Shapiro, Regal House, 2025, $19.95, pb, 266pp, 9781646036196

1989 Illinois. The same day she experiences a devastating loss, Kate watches on television as the Berlin Wall begins to come down. This opens up possibilities for Kate’s mother, who spent part of her childhood in East Germany and now has a chance to travel there. For Kate, it’s a beginning of a discovery, as she, her mother, and her brother Martin return to the town of Grimma, to their grandparents’ former home. This journey brings us back to the 1950s, when Kate’s grandparents lived under Soviet control.

Then, for Kate and Martin, the subject of restitution comes up. Could they get their grandparents’ house back? In 2005, Kate, long estranged from her brother, decides to reconcile.

This emotional, family-focused novel flashes from 1989-1990 to the 1950s, spends a bit of time in 1969-1970, and occasionally goes forward to 2005, as the secrets of a family are revealed, and they are intertwined with what life was like in East Germany under Soviet rule. In 1950s East Germany, the desperation of and danger for those who did not join “the party,” and the pressure for neighbors and friends to turn on each other, pulses on the page. The aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fears and complications that came with reunification are also explored. This tale combines loss, fear, betrayal, and love into a story that slowly unpeels terrible secrets, beyond what Kate and Martin had ever expected. They also face truths about another known family tragedy. Recommended to anyone interested in the history of post-WWII Germany.

Bonnie DeMoss

THE SCULPTOR AND THE SAINT

Lori Joan Swick, L.J. Hendricks Press, 2025, $16.99, pb, 313pp, 9798992258509

This dual-timeline historical novel brings to life both the martyrdom of the early Roman virgin Saint Cecilia (c. 250 AD) and the creation of the Baroque sculpture portraying her as she was discovered in her coffin in the catacombs of Rome in 1596. Stefano Maderno (c. 1600), the sculptor who fashioned this remarkable work, is the second protagonist.

The story of Cecilia’s marriage and martyrdom is interwoven with the discovery of her undamaged sarcophagus and the exhumation of her body, an event at which Maderno was present. Little is known about the artist, but his statue stands as a lasting tribute to the 23-year-old who produced a masterpiece yet created nothing later of

comparable quality. Swick vividly imagines his process as a merging of the saint’s mystical presence with his tormented creativity, portraying the destructive, physical act of beating a work of art from marble. Cecilia’s tragic life, cruel death, and bizarre afterlife are paired with Maderno’s increasingly extreme behaviour as he becomes consumed by his artistic endeavour.

Swick’s portrayal of Cecilia, honoured as the patron saint of music, departs from traditional hagiographies. Her historical analysis in the Author’s Notes offers a persuasive reinterpretation of Cecilia as both a living woman and a virgin saint whose image was shaped to serve the needs of the patriarchal Roman Catholic Church.

Keira Morgan

BEASTS OF THE SEA

Iida Turpeinen, trans. David Hackston, Little Brown, 2025, $28.00/C$37.00, hb, 288pp, 9780316585835 / MacLehose, 2025, £16.99, hb, 288pp, 9781529438291

In the mid-18th century, Georg Wilhelm Steller is a “theologian, naturalist, and curious man.” Commander Vitus Bering (of Bering Strait and Sea) is on a mission to chart a route from Asia to the Americas.

Steller joins the expedition, and when disaster strikes, “he knows with absolute certainty that they are lost, but his horror is mixed with a strange sense of elation: the discovery of the sea cow is his alone.” Steller’s Sea Cow, an enormous Sirenian, is already on the verge of extinction when Steller attempts to describe it and preserve a specimen. Jumping forward 100 years, Alaska’s new governor, overwhelmed by a territory whose initial promise is coming to naught and taking his career with it, recovers the skeleton of Steller’s Sea Cow. His sister cares for it and other Alaskan specimens, which eventually end up in a Helsinki museum, to be meticulously captured there by a female illustrator. Finally, in 1952, the skeleton undergoes restoration by John Grönvall, a conservationist “given the task of putting together the first of the disappeared species that forced humans to look at themselves in the mirror” – to acknowledge the possibility of man-made extinction.

This is a novel in translation, and the language is evocative, transportive, thought-provoking. Its exploration of the natural sciences is fascinating, it wears its research effortlessly, hews as closely to history as possible, and “takes the liberty to use imagination” with infinite subtlety for the rest. This guarantees standout status in a genre currently plagued by presentism and dead horses of the same themes/settings constantly beaten to an ahistorical, juvenile, boring pulp. Turpeinen’s

debut exhibits universal verisimilitude of characterization and everything else. Her story of the Sea Cow is exemplary historical fiction and a haunting paean to all extinct species –a fleeting moment of “all-consuming sorrow upon beholding this creature… so irrevocably departed.”

Bethany Latham

TAP DANCING AT THE BLUEBIRD

Christine Walker, Sibylline, 2025, $18.00, pb, 346pp, 9781960573667

Genet is about to get married and is keen to record her ninety-nine-year-old grandmother Mattie’s memories. Mattie has made a great success of her life, but it wasn’t always so, and we are taken back to the lean years of the Great Depression when the Toft family ran the Bluebird Buffet in Kansas City. When Mattie is twelve, a young man wearing tap shoes arrives looking for work. He is Kip Kelly, and where he has come from no-one knows, but he joyfully dances through his duties. Mattie is entranced by him, and she becomes his eager pupil. Circumstances result in Mattie running away from home, riding freight trains with Kip across the country. Although California is the goal, fate has other plans for the pair.

The narrative set in the 1930s is wellcrafted and by far the outstanding part of this novel. It conveys with a delicate sensitivity the atmosphere, struggles and desperation common to so many individuals during this era. The younger Mattie and her family have endearing qualities, always optimistic in spite of their troubles. As she says: “There’s difficulty enough in the world. Why add misery?” Later decades up to the time of Covid include passages written in a more journalistic style that occasionally detracts from the basic theme that is primarily about love and forgiveness. Although uneven in places, this novel has many charms and hidden gems.

Marina Maxwell

HISTORICAL FANTASY

THE NANNY’S HANDBOOK TO MAGIC AND MANAGING DIFFICULT DUKES

Amy Rose Bennett, Kensington, 2025, $18.95/ C$24.95/£16.99, pb, 352pp, 9781496754417

In this charming confection, Mrs. Emmeline Chase, newly graduated from the Parasol Academy for Exceptional Nannies and Governesses, is hired by the eccentric Xavier Mason, Duke of St. Lawrence, to manage his high-spirited wards, Harry, Barry, and Gary. Like any Parasol Academy nanny, Emmeline is clearly up to the task, securely equipped with a magical uniform pocket that produces such useful items as “besmirchifying potion.” However, Emmeline has yet to quite master the art of teleportation, so, with the help of the family pet, Horatio

Ravenscar, the talking raven, her first encounter with the duke and his household takes place atop the room, where she is trapped. Xavier is a shy and socially awkward horologist, who is currently obsessed with creating the “Clock of Clocks” to win the upcoming competition to design the Westminster Palace Clock. But his growing attraction to the charming Mrs. Chase, threatens to prove an enticing distraction from his task. And when a secret enemy begins to play dangerous pranks that jeopardize the entire household, Emmeline and Xavier must work together to discover the culprit and find true love at last.

Readers who are looking for an in-depth discussion of horology or a historically accurate picture of Victorian London will likely find themselves disappointed, but taken on its own terms, The Nanny’s Handbook to Magic and Managing Difficult Dukes is a pleasantly satisfying romance.

Erica Obey

BLOODY BONES

Garrett Boatman, Cemetery Dance, 2025, $18.99, pb, 206pp, 9781964780382

In 1924, a man calling himself a preacher leads a young girl into the pine woods, claiming her mama is hurt. When out of sight, the man slams a branch onto the side of the girl’s mouth before he rips off her panties, then puts his hands on her throat.

In 1956, eight-year-old Lamar Lavonne and his dog Hobo are attacked and killed by Mauser, Billy Bob Wilcox’s Doberman. Billy Bob’s father, sheriff Luther Wilcox, covers up the attack, dumping Lamar’s body in quicksand. But his is not the only body in the dirt. The Dark Man is submerged in the sand, held down by a plowshare, but quick to take advantage of the corpse, inhabiting Lamar’s body, rising from the sand, and terrorizing the townsfolk—again.

Bloody Bones is a historical horror novel, the latest from author Boatman. Like many horror stories, action drives the narrative as victim after victim face the living dead Dark Man. But the narrative moves from incident to incident with little context, making it hard to understand how the overall plotline arcs, and robbing readers of the tension that comes with anticipating the next move.

Characters are introduced quickly and not fully fleshed out, so it’s difficult to get to know and connect with them, and when no clear protagonist emerges, lines between the characters blur.

K.M.

Sandrick

A HOUSE BETWEEN SEA AND SKY

Beth Cato, 47North, 2025, $16.99/£8.99, pb, 303pp, 9781662527760

Cato sets her historical fantasy in 1920s Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. Fayette, a writer for the silent movies whose creativity is stymied by grief, escapes to the seaside town to find her muse and restart her life. To clear her thoughts, she heads out for a walk on a dark and exceedingly stormy night and stumbles upon

Rex, one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, in need of a risky rescue.

When writer and actor take shelter in a strange but welcoming house, they unknowingly wake up old magic, some of it wicked and lethal— and some of it intriguingly not. There’s also the magic that’s been part of Fayette’s family for generations, a preternatural sourdough starter named Mother (there’s humor here along with symbolism). Fayette blames Mother, perhaps unfairly, for her many familial losses and must come to terms with the strengths and limitations of this novel character.

How Fayette and Rex protect each other and navigate the supernatural dangers and offerings that the house and Mother drag them into forms the action of this engaging and enjoyable novel. Cato draws on Russian folktales as well as her powerful imagination and baking expertise to develop her tale’s magical elements. She deploys her fantasy to build themes of friendship based on listening and genuine respect, the advantages of found family, and the need for shelter—metaphorical and tangible.

Appropriately enough, A House between Sea and Sky reads like homemade sourdough fresh from the oven—that is, comforting and delightful, even nourishing to the soul—but with the right amount of danger and excitement found in crunchy crust and the challenge of a well-developed chewy crumb.

Judith Starkston

WHEN THEY BURNED THE BUTTERFLY

Wen-Yi Lee, Tor, 2025, $27.99/C$38.99, hb, 480pp, 9781250369451 / Wildfire, 2025, £20.00, hb, 480pp, 9781035429929

Sixteen-yearold Adeline

Siow and her single mother live together in 1972 Singapore.

Mother is part owner of a highend department store. Beautiful, bratty and smart, Adeline attends a private girls’ school. She and her mother have a unique talent. Through thoughts and hand motions, they can make fire emerge from their fingertips. Mother dies suddenly in a massive home fire when Adeline is away. Soon Adeline learns that her mother led a secret life as leader of twenty or more Red Butterfly girls, each of whom came from poverty and abuse but now can wield the fire power. Adeline’s mother was the “conduit” for the Red Butterfly goddess to interact with the real world. Adeline is the only survivor with her mother’s bloodline to sustain the fire goddess’s power.

Wen-Yi Lee masterfully transports readers into the chaotic multi-cultural island nation, just seven years old. Wealth and poverty run side by

side, and unclaimed bodies float in waterways. Male-centric gangs with other magic or special skills originating in far off places grab for women, drugs, territory, and power. They seek to crush competition and scoff at the Red Butterfly girls. The prose and pace of this fantasy novel match the quiet tiny flames that grow into all-consuming hot rages, then dies down before the next burst of energy and action. Intricate sub-plots explore police activities, betrayal for money or favors, family relationships, and peculiar drugs. Adeline’s search for Mother’s killer and for her place in the Red Butterfly gang takes her on a stunning, sometimes tragic, journey from loner schoolgirl to brilliant, avenging fire-wielding leader and sapphic lover. Her growth will make any reader, female or male, cheer. Highly recommended.

G. J. Berger

THE IRON PALACE

Kate Shanahan, ROAV Press, 2025, $16.99, pb, 326pp, 9798985629149

For the past two weeks, Mina has been looking for evidence to prove that her spirit journey to the past really happened. Mina wishes to be a normal college student; however, she can’t deny the ways she changed, including seeing fox spirits. When a spirit directs Mina to a hidden account written by Masako, the woman whose body she was pulled into in the year 999, Mina discovers her adventures to the past may not be over. Masako hasn’t been able to use her powers since Mina left. With the assistance of Kenji, whose family has guarded Masako’s Chronicle of an Imperial Court Medium, the two will attempt to send their spirits back in time to help Masako defeat a powerful demon.

Book 2 picks up immediately after the events of Book 1, Tangled Spirits, with the first half centered on Mina and Kenji reading a series of letters left behind by Masako. These letters chronicle Masako’s life after Mina was returned to the present. While the insights into Masako’s world are engaging, the letter-style narrative lacks the urgency and tension that made Book 1 so compelling. In the first half, Mina’s longing for a normal life is understandable, but her refusal to accept her ability to see fox spirits—especially after all she’s experienced—feels somewhat forced. Once Mina and Kenji do return to the past, the story regains its momentum. The twist involving the identities they inhabit is a standout moment, adding a fresh layer of intrigue. Plus, the vivid depiction of the Heian period is immensely enjoyable. One minor inconsistency I noticed: Masako sometimes calls her friend “Mina” and other times “Mi-na.” Overall, The Iron Palace is a richly imaginative folkloric tale that moves fluidly across time.

J. Lynn Else

AS MANY SOULS AS STARS

Natasha Siegel, Bloomsbury, 2025, £18.99, hb, 320pp, 9781526684622 / William Morrow, 2025, $30.00, hb, 352pp, 9780063418028

Described by the publishers as a Sapphic retelling of the Dr Faustus legend, this is a multiperiod novel which follows the dark, intense

encounters between Miriam, a shape-shifting demon who has taken female form, and Cybil Harding, a witch. Miriam lives by making deals with people whose desires she fulfils in return for their souls, which she consumes. She is powerful and immortal, but she is utterly alone.

Then, in 1592, she meets Cybil, who is also alone. The two are drawn together, and a bargain is struck when Cybil is on the point of death. Miriam grants her reincarnation in exchange for her soul. So begins a passionate affair in which love and hate co-exist, and a fight for survival which lasts through a further two lifetimes.

Of the historical periods, the 16th century seemed the most convincing, though there was too much reliance on the over-use of the unconvincing archaisms ‘mayhap’ and ‘perchance’. The evocation of the Regency is the sketchiest, with its vague references to ‘the Ton’ and anachronisms such as ‘passed’ for died or Cybil’s exclamation ‘Jesus Christ!’. The last part of the novel is set on a 1930s liner, and again anachronisms undermine the setting: for example, Cybil’s graduation from a Cambridge that did not award women degrees until 1948.

The novel is, though, strong on the magical and supernatural elements. It would appeal to readers of Gothic fantasy, although some readers might find it too melodramatic: so much blood and gore and gurgling slit throats. There’s a corpse kept in a bedroom, and a stagey villain in mad Thomas Harding who would not have surprised if he occasionally gnashed his teeth. However, it has terrific atmosphere, and there’s a good twist at the end.

Lucienne

Boyce

TIMESLIP

NEVER TEAR US APART

Rowan Coleman, Hodder, 2025, £9.99, pb, 400pp, 9781529376630

This novel is a beautiful love story, set against the dramatic backdrops of Malta’s darkest hour during World War II and the modern-day, picturesque island.

Maia travels to Malta with her estranged Maltese father to try and patch up their dysfunctional relationship. After a head injury, Maia finds herself catapulted back in time to the Siege of Malta, where she comes face to face with her family’s buried trauma. While helping with the island’s war effort, Maia falls in love with a handsome pilot. Dislocated in time and flitting between the past and present, Maia must work out what she needs to sacrifice for love, for war and for atonement.

This compulsive read has many fascinating historical details and real-life heroes. I felt immersed in the two time periods while reading it. The love story is both poignant and realistic for the 1940s. The time travelling element to the story made me think of the BBC’s 1990s TV programme Goodnight Sweetheart. With Malta as a backdrop, this would make a great TV adaptation or film, too.

Don’t overthink the quantum physics and space time paradoxes needed for time travel in

this story; just enjoy being carried along with the romance of two young souls in love. This a perfect book for a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Lizzie Bentham

THE MISSING PAGES

Alyson Richman, Union Square, 2025, $18.99, pb, 416pp, 9781454953210

1992. Violet, a student at Harvard University, is still mourning the loss of her boyfriend when she gets a job at the Widener Library as a page. Among the stacks, Violet finds solace until odd things begin happening. Sounds, uncommon smells, and books falling at her feet lead Violet to believe there may be a ghost following her. Even more surprising? The ghost may be that of the library’s namesake, Harry Widener, who lost his life on the Titanic. Harvard legend recounts that Harry went back to his cabin to retrieve a valuable book instead of boarding a lifeboat. However, Violet slowly discovers that Harry may be trying to tell her a piece of his past that’s remained secret all these years. But why her, and why now?

The story is told in the third person through Violet and in first person as Harry’s ghost observes present events and recounts his past. I did not expect the paranormal elements to work as well as they did. Richman vividly reconstructs historical settings with opulent detail, recreating the journey of the real-life Harry Widener and following his footsteps leading up to the Titanic’s final moments. As someone who’s been captivated by the Titanic myself, walking through the ship’s exclusive (and less exclusive) areas was a delight! The dual time periods flow together seamlessly. Richman beautifully depicts the profound experience of grief, capturing the emotions of a mother who’s lost her son as well as those in romantic relationships. Violet is perpetually associated with her boyfriend’s untimely death by fellow students. Her narrative poignantly illustrates the challenges of moving past grief when reminders of it are omnipresent. Throughout the narrative, a passion for books is lyrically explored, highlighting their power to touch the heart and forge connections that transcend time. The Missing Pages is a book to savor. Recommended!

J. Lynn Else

CHILDREN & YOUNG ADULT

A POND, A POET, AND THREE PESTS

Caroline Adderson, illus. Lauren Tamaki, Groundwood, 2025, $19.99/C$21.99, hb, 36pp, 9781773068930

The 17th-century Japanese poet Bashō sits by a pond with his eyes closed. Seeing him, a carp, a flower, and a mosquito all hope to gain his attention and become famous in one of his poems, but the poet doesn’t notice them. He does notice the frog that jumps into the pond. The final words of the story are Bashōs famous haiku, “The Old Pond.”

This is a brilliantly conceived picture book.

The text on each page is simple. The full-page, gorgeous illustrations, in watery green and blue, clearly show the actions and desires of the pests... and the stillness of the poet. The splash of the frog and the famous haiku are a wonderful finish. End pages explain more about haiku and the poet, and encourage readers to write their own nature haikus. A beautiful, magical book. The publisher recommends ages 3-6, but I recommend it for older children too.

Elizabeth Caulfield Felt

A SEA OF LEMON TREES

María Dolores Águila, Roaring Brook, 2025, $17.99, hb, 304pp, 9781250342614

Roberto is the youngest of four children, the only one born in the United States. To his Mexican immigrant family in 1930, he is the future. While he’s the best student in Mrs. Markland’s fifth-grade class, he’s also a regular kid who wants to play with his friends and be the one to break the Christmas piñata. Still, changes are coming to his community set among the lemon groves near San Diego. Two girls he likes are moving away because their father is out of work. His best friend, David, and David’s family disappear one day, deported to Mexico. A barn in his neighborhood is being turned into a school where the Mexican American children will be sent, expelled from the elementary school they’ve attended for years. Not even Roberto, for all his top grades, will be allowed to stay. Community leaders decide to take the children out of school and sue the district for discrimination. Because of his academic achievements, Roberto is chosen as the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit to testify in court.

This is a huge responsibility for a 12-yearold, and through free verse in a fictionalized biography, Águila conveys how the weight of the entire community rests heavily on Roberto’s shoulders. Readers feel his sense of betrayal when his teacher sides with the school district and lies under oath that multiple grades of Mexican American children can receive the same education in a converted one-room barn that the white children receive in a dedicated school building. The corrido of the subtitle (“The Corrido of Roberto Alvarez”) refers to a traditional Mexican musical genre that honors community heroes, and this book for middlegrade readers shows that real heroes are not those who aren’t afraid, but those who are afraid and do the right thing anyway.

Lyn Miller-Lachmann

THE RESURRECTIONIST

Kathleen S. Allen, Roaring Brook, 2025, $19.99, hb, 336pp, 9781250341778

Seventeen-year-old Odile “Dilly” Rothbart is on a personal crusade to become a surgeon just like her father. However, she is pitted against Victorian-era societal pressures, expectations for a woman of her age and status, her twin sister’s physical disability, and the recent death of her famous father. Dilly finds herself in the company of the charming and persuasive Ben Sinclair, who helps her break into the Academy so that she can begin her learning, and break into graves so she can begin her training. It isn’t until Dilly finds herself in the bowels of betrayal that she learns about herself, her family, and who she can really trust, or love.

This book is filled with rich and visceral scenes that graphically illustrate Victorian-era surgery, death, and an obsession with resurrection. Each chapter is accompanied with a quote from classic Gothic literature and Dilly narrating from the future, which sets the tone and provides a nice recall to works that inspired this story. This reviewer recognized and appreciated the parallels.

Lies, betrayal, and moral corruption spill from this story as plentifully as blood from a severed artery. Secrets, blackmail, and unexpected plot twists stack as high as the body (and body part) count in this book. Trigger warnings and sensitivity towards blood, death, and bodily harm should be considered for this young adult novel, before readers join Dilly on her quest to find out who she really is, and what she is meant to be: a respected surgeon, or a monster.

Sarah Elliott

ELSA’S CHESSBOARD

Jenny Andrus, illus. Julie Downing, Neal Porter Books, 2025, $18.99, hb, 48pp, 9780823454082

In 1906 Vienna, Austria, six-year-old Elsa watches her brothers play chess. She soon learns to play, too, and thinks of chess every day. On her tenth birthday, Elsa receives her own chessboard and carved pieces. She carries it everywhere, even after she grows up. At the library, Elsa meets Edmund, and their courtship includes chess games—on picnics near the Danube River and even at the opera during intermission. After their wedding, they play chess while rocking their baby to sleep.

Then World War II threatens their lives. The family immigrates to America and takes the chessboard. Elsa works at a dress factory where everyone speaks different languages. But when Elsa teaches her co-workers to play chess, they can all communicate.

Based on author Jenny Andrus’s grandmother’s life, this beautiful story with lovely vintage illustrations captures the wonder of the game of chess alongside the fortitude of immigrant families. Highly recommended. Ages 4-8.

Genetta Adair

IF LOOKS COULD KILL

Julie Berry, Simon & Schuster, 2025, $21.99, hb, 448pp, 9781534470811

In 1888, Jack the Ripper is in London getting ready to escape to the United States as the local police are closing in after his crimes of grisly murders.

Young Tabitha is in NYC’s Bowery working with the Salvation Army trying to help the poor, sorry souls there. Meanwhile, a mystical and legendary force from ancient times arises once more to play the role of avenger in dealing once and for all with the elusive Jack— none other than Medusa the Gorgon.

As Tabitha and her Salvation Army sister Pearl boldly move through the crime-infested worst Bowery streets, they have no idea they will soon share intimate experiences with the infamous British serial killer and a snake-haired, vengeful apparition from antiquity. All the time, Tabitha must also deal with a surprising romantic attraction to a young bartender as the two try to elude local gangsters while they search for missing friends.

Initially a bit skeptical because of the book’s outlandish premise, I soon found this young adult novel to be cleverly cute, bizarre, and completely enticing. What else can one say about a novel that features crooked cops and gangland intrigue, brave teenaged Salvation Army girls, an internationally infamous killer, a supernatural monster from legend, and an amorous young Irish bartender? All the “good” characters like Paddy Campbell, the Salvation Army “Captain,” Oscar the urchin newspaper boy, and Freyda the “girl reporter” are immensely likeable; the “bad” ones hideously sinister. The period jargon is excellent and amusing, adding charming bits of humor during the otherwise most stressful scenes. Prepare for a wild ride of danger and intrigue wrapped around an unlikely and appealing teen romance. Five stars.

Thomas J. Howley

HERO THE HIGHWAY GIRL

Penny Chrimes, Firefly Press, 2025, £8.99, pb, 251pp, 9781917718028

Hero Devine, the richest orphan girl in England, wants to swap her jewels for freedom. Due to be bartered to an unknown husband on her thirteenth birthday, she places herself in the path of a notorious highwayman on the Black Heath. She demands that he teach her to become a highwayman, too, so she can escape her ancestral home where all her life choices are made for her by a cold-blooded aunt. Her only friend is her loyal wolf, Flow, who will not leave her side; but she has promised to set him free to roam with his own kind in the wilds of the north. First, she must become one of the highwaymen

of the Heath to finance her new life. Her reluctant instructor, orphan boy Gentleman Jack, with his untameable horse, Diablo, have been clever enough to avoid the hangman’s noose, the gallows rattling a warning with dead boys’ bones on the Heath.

Jack promised Diablo he would never subject him to the saddle or the bit, so together they rob the rich to survive and furnish their secret hideout. Jack and Diablo share their warm, companionable den with Hero, the kind of home which, despite her riches, she has never had. Jack knows she is trouble. Turning Hero Devine into a thief of the highway puts everything he holds dear at risk. But once they come together, they find they are miserable when forced apart. They seem to mean more to each other than fugitives on the run from different misfortunes. This is a lively, heartwarming story of orphans of different kinds finding a home in loved ones, with finely placed historical detail. Point of view shifts quicken the pace, showing young readers the dangers and escape routes of 18th-century childhood, whether rich or poor.

IN THE COMPANY OF WOLVES

Antonio Farías, Piñata Books, 2025, $14.95, pb, 188pp, 9798893750119

In his first young adult novel, aimed at readers aged 12 to 16, Antonio Farías introduces the engaging, fearless Jaime Cieza, a boy who journeys from New York to live with his father’s family on a ranch in northern New Mexico. He’s also on a journey of discovery, learning about himself, his late father, his Hispanic relatives, his ancestors, and the beliefs and experiences that color their—and his—world. He learns to shoot a rifle and to eat chile. He approaches manhood, yet he misses his mother. More hopelessly, he misses his father, recently killed in Vietnam.

As Jaime rides his charismatic mare, Shadow Walker, and meets an ancient wolf, Graybeard, the novel also explores the mystical bonds between humans and animals.

Farías vividly describes the Southwestern plain, or llano, which forms the Cieza homeland, sometimes dry and sometimes flash flooded. He recreates the atmosphere of the mid-1970’s. His characters, who include Jaime’s warmhearted mother, his big brother Kiko, his feisty grandmother, his cowboy uncle, and the mare and the wolf, are memorable. The issues he raises, particularly the tragic incompatibility of ranchers and wolves, are important.

But this novel would have been even better if it had been carefully edited and proofread (“reins” is consistently misspelled “reigns”). A few fourletter words seem gratuitous, even possibly detrimental to the book’s success with schools and libraries. But above all it needs one more chapter, or even one more page. It concludes without resolving the fates of Jaime, his family, and the wolf, and the reader is left with blank pages instead of a satisfactory ending, which

need not be rosy in order to complete Jaime’s heartfelt story.

Susan Lowell

THE ELIXIR

Lindsay Galvin, illus. Kristina Kister, Barrington Stoke, 2025, £7.99, pb, 110pp, 9780008724504

The year is 1655. Twelve-year-old Isaac Newton, the future discoverer of the force of gravity, is lodging with Katharine and Ann Storer, daughters of the town’s apothecary. Katharine is a year older than Ann, kind but serious and has no particular talents. Ann is a talented herbalist who also has magical powers inherited from her much-missed grandmother, who has already been tried for witchcraft but died in jail.

Two young girls in the town have developed plague symptoms, so a witch hunter has been called, as the plague is believed to have been brought on by a curse. This is a huge problem for Ann and her family, because if Ann’s talents are discovered, she will be accused of witchcraft and put to death.

Can Ann and Isaac put their collective talents to good use and save the town from the plague and what will be the consequences for both of them?

This is a very clever and interesting novella mixing fantastical elements such as the elixir, with historical truth in a very believable and engaging way. It will be revealing for young readers to see Galvin’s imagining of Isaac Newton’s childhood and of the reasons he became famously unapproachable. Ann’s character is fiery, passionate, intelligent and fiercely feminist and young women will feel her frustration with the period in which she lives.

Rebecca Butler

MY SOUL, A SHINING TREE

Jamila Gavin, Farshore, 2025, £8.99, pb, 149pp, 9780008617189

This is the story of three people in three separate sets of circumstances during the early part of the First World War in 1914 Flanders. They are brought together by one walnut tree which also narrates part of the story. This is an ambitious narrative set-up for a book of only one hundred and fifty pages. Some young readers may find so many narrative perspectives a little confusing, but that would be a shame, because the way Gavin has evoked the First World War, and the atmosphere of disconnected chaos which surrounded both civilians and the military, is at points breathtaking.

The character on whom there is the strongest focus is Lotte Becke, the eleven-year-old on whose family farm the walnut tree grows. Gavin’s skill as a writer is evident in her ability to keep Lotte’s account realistically knowledgeable yet also naïve. The moment when she loses her mother happens so fast it is heart-breaking. Lotte’s telling of her tale is alternated with those told by Ernst, an underage German soldier, and Khudadad, a youthful soldier recruited from India to fight for the British Empire. These varying viewpoints come together to give

direct insights into the parallel and often similar experiences of young people involved in conflicts that are not of their making.

The book also talks about an issue which is still being felt by young people today, the situation of refugees and displacement and how children can feel when they are forced to adjust to a new family.

Rebecca Butler

WAR GAMES

Alan Gratz, Scholastic, 2025, $18.99, hb, 368pp, 9781338736106

When Team USA travels to Berlin in 1936 to compete in the Olympics, young gymnast Evie Harris discovers that the discrimination and hatred by the Nazis is far worse than she had imagined.

Still, Evie is determined to take home a medal, become a celebrity like her returning champion roommate, and earn enough money to lift her family out of poverty. This draws the attention of a thief who could use the skill of a talented gymnast to pull off a heist of Olympic proportions and creates a moral dilemma for Evie.

War Games is a richly plotted story with unexpected twists and turns worthy of an eyepopping perfect score of 10 on the uneven bars. The characters are well developed and appealing, giving the reader glimpses into the wide-ranging types of discrimination inflicted on people by the Nazis even before World War II began. While it’s a work of historical fiction, Gratz has included an interesting afterword that explains which characters were based on actual people. It also points out some events that are based on urban myth.

The fast pace and page-turning action make War Games a gold medalist for middle grade fiction that will keep readers in grades 5-8 on the edge of their seats waiting to see how the action all plays out and who wins in the end.

Rebecca Langston-George

THE ODYSSEY OF PHOEBE QUILLIAM

Annelise Gray, Zephyr, 2025, £7.99, pb, 226pp, 9781035911011

Phoebe Quilliam is a talented young artist who learned her skills and love of art from her Nan, Cass. They have enjoyed painting in Cass’s studio, whilst listening to her stories of Greek mythology. Phoebe realises that Cass is becoming forgetful but accepts her Nan’s dismissal of it as old age, not really wanting to acknowledge that Nan is being lost, like her memories, to dementia. Phoebe is grieving the death of her father, a volunteer with the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat

Institution), who died saving a life, yet Nan still thinks her son will visit.

When Nan moves into care, Phoebe visits the studio before it is sold and attacks a seascape which her Nan painted, inspired by her childhood holidays with her friend Hattie on the island of Ithaca. Phoebe is pulled into a fantasy world and meets Leander, a boy who is seeking his lost father who worked for King Odysseus. This beautifully written epic sea adventure follows the quests of Phoebe and Leander as they join forces.

The author’s knowledge of the mythology is evident as the reader follows this page-turning story. Monsters, shapeshifters, giants, searaiders, and many other mythological creatures delight to keep the action rolling.

The story is more than an adventure, though, as it also reveals the impact that her Nan’s dementia has on Phoebe, and how she struggles with the guilt, anger and hurt it causes. This is an excellent topic for class discussion, along with grief, love, and loss.

Phoebe is intelligent and the humour is gentle, threaded through the drama. The senses are used to bring scenes alive in this intriguing novel where fears are faced and overcome. An excellent resource for 9+ year-olds introducing Greek mythology and discussions on familial bonds.

Valerie Loh

SEABIRD

Michelle Kadarusman, Pajama Press, 2025, $19.95/C$22.95, hb, 224pp, 9781772783490

In the late 1800s in Java, girls of noble birth are allowed outside their homes only until they are eleven. At age twelve, they must stay inside until they marry and then remain inside the homes of their husbands. Kartini is twelve and hates being kept inside. She was lucky that her father permitted her an elementary education, but she misses school and wants to be a writer or teacher. Having excelled in the Dutch language, Kartini writes letters to a school friend who returned to her native Netherlands; they share thoughts on what it means to be a colonizer, colonized, and a woman in both societies. Kartini loves Java’s culture but also wants to change the rules against educating women. But how can she do so?

Raden Adjeng Kartini was a real person who helped advance education for women in Java. Kadarusman’s Kartini is a spunky and intelligent heroine, and her struggle to be listened to is one that young readers will understand. Her plight of not being able to leave the house and to possibly be married off young gives the plot real gravity. Historical and cultural information are integrated and made interesting, including

details such as the Chinese Pirate Queen and “People Zoos” in Europe. End pages include a glossary of Indonesian and Dutch words, more about the real Kartini, Javanese culture, and Dutch colonialism. Although a short and easy read, this story gives readers much to think about. Highly recommended. Grades 3-7.

Elizabeth Caulfield Felt

PRESENT, STILL MISSING

K. G. Mach, Big Sister Press, 2025, $15.99, pb, 232pp, 9798991208840

World War II has just ended, and 12-year-old Irene can’t wait to see her soldier father again. She considers herself lucky; her best friend Glen’s brother was killed in the war. But the happy reunion is followed by troubling incidents—her father’s inability to find a job, his heavy drinking, and nightmares. The small-town Tennessee community seems less than welcoming, too. A neighbor tells Irene her father has “soldier’s habits” and his work troubles are all his fault. In addition, she and Glen are fighting, and Glen seems to be more interested in her former friend and now rival Cassie, the daughter of one of the town’s wealthiest families. Cassie finds every opportunity to demean Irene, but behind their friendship break is a terrible secret that implicates all three kids. After Irene’s father attempts suicide and is institutionalized, Irene decides to stand up for herself and her family no matter the cost.

This novel for older elementary and middleschool readers explores the impact of PostTraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) on the lives of former soldiers, their families, and their communities. Mach avoids sugarcoating realities for young readers and in doing so, forces us to look at the way our society has treated veterans, people with disabilities, and families struggling to make ends meet. At the same time, the novel leaves readers with hope as Irene finds unlikely allies in a strict teacher and a classroom bully, both of whom have also experienced the loss of loved ones who survived war only to suffer in its aftermath. An author’s note describes a pioneering hospital on Long Island that successfully treated World War II veterans with what we now know as PTSD until it was shut down due to budget cuts in December 1946.

Lyn Miller-Lachmann

THE PRICE OF EYES

Janet McGiffin, illus. Harry Pizzey, Scotland Street Press, 2025, £9.99, pb, 282pp, 9781910895825

This book forms the final episode in the Empress Irini series. It covers Constantinople and the Eastern Roman empire, as it was then known, during the reign of the Emperor Constantine. A civil war, provoked by the arrest of his consort, the Empress Irini, leads to Constantine’s downfall and the novel deals briskly with these events and their aftermath.

The story is narrated by Thekla, the central character in the previous three books, now an abbess, though an unconventional and somewhat dangerous one, with a short temper and a handy way with a knife. becomes the guardian of Constantine’s daughter Efrosini and

soon realises that she must protect her from the plotting of the Empress Irini, who wishes to make her co-Empress to legitimise her own unpopular rule. The narrative is peppered with extraordinary incidents and narrow escapes from which Thekla and Efrosini finally emerge safe if not triumphant. Brimming with historical detail, the text perhaps suffers from its own relentless action. Gory detail means that it is not for the faint-hearted.

This is an interesting but challenging period, and the author has to negotiate confusing and sometimes impenetrable events to present her narrative. This she manages with elan and a clear feminist perspective. The language is arresting if highly charged. Thekla ‘fumes’ and ‘snaps’ rather than speaks, and when she writes wonders ‘that my words didn’t burst into flames’. No-one enters a room if they can rather ‘rush’ or ‘charge’ into it; Efrosini does not learn so much as ‘gobble up her lessons like sweets’.

The novel brings an obscure and intriguing culture to life, perhaps rather too vividly at times, but is sure to appeal to readers of the quartet’s earlier volumes, and to any reader curious about the setting. Recommended for young adult readers of 12-16 years.

Jane Burke

ESCAPE FROM AMRITSAR

Bali Rai, Bloomsbury Education, 2025, £6.99, pb, 128pp, 9781801997720

The action of this pacy short novel takes place over a night in Amritsar, India, in April 1919 as Arjan aims to find and rescue his father, Mit Singh, who has been arrested by British soldiers, having been wrongly accused of rioting. Arjan tries to make sense of what is going on in the city he loves and where he helps his father on his market stall, selling savouries and spiced tea. In his quest he receives help from a mysterious woman, Heera, and a young girl, Shanti, running into dangers along the way.

Bali Rai explains more about the context for the story in an historical note which forms an afterword. He originally intended it to be part of a novel about the Amritsar Massacre, City of Ghosts that was published in 2009 but was not much noticed at the time (see my article about India in children’s fiction https:// historicalnovelsociety.org/india-in-childrenshistorical-fiction/). This story is linked to that book and was published in an earlier version as The Night Run in 2014. Here he has reworked the story and hopefully the greater interest now in telling stories from Britain’s colonial past from the viewpoints of those colonised will mean that it gains a well-deserved wider audience as Escape from Amritsar

Ann Lazim

THE SKY WAS MY BLANKET

Uri Shulevitz, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025, $19.99/C$26.99, hb, 160pp, 9780374392468 In 1930, at the age of fifteen and a half, Yehiel Szulewicz leaves home in search of adventure and a life other than the one destined for him by his religious Jewish parents in Poland. Yehiel has no money and no ID papers, yet he thinks of traveling to the Holy Land. He makes his way through Europe from one Jewish community to the next, doing odd jobs to earn a meal, a bed, or some money, surviving through his quick wits and good luck. Sometimes he sleeps in the wild, with the sky as his blanket. In Vienna, Yehiel is apprenticed to a leathersmith, but in 1933, his adventures turn dangerous. Forced to leave Austria, he flees to Spain and becomes a member of the Republican Army fighting Franco’s fascist forces. After Franco’s victory, Yehiel flees to Vichy France, where he joins the Jewish Resistance and fights the Nazis. Yehiel fills his life with adventure, but he never reconciles with his parents. He never sees them again.

Posthumously published, The Sky Was My Blanket tells the story of Caldecott Medal winner Uri Shulevitz’s own uncle’s story—a man who “…was to me like a second father, a role model, and an inspiration.” It is brutal yet beautiful. Fast paced, this is a quick but not an easy read. Shulevitz’s black-and-white illustrations are as stark and as impossible to ignore as the story itself. An extensive afterword informs the reader of Shulevitz’s reasons for telling his uncle’s story. The publisher’s age range is 10-14, though any adult will appreciate it. Some knowledge of WWII and the Holocaust will deepen the reading experience. Highly recommended.

Meg Wiviott

NORTH OF TOMBOY

Julie A. Swanson, SparkPress, 2025, $14.99, pb, 376pp, 9781684633302

1973. Nine-year-old Jess doesn’t like dresses, dolls, or sleepovers with girls. She likes to play sports, climb trees, and do the same things as her brothers. Her mother won’t let Jess cut her long hair, forces her to wear a dress two days a week, and thinks Jess will eventually want to be more “girl-like.” When Jess gets a doll for Christmas (again!) she cuts its hair and names him Mickey. Mickey can say all the things that well-behaved Jess cannot. Helpful at first, Jess soon longs to speak her own mind. Will her family ever understand who she really is?

The setting of the 1970s in a Michigan lake

town is spectacularly evoked. A map makes clear locations of Jess’s house, the lake, the elephant tree, and all the places she goes to have fun. Modern children will learn how much more stringent the gender divide was at that time and what life was like for girls like Jess.

Jess is a well-developed, relatable character, but the conflicts she experiences aren’t especially suspenseful. The story moves at a gentle pace, which was OK for me but is less likely to hold a young reader’s attention. At 376 pages, this book is too long. Some issues and characters don’t have full arcs and could have been cut, such as the concussion and the “mystery” about grandpa. While the recommended audience age is 8 to 12, young readers rarely read “down,” meaning older readers may not be interested in a nine-year-old protagonist. With a few changes, Jess could have been twelve. A good book, which with stronger editing could have better appealed to children.

Elizabeth Caulfield Felt

WENDY’S EVER AFTER

Julie Wright, Shadow Mountain, 2025, $19.99, hb, 272pp, 9781639933877

This book is written for teenagers, but it is also for those of us who have ever wondered what happened to Wendy Darling after she returned home to London from her adventures with Peter Pan.

Five years after she left Neverland, Wendy is seventeen and enjoying a lively social life in London, complete with balls, parties, and gatherings. However, she has never forgotten Peter Pan and often yearns for why he never returned to bring her back to Neverland. One night at a masquerade ball, Wendy meets a handsome but elusive stranger who piques her curiosity. He leaves the ball early, and on a whim, Wendy decides to follow him.

She travels through a series of underground tunnels and unexpectedly finds herself emerging into the light of Neverland. The stranger is waiting for her there, and Wendy is attracted to him, but can’t wait to be reunited with Peter.

What ensues are brilliant twists to the original storyline. Wendy discovers the true identity of the handsome stranger and why he led her to Neverland. Another significant plot twist occurs when Wendy finally finds Peter, but her new adventures with him are complicated now that she is a young adult. Neverland still has pirates, mermaids, and pixies, but even the Lost Boys have changed, and hard truths emerge. In the end, Wendy finds herself faced with a huge decision that will determine her future happiness and the very existence of Neverland.

This novel gives the reader the chance to immerse themselves in the fantasy of Neverland while it explores the very human qualities of finally growing up. Recommended.

Linda Harris Sittig

CONFERENCES

The Society organizes biennial conferences in the UK, North America, and Australasia. Contact Richard Lee <richard@historicalnovelsociety.org> (UK), Elizabeth R. Andersen <hnsnaboardchair@gmail.com> (North America), or Elisabeth Storrs <contact@hnsa.org.au> (Australasia).