A visual preview of the fall season

I know I haven't been here much lately. I've been working on an article (about historical fiction, naturally) that I want to get written and turned in before continuing with my book manuscript. However, I've set myself quite a challenge with this article, structure-wise, and it's been slow going.

In the meanwhile, I thought I'd give readers a heads-up on historical fiction titles forthcoming in the autumn, ones that I could find cover images for. Also, the HNS forthcoming books page has been updated through December, but since some large catalogs aren't posted yet (Random House, St. Martin's, Simon & Schuster, among others), it's still incomplete.

The covers link to the Amazon page for the books.

From the author of the bestselling Beneath a Marble Sky, a new novel about a group of castaways on a remote Pacific island during World War II. A wounded Japanese soldier grows closer to the American woman he had rescued. From NAL in September.

The first historical novel from two acclaimed historians. Set in Boston on the eve of the American Revolution, it "weaves together the fictional stories of a Scottish portrait painter and notorious libertine Stewart Jameson, and Fanny Easton, a fallen woman from one of Boston’s most powerful families." Spiegel & Grau, December.

The long-awaited final novel in Penman's trilogy about Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and their brood. I'll drop everything to read this one when it arrives. From Putnam in October.

Two fictional sisters, Maddalena and Chiaretta, left at the foundling hospital at Venice's Pieta become the pupils of Antonio Vivaldi. From Hyperion/Voice in September. Look for an interview with the author in May's HNR.

A reissue (with new cover) of one of Seton's lesser-known novels, originally published in 1950. Amanda Lawrence, an East Coast debutante, moves to the Arizona desert with her part-Apache husband, Dart, a mining engineer. She feels bored and neglected until a map to a lost mine surfaces. From Chicago Review Press in September.

The Spanish Civil War (and Spain in general) seems to be growing in popularity as a setting. In this first novel, a literary love story, the war is seen from the viewpoint of Guernica's Basque residents. From Bloomsbury USA in September. I generally love "landscape" covers, including this one.

The story of Martha Carrier, one of the first women hanged for witchcraft in Salem, and that of her daughter, Sarah, forced to stand alongside her mother as hysteria grips their village. The author is a tenth generation descendant of her heroine. I glom onto historical novels set in colonial America and got this ARC thanks to a Publishers Weekly giveaway. Out from Little, Brown in September.

From Berkley in October: a novel set in London, three days after Mary Stuart's execution. Lady Janet de Ros, Scottish wife of an English merchant, travels to Edinburgh to prove that Mary was innocent of murdering her husband, Lord Darnley. The author wrote The Spanish Bride, about Catherine of Aragon, under the pseudonym Laurien Gardner.

Decades after the mysterious disappearance of the Cenergite manuscript (called "Revelation of Fire") from a Moscow archives in 1938, two researchers reconstruct its history over the previous two centuries. From the Permanent Press in September.

Courtroom drama, based on a scandalous real-life London divorce case from 1864. From Harcourt in September; it appeared from HarperCollins Canada last month.

Literary saga about sixty years in the life of a Brahmin woman, left widowed at age eighteen in early twentieth-century India, and based on the life of the author's grandmother. Harcourt, September; already out in Canada.

A new biographical novel/literary invention from the author of novels about Josephine and Marie Antoinette. I'm not sure yet who this is about. Grand Duchess Tatiana is on the cover. She was the most photogenic among Nicholas and Alexandra's daughters, so that may or may not mean anything. St. Martin's, October.

More culinary romance from the author of The Wedding Officer; from Bantam in August. Set in London and Abyssinia in 1895.

I can take a wild guess at the subject based on the title. From Crown in late December, a tumultuous romp about a beautiful young woman in the Tudor court.