Short reviews of four historical novels about uncommon women

Happy New Year!  This is my 1900th blog post, with brief reviews of four recommended historical novels I've read over the past month or so. If you've read any or would like to, please comment.

With my best wishes for good reading for everyone in 2025!

Elena Morandi has unusual ambitions for a young woman in Bologna of 1575: to become a tailor, an occupation forbidden to females, and to expose the powerful, depraved nobleman who had abused her and the other girls living in the Baraccano Orphanage. Elena’s spirited narration sees her through several missteps as she finds an unofficial family of supporters in the growing Renaissance city.

From the hustle and bustle of a master tailor’s workshop to the studio of the yet-to-be-famous Carracci painters, Bologna proves to be as alluring as the better-known Rome and Florence. The cast is realistically diverse, including a Black seamstress who becomes Elena’s friend (she’s depicted in Annibale Carracci’s Portrait of a Woman Holding a Clock). Debut novelist Virgo is herself a talented craftswoman as she works elegant solutions out of complex plotting dilemmas in City of Silk.

Even if you’re a devoted reader of Victorian gothics, you won’t have encountered anything quite like Fayne. A unique masterpiece of the genre, Ann-Marie MacDonald’s novel is a 700-plus page brick of a book that, once past the elaborate opening chapters, was near-impossible for me to put down. Charlotte Bell’s father has always encouraged her scientific inquisitiveness, and when he invites a male tutor to his sprawling, remote estate in the English-Scottish borderlands to continue his motherless twelve-year-old daughter’s education, countless secrets – including the unspoken medical condition that keeps her isolated – begin unraveling.

The less you know at the outset, the more surprises await. Fayne left me pondering established gender roles and admiring the witty language (one dinner party scene is utterly magnificent), but I especially loved the author’s ability to build up layers of mystery and reshape gothic tropes with every reveal. What a shame it wasn't published in the US (although it's available for sale here).

Alice Kyteler, daughter of a prosperous innkeeper and moneylender in Kilkenny in 1279, is an outspoken and haughty young woman who developed a thick skin out of self-preservation against those who covet her beauty and power: “I am sixteen years alone in this skin, and with each season, their hunger for me increases.” Alice has the dubious renown of being the first woman condemned for witchcraft in Ireland, but in Molly Aitken’s fierce portrait, Bright I Burn, this false accusation by a malicious bishop is just one part of her extraordinary story.

Unlike the stereotypical independently-minded female in medieval-set fiction, Alice knows she must marry – “Few would choose a woman banker if she were unwed” – and has a succession of rich husbands. Whispers follow when they die under suspicious circumstances. The novel has been critiqued for its lack of large-scale worldbuilding, but I found the scene-setting well-drawn, with a close focus fitting its subject. While not guilty of the satanic crimes she was tried for, this bold, earthy Alice, with her uncompromising determination to exist on her own terms, is the defiant opposite of innocent.

Lucy Holland’s historical fantasy Song of the Huntress has a complex setup that takes extended verbiage to explain, just like in the novel itself. When she’s offered enough power to vanquish Queen Boudica’s Roman enemies in the 1st century CE, her lover, Herla, foolishly grabs it. Problem is, Herla’s benefactor was Gwyn ap Nudd, lord of the Otherworld, who condemns her to lead the Wild Hunt through the ages, killing with uncontrollable bloodlust whenever the moon is old.

Centuries pass. When Herla reappears in the time of King Ine and Queen Æthelburg of Wessex, she somehow finds the ability to resist her murderous urges – temporarily – and she and Æthelburg, warrior women both, feel a slow-burning mutual attraction. Besides ongoing tensions with other Saxon kingdoms and native Britons, Æthelburg is angered that only Ine takes her abilities seriously, even as he remains romantically distant.

The novel’s premise is a super-creative mashup of eras, and the storyline of dark magic re-emerging in 8th-century England makes an entertaining blend of history and the supernatural. But I found the pace very slow at times, and for a feminist novel, it's curious that Ine’s storyline held my attention the most. Ine loves his wife but isn’t attracted to her, he daringly prefers alliances to fighting, and his coming to terms with a vein of reawakened power is truly compelling.

Publishing details:

Glennis Virgo, City of Silk, Allison & Busby (Nov. 2024)
Ann-Marie MacDonald, Fayne, Vintage Canada (March 2024)
Molly Aitken, Bright I Burn, Knopf (Sept. 2024)
Lucy Holland, Song of the Huntress, Redhook (March 2024)

The Instrumentalist reinterprets the life of an orphaned girl turned master violinist in 18th-century Venice

In 1696, a Venetian sex worker deposits her newborn in a small hole in the wall of the Ospedale della Pietà, an orphanage where nuns shelter unwanted girls who may otherwise have been drowned in the canals. The Pietà has a music school, and the baby, named Anna Maria, grows up to become its orchestra’s star violinist under the tutelage of maestro Antonio Vivaldi.

Constable’s debut is a passionate reimagining of Anna Maria’s story—and much of it must necessarily be reimagined. As with other artistic women from history, her work remains shadowy, and although Vivaldi wrote concertos for her, her specific contributions to his oeuvre are unknown.

Anna Maria burns with ambition. At eight, she knows she’s “destined for greatness,” and insists that her teacher guide her in honing her ferocious talents. She develops close friendships with other girls but casts them aside; her music demands full attention. In short, she’s a diva-in-training, and Constable urges readers to consider not only what it takes for women to succeed in a repressive era, but also what this single-minded drive takes away from them. Anna Maria is a synesthete who sees music in color, and these passages (“it trembles and fragments before her eyes… a thousand shades of gold and auburn and maroon”) immerse the reader in swirls of brilliant sound and images.

As Anna Maria uses Vivaldi (who’s never named as such) to pursue her goals, her teacher is also using her. “I am a composer. Instrumentalists are forgotten,” he tells her, and her original compositions are stolen and subsumed into his. The story over-relies on binary extremes such as this, and her petulance and self-entitlement feel very modern. Fortunately, the concluding chapters show greater emotional subtlety. You may come away from this novel unsure if you’ve met the real Anna Maria, but it has a sweep and urgency that’s hard to resist.

The Instrumentalist was published by Simon & Schuster (US) and Bloomsbury (UK), and I reviewed it initially for November's Historical Novels Review.  This isn't the first novel about Vivaldi and the violin school at the Ospedale della Pietà; others include Laurel Corona's The Four Seasons, Barbara Quick's Vivaldi's Virgins, and Alyssa Palombo's The Violinist of Venice. Read more about the author's writing process in her article for The Guardian.

Michelle Cameron's Babylon illuminates life during the Jewish exile in ancient Babylon

Babylon is engrossing from start to finish. Michelle Cameron’s novels illustrate the lives of the Jewish people (especially women) at times and places rarely explored in fiction. I’ve enjoyed The Fruit of Her Hands (13th-century Europe) and Beyond the Ghetto Gates (Napoleonic-era Italy), and this one is even better.

The story begins in 586 BCE, as Chaldean soldiers in the army of Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon’s mighty ruler, overtake the prosperous farm outside Jerusalem where a young woman named Sarah lives with her parents, brother, and cousin. After her other relatives are killed, Sarah and her cousin Reuven are forcibly marched, along with numerous other captives, on the lengthy journey to Babylon. Some of the enslaved Judeans are chosen to be servants at the royal palace; others are settled on farms, with orders to grow specific crops. The characters undergo difficult ordeals, presented unflinchingly yet with great compassion. Sarah always yearns for the day she’ll see her farm again and keeps faith that the Judeans will be allowed to return. However, while they preserve their customs and faith in this very foreign land, there’s no denying the allure of the dazzling riches at court.

Babylon spans over eighty years and three generations, with genealogical charts in the opening pages for the novel’s three principal families: Sarah and her lineage, the Babylonian royals, and the people who take up residence on the farm Sarah was forced to abandon. While I love that the charts exist, I didn’t consult them until I was done, since I didn’t want to know in advance which relationships would be forming. This is an epic novel, and Cameron has mastered the art of moving through a wide swath of time without choppiness and without losing readers’ emotional connection to the characters. And the characters themselves are a colorful and interesting bunch, including vain and power-hungry princesses, farmers, talented musicians, Biblical prophets, and a dedicated scribe who chronicles happenings for posterity.

Individual Judeans and the people as a whole work through questions relating to assimilation – intermarriage, adoption of a new land’s customs and religious rituals, and more – but don’t find simple answers. It’s altogether an immersive tale, told with an underlying sense of warmth, about resilience during adversity, family, faith, and how people instill the meaning of home in their daily lives even while far away.

Babylon was published last year by Wicked Son/Post Hill Press; I read it from a personal copy.

Ten more recent indie-published historical novels to check out

Here are ten more indie-published historical novels worth investigating. It was great to see so much interest in my initial list of ten titles - thanks for all the feedback and shares.  Because of a Blogger quirk, the cover images below got uploaded in reverse alphabetical order by author, which I'm keeping in order to switch things up a bit. These novels feature many historical settings you'd be hard-pressed to find elsewhere in fiction.

Peter Young, the title character in Tvordi's debut, was a highly respected scholar who sounds like he was a decent overall fellow, too. As tutor to the young Scottish king, James VI, Peter's political skills and patience are tested when James's attractive French cousin, Esmé Stewart, arrives at court. June 2024. 

Australian writer A. M. Stuart's Harriet Gordon mystery series, set in early 20th-century Singapore, began with Berkley and is continuing via indie publishing. This fifth entry has her looking into a schoolgirl's death, complicating her relationship with her beau, a police inspector. Oct. 2024.

I've read and reviewed all of Elizabeth St.John's full-length historical novels, so I preordered The King's Intelligencer as soon as it went online. They're all well-researched, beautifully told stories based on people from her own family tree; many of the St.Johns played prominent roles in English history, though you may not recognize their names. This entry, standalone but connected to her earlier The Godmother's Secret, takes place in the 1670s as bones of young children (the lost princes?) are discovered in the Tower. October 2024.

S. K. Rizzolo has contributed guest essays here before, so you may recognize her name from that as well as from her Regency mystery series from Poisoned Pen Press. Safe in Death begins a new series featuring Esther Hardy, who turns amateur sleuth in Victorian England after a young woman's terrible murder. November 2024.

 

The Pirate's Physician is a companion standalone novella to Maroney's Sea and Stone Chronicles, set in the 15th-century Mediterranean world. A female medical student boards a ship to escape an unwanted marriage. Pirates and romantic intrigue in a setting you don't often see in fiction. I first discovered Maroney's work via the Historical Stories of Exile anthology. September 2024.

Described as "Gangs of New York for women," Battle Annie is based on Annie Walsh, a brick-hurler and gang leader active in the gritty world of railroad strikes on the streets of NYC's Hell's Kitchen in the late 19th century. She sounds like quite a character!  Annie and her ward, an orphaned guttersnipe, go on the run after a false murder accusation. I'd interviewed the author about her excellent novel Cinnamon Girl last year. Sept. 2024.

Susan Higginbotham always chooses interesting subjects for her biographical novels, and her research is thorough; so much so that in this case, a peer-reviewed journal article resulted from her new discoveries about the title character and her family. The Queen of the Platform stars Ernestine Rose, a Polish woman of Jewish heritage whose surprising path led her to become a noted public speaker and early women's rights activist in early America. I've read it and recommend it.  March 2024.

Any Hamilton fans here?  American Harlot reveals the backstory of Maria Reynolds, whose affair with Alexander Hamilton became early America's first major political sex scandal. Her tale is one of resilience and survival. I first read about this novel in Stephanie Dray's author newsletter. Sept. 2024.

Opening in France in 1793, The Greatest Thing evokes the first-person voice of a historical person who deserves more attention. Louis-Benoît Zamor was enslaved as a child and given as a "gift" to Madame du Barry, the last official mistress of Louis XV, King of France. This is the first in a trilogy; one additional novel has been published so far. November 2023.

Lexie Conyngham is an indie author from the Scottish Highlands whose books have been recommended on the CrimeThruTime e-list often. She has multiple historical mystery series, set between early medieval times and the 20th century, incorporating detailed research and dry wit. This first series entry follows Dr. Robert Wilson on his travels throughout Europe during the Regency era, where he encounters crimes. November 2023.

Jennifer S. Brown's The Whisper Sister is a fabulous tale of Prohibition-era NYC

In flapper-speak, a “whisper sister” was a female barkeep during Prohibition, a daring woman who kept booze flowing for eager customers in underground establishments. A more unlikely career choice could hardly be imagined for ten-year-old Malka Soffer when she arrives at Ellis Island in 1920 with her Mama and older brother, having traveled from Ukraine to join her father in New York after a long separation.

Her Papa seems barely recognizable without his long beard and yarmulke, and at school she gets a new American name: Minnie. Remarkably, her story of transformation, assimilation, and blood and chosen family never loses its believability through many sudden plot twists.

As with her debut, Modern Girls, Brown has a confident hand with character, and Minnie has vulnerabilities and a deep emotional strength. Young Minnie soon learns that her Papa has mysterious sources of power through connections to organized crime (though that phrase is never uttered), and when he buys a soda shop, she gleans it’s a front for a bar. She’s right – and rapidly falls in love with the unprepossessing joint on Baxter Street. Some years later, awful circumstances compel her to take over the place herself, leading her ever deeper into excitement and danger, to her brother Max’s dismay.

Minnie’s two spheres of existence feel immediate and real: the strong Jewish traditions her Yiddish-speaking Mama upholds at home, versus the alluring world of the speakeasy, where Minnie crafts original drinks and socializes with an affable trio of regulars. Brown pulls no punches in illustrating the era’s prejudices and violence, which was brutal and often premeditated. The prologue generates instant intrigue with a magnificent (and suspenseful) opening scene that repeats later on. A bravura performance, led by an original heroine who takes risks in bending rules.

The Whisper Sister (a phrase I'd never heard before and makes for a great title) was published by Lake Union in September, and I covered it initially for November's Historical Novels Review.  I also enjoyed the author's interview for Lilith Magazine, in which she discusses the novel's background and themes, Jewish identity, and more.

Signe Pike's The Shadowed Land delves into the possible Scottish roots of Arthurian legend

Personal transformations echo throughout Pike’s intensely felt third novel (following The Forgotten Kingdom, 2020) in an ongoing series about sixth-century Scotland’s political and religious conflicts. Grounded in intriguing new research, it brings to life the little-known stories of Languoreth of Strathclyde, a powerful early medieval queen, and Artúr mac Aedan, a war leader and prince of Dalriada—potentially the true, historic King Arthur behind the legends.

After the Battle of the Caledonian Wood, where the brutal Angles were defeated, the characters endure separate tests of fortitude. Languoreth, a pagan follower of the Old Way, grudgingly endures a treacherous former bishop’s presence in her lands while Artúr returns to Dalriada at his father’s behest.

The book’s title references the Pictish kingdom, where Languoreth’s daughter Angharad travels to hopefully apprentice herself to the druid Briochan. A valiant young woman with deep emotional reserves, Angharad undergoes physical and mystical trials during her quest.

There are perhaps too many viewpoints, but Pike enthusiastically transfers her affinity for ancient Celtic cultures to readers, and her interpretation of the Arthurian canon exudes originality.

The Shadowed Land was published this week by Atria/Simon & Schuster, and I reviewed it initially for Booklist. I had previously reviewed book one, The Lost Queen, and book two, The Forgotten Kingdom, but since the previous book came out over four years ago, it took some time to reacquaint myself with where the characters left off.  You really don't want to start with this book. Originally the series was planned as a trilogy, but the story doesn't end here.  There will be one more book to come.

Critics pick their favorite historical novels of 2024

It's not even December, and media outlets have been proclaiming their Best Books recommendations for 2024. I feel a bit sorry for those novels slated to come out next month! (Although to be fair, these may be included in roundups by pre-publication review sources.)

Here are the lists I've come across thus far.

As always, NPR's Books We Love crosses subgenres, age categories, and time periods (even ranging up through the 1980s) to present their annual collage of favorite historical novels: 44 of them.  If you prefer to see a list rather than a cover gallery, that's available too.

Writing for The Times (London), critics Nick Rennison and Antonia Senior pick the 10 best historical novels for 2024. This is paywalled, sorry, though if you have Apple News, you can read the article through the app. Some books included here that I haven't seen on other lists are Irish writer Kevin Barry's The Heart in Winter (set in 1890s Montana), Mary Horlock's The Stranger's Companion (1930s on the Channel Island of Sark), Hesse Phillips' Lightborne (Christopher Marlowe), and Rosanna Pike's A Little Trickerie (Tudor times).

The Washington Post (gift link) makes their picks, including Leonard Pitts, Jr.'s 54 Miles, Ashton Lattimore's All We Were Promised, and The Phoenix Crown by Kate Quinn and Janie Chang, which is on NPR's list too.

The top 10 list in The Independent has been out for a few weeks, and is very different from that in the compilation above. Overlapping titles include Robert Harris's Precipice (which I also read and enjoyed, though it wasn't my favorite of his) and Tracy Chevalier's The Glassmaker.

The final round of Readers' Choice Awards at Goodreads is out, with ten books vying for the title (in theory). Voting is only open for the next day and a half. Just because I'm curious how closely popularity will correlate with the ultimate rankings, here they are, listed by the # of reviews posted in the system as of today:

The Women by Kristin Hannah - over 90K reviews

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon - 19,400+ reviews

James by Percival Everett - 13,800+ reviews

The Briar Club by Kate Quinn - 6700+ reviews

By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult - 5300+ reviews

Husbands and Lovers by Beatriz Williams - 4600+ reviews

Anita del Monte Laughs Last by Xóchitl González - 3800+ reviews
The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali - 3600+ reviews

The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia - 1200+ reviews

The Booklover's Library by Madeline Martin - 800+ reviews

Some books with higher #s of reviews were eliminated after the semifinals, so we'll see how this ends up.

Still to come: the New York Times list, which should be out in mid-December, and Library Journal's lists, out in their December issue.